Two interesting events in Adworld in the last 2 days show how tough it is proving to make Ads work in the video world:

Firstly, ITV is looking at placing Ads in their programs, on blank spaces – as The Times notes:

ITV is developing a new form of unavoidable advertisement that can be embedded in television programmes.

The new technology, which is known as “automatically placed overlay advertising”, uses complex computer algorithms to find clear space, such as blue sky or blank walls, in video footage in which to display logos or messages.

The technology, which was developed for ITV by Keystream, a Californian company, is currently being tested in news footage on the broadcaster’s ITV Local website. If it is well received, and if regulations permit it, ITV hopes to transfer it to the television screen.

We await with eager anticipation the McDonalds ads on those beautiful Georgian walls in the next classical bodice-ripper (will the software be able to tell the difference between heaving bosoms and those walls we wonder ). As the Times notes:

Colin Macleod, research director at the World Advertising Research Centre, an independent advisory body, said: “Consumers are becoming a lot more clever in avoiding advertising, and now that they’ve got the technology to do it it’s become a big issue for advertisers. They need to be smarter.

Smarter does not necessarily imply increasing the stridency of something that isn’t working though. We’ve not done formal tests on these reactions, but we suspect this will not be a hit – as teh article notes:

“Anything that they are able to use to attract viewers’ attention they will welcome, but as long as viewers feel comfortable about it. This potentially could cause some friction between broadcaster and consumer.”

Here’s a prediction – it will cause more scorn and parody than friction, and will be quietly dropped as they find the audiences just switch over elsewhere.

Secondly, YouTube is reaching for the Post Roll Ad (for the 4% of YouTube videos that take it), as Liz Gannes of NewTeeVee reports:

YouTube, which has never had trouble growing an audience but hasn’t yet figured out the trick for monetizing them thar eyeballs, is adding a trick from the old playbook: post-roll advertisements. As we understand it (and this has been confirmed with the company), if you don’t click on an overlay ad when it shows up in a clip you’re watching, the video ad it would have played rolls automatically at the end of your video. Previously a post-roll video wouldn’t play without being initiated by the user. This type of ad started rolling out over the last few weeks.

Post Rolls are an “interesting” option, in that the probability of them being watched is pretty low compared to the other options, but it is less intrusive. which is the issue – the other formats are not working. Liz:

Just this summer Google CEO Eric Schmidt touted the effectiveness of embedded ads versus pre- and post-rolls. And earlier in the year he promised forthcoming ad products that would be “much more participative, much more creative, much more — much more interesting in and of themselves” than in-line ads. Since then, new products have included ad formats like a full-screen HD movie trailer and publisher tools like “Hot Spots,” which shows which parts of a video viewers are most interested in. That is to say, very few socks were blown off.