Are Skins, Bugs or Tickers The Holy Grail of Web Advertising?

ARE SKINS, BUGS AND TICKERS THE HOLY GRAIL OF WEB ADVERTISING?
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Kevin J. Delaney at kevin.delaney@wsj.com and Emily Steel]
Sites ranging from Google Inc. to Break.com have been experimenting intensively with replacements for the preroll, the video ads that users are forced to watch before viewing a clip. The sites and advertisers are now citing success with such things as graphics that slide over the bottom of the video-viewing screen that allow them to market to users without interrupting the clip. A user can usually click on the graphic -- sometimes known as overlays, bugs or tickers -- to pause the video and see more information from the advertiser. Other marketers are seeing results with ad graphics that surround the video player screen, often known as player skins, especially when used in concert with video ads dropped into clips like TV commercials. And the preroll itself has been reinvented, now limited to as little as five seconds and sometimes including timers that count down the length of the commercial in order to grab consumers' attention without turning them off.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118694625293695336.html?mod=todays_us_ma...
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