Online Television Ads Coming

WOODBRIDGE, N.J. -- With online advertising revenue dropping and banner ads failing to draw much consumer interest, the Internet soon will see a familiar look -- television commercials.

Zebus Group, a technology company that has developed a method to serve streaming video advertisements, said it has formed a partnership with Forbes.com to present video ads on the Forbes Web site.

Praveen Varma, CEO of Zebus, said a move to the TV commercial format represents the "natural evolution" of advertising on the Internet.

"For several years, online advertising was dot-com ads," said Varma. "The traditional advertisers stayed on the sideline. This technology merges the power of the TV commercial and the power of the Internet. That is an excellent combination for advertising."

Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO of Forbes.com, agreed with Varma that the Internet had great, but unrealized potential for marketers.

"It is pretty clear that the Web will be the definitive advertising medium," he said. "I do not want to say the banner ad is useless, but it is not the definitive advertising method."

Spanfeller added that he does not think television ads will crowd out other forms of Web advertising.

"Being able to deliver TV ads online combines the best of all mediums," he said. "They have the power of TV and the information of print. They let people click through to the marketers site, which allows targeted marketing that is better than direct mail."

Jim Nail, an advertising analyst for Forrester Research, couldnt disagree more. TV ads are simply wrong for the Web, he said.

"Its still that model of interrupting somebody, divert them away from what theyre there to do, and do something completely different to them," Nail said. "You can get away with that when people are in a relaxed, let-me-just-surf-the-channels-and-see-whats-happening mode."

According to Tricia Benninghof, the vice president of business development and marketing for Zebus, the company will offer three types of advertisements -- embedded, pop-up and insertion. She said Forbes will showcase the first two, but she said insertion will be the wave of the future.

"With embedded ads, when the person comes to the site, the ad starts playing," she said. "With pop-up, the user has the option to close the window rather than watching the commercial. These two options are best in a text-based environment like a Web page. We can insert an ad into a video stream on sites that have video. This is truly the broadcast television model -- ads in video clips."

Varma said the television ads would make their debut on Forbes.com in the first week of May. What the viewer will see depends on his or her connection, he said.

"The user does not have to do anything," he said. "The technology detects the type of browser, connection and speed and delivers the right format. If the person does not have a media player, we still can deliver the ad using a Java applet. We cover people whether or not they have a player."

Forbes will be the first site to carry the Zebus ads, but Benninghof said the company is in discussions with several other companies.

Michael Bartlett, Newsbytes