The Pool Opens Lane 2

Tracey Scheppach, SVP, Video Innovation Director, Starcom USA, just announced the launch of “Lane 2” of the Pool — Publicis-owned VivaKi’s effort to develop a more consumer-friendly replacement for the standard pre-roll ad unit in partnership with top online video suppliers (AOL, Broadband Enterprises, CBS, Discovery, Hulu, Microsoft and Yahoo), along with a half dozen major marketers.

With more of a focus on short-form content, the Pool is now open to all VivaKi clients, according to Scheppach.

Of the seven content partners on board, Scheppach named six: AOL, BBE, CBS, Fancast, Microsoft Advertising, and Tremor.

She also named three marketers involved: Bank of America, General Mills, and U.S. cellular.

“We believe (the resulting ad unit) will scale and create empowerment,” oh, and “beat the pre-roll.” That’s what ad units are most lacking, today, she said: “Empowerment.” “What we have found is that pre-roll doesn’t taking advantage of one of the key elements of the Internet.”

Playing devil’s advocate, Alan Schulman, Chairman, Chief Creative Officer, U.DIG >The Digital Innovations Group, questioned whether the industry isn’t moving too fast to nail down a solution to advertisers’ video issues. “I’m not sure the industry is going to stand still long enough,” he said.

Oh yeah, and Scheppach assured the audience that plenty of invaluable data is coming out of all the Pool’s testing… none of which, however, she plans to reveal until later in the year.