News Flash: Video ads becoming a much bigger player than Flash ads

Chances are you've seen the online eyesores of Flash animation advertisements - dancing silhouettes urging you to refinance your mortgage, animated smiley faces hawking premium emoticons or "floater" ads that fly sideways on your screen with an impossible-to-find Close button.

You'll be relieved to find out that those Flash advertisements, while still ubiquitous, are a declining medium. Web video ads are not only easier on the eyes but they're proving far more lucrative than Flash for online advertising.

"Video ads get two to three times the click-through of Flash ads," says Matt Cooper, Founder and CEO of Addroid, a web platform allowing users to create their own video banner ads affordably and in a matter of just minutes.

Research indicates Mr. Cooper's higher estimate is more accurate. A DoubleClick study revealed that online ads with video increased users' intent to purchase by 1.16 percent, as opposed to just .26 percent for Flash ads.

With Flash advertisements, animation is often crude and the ad campaign sometimes even cruder. By comparison, web video advertisements are cleaner, more elegant and user friendly.

Some of the top up-and-coming web video ad pioneers will be featured at April's ad:tech San Francisco conference in the New Video Platforms Startup Spotlight. Addroid will be among these featured startups, with their revolutionary fast and affordable web video creation platform.

While video ads are becoming better-crafted and more common, many businesses still find it a cost-prohibitive and time-consuming platform. Addroid has a model to change that.

"We're making video ads accessible," Mr. Cooper told Allvoices, referring to his company's ad builder product. "We're taking something that took two to three weeks of time and turning it into something that takes two to three minutes."

While mobile devices are widely considered the next unconquered frontier for web advertisers, Mr. Cooper sees the traditional computer and laptop platforms as more cost-effective. "Mobile is important and it's expanding," Mr. Cooper said. "But mobile is expensive, and it doesn't perform well."

After all, video ads on the mobile platform consume gobs and gobs of data bandwidth - and data isn't free. No one is going to want to be billed extra just to look at advertisements.

More pointedly, most mobile video ad click-throughs are unintended. The user clicked on them only by accident, on account of the smaller screen interface. Forbes notes that more than 50 percent of U.S. adults admit to clicking on ads by mistake more often than on purpose.

Mr. Cooper will be participating in the New Video Platforms panel Tuesday, April 3 at ad:tech San Francisco.

This article is part of Allvoices’ series on ad:tech, the largest digital marketing and technology conferences and expositions. Check out allvoices.com/adtech for more of Allvoices’ ad:tech San Francisco event coverage. This series is supported by ad:tech.