80% more publishers will support video advertising in 2007.

Advertising.com, Inc. announced the results of its 2007 online publisher survey, an annual survey of websites who participate in the company’s advertising network. The online survey addressed publisher predictions for online advertising revenue growth, advertiser objectives and advertising capabilities for 2007.

Survey findings validate industry prognostications regarding the growth of online video, with 80% more publishers supporting video advertising formats in 2007 versus 2006. In addition, 100% of sites with streaming content are monetizing it with video advertising. Publishers are also expected to add more streaming content to their websites in 2007, primarily through original content versus syndicated or user-generated content.

User-generated content as a whole saw a modest increase this year because, according to one survey respondent, publishers still have not found a way to “filter or monitor user-generated content effectively.”

“Video has a lot of value for advertisers. It carries great emotional impact like TV, yet it can be measured and can’t be skipped. That value means publishers can command higher CPMs – hence the rise of streaming content,” said David Jacobs, senior vice president of publisher services for Advertising.com.

Another notable trend had to do with the objectives advertisers hope to achieve using online advertising.

While it appears traditional offline advertisers will continue to shift more dollars to online advertising, maintaining a three-year trend, advertisers plan to use the Internet primarily to achieve hybrid goals, i.e., both branding and direct-response objectives simultaneously. This shift toward hybrid campaigns had clear ramifications for a wide range of other survey findings, including the dominance of CPM pricing models, the focus on larger ad sizes, and the use of more sophisticated advertising formats such as video and rich media – all of which typically correlate with brand advertising. Factors traditionally associated with pure direct-response advertising, such as text links and CPC/CPA pricing, were expected to decline in 2007.

For more information at http://www.advertising.com