Banner ads suck. That's why everyone is replacing them with more interactive marketing campaigns, reeling people in with videos, RSS feed content, and other socially integrated ways in which to merge with a site's ongoing conversations. Involver (formerly RapOuts), is the latest to replace the banner ad with an interactive video widget that is fully customizable by the brand. Launch partners for Involver's new video widget ads include Kiva and Serena Software.
Many of the newer, custom video offerings revolve around hyperlinks that can be inserted into clips based on that video's existing content, but Involver is taking a more familiar approach with its video widget ads. There are menu buttons that can be added to the video, which then appear along the top and the bottom of the clip, similar to video widgets you see from established widget creation services. In fact, Involver's video widget ad is powered by Gigya, so Involver is able to take advantage of the viral sharing capabilities that Gigya already provides.
But in customizing your Involver video widget, you can edit your player with things like quizzes, an email registration window (collect email addresses for your outgoing newsletter), RSS feeds, petitions, donate buttons, a shopping cart and more. These items are all available as individual add-ons, so you can pick and choose which ones you'd like to add. Such options turn your video campaign into a portable website of sorts, enabling brands to get their message across without interrupting the user experience. What's worse than actually seeing an ad you're interested in, but not clicking on it because you don't want to interrupt the video?
That may be exaggerating the situation a bit, but the core concept that Involver is promoting here is the fact that brands can skip the dynamically changing landing pages and just close the deal, directly from the video widget. What will be interesting about these types of ads that aim to get their message across without necessarily redirecting to a separate page, in the immediate sense, is that it will eventually call for a shift in the way in which ad revenues are distributed amongst brands, networks, and site publishers.