I recently reconnected with Corey Kronengold, who I've known for years, since he was at Eyeblaster. Corey now handles marketing for video ad network Tremor Media, and blogs at Online Video Watch. It's an entertaining and useful blog -- if you're interested in the online video space, you should go check it out.

As you'd imagine of someone working at Tremor, Corey is a staunch defender of in-stream advertising. So I enjoyed seeing him rampage against some new research on whether consumers like in-stream ads. To put it clearly: users don't like *any* kind of advertising. If advertisers abandoned every format that consumers said they didn't like, there'd be no advertising left. While that sounds great to the 'go-social-or-go-home' dreamers of the world, it would eliminate free media -- and we know that, while consumers say they don't like advertising, consumers would much rather let advertising pay for content than cough up their own money. (We've just finished yet another survey proving this point, this time asking specifically about willingness to accept advertising in exchange for free online video content, and will be publishing those results shortly.) So the key is to find formats that are effective for advertisers and acceptable for consumers; and implemented correctly, in-stream ads offer one such format.

Jupiter clients can see our European Online Video Advertising Best Practices Guide report for more research and ideas on how to make sure in-stream ads work for both consumers and advertisers.