With the incredible rapid growth that online video sharing and video search sites are realizing, more and more advertisers are pumping money into video advertising. According to the latest research, online video advertising revenues in the US are expected to reach $7.1 billion by 2012 which is a 72 percent compound annual growth rate for the next five years. In 2008, the projections are just shy of $1billion.

Since video sites have been realizing more and more traffic growth, they have had a unique opportunity to innovate and test various different online video ad formats. And the advertisers as well are more than happy to experiment as they are looking to these leaders to develop the most effective online video advertising formats. Traditionally, pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll ad formats (aka in-stream ads) have been favored by advertisers due to the availability of inventory and prominence of the advertisement itself.

Pre-Roll Ads - In this format of advertising, the advertisement clip is inserted before the actual video and while playing the video, the advertisement clip is played first and the viewer is compelled to watch the advertisement before the start of the real video file.

Post-roll Format - In post-roll, just like the other in-stream ad formats, a short clip is played and streamed within the player at the end of the video stream itself. This is not as desired by advertisers as they know that many users never watch a video all the way until the end.

Mid-Roll Format - With mid-rolls, a short clip is streamed in the middle (sometimes every X minutes) of video content that is playing. This tends to be less annoying to users as they are acustomed to this format in television advertising.

As stated earlier, due to the demand, many of these video websites have begun to test and offer new, innovative ad solutions for video. One of these experimental format is the In-Player ad: With in-player ads the player skin itself can be used to place relevant images or text content for the advertiser so that the ad is displayed for the entire time that the video is played.

Contextual in-video advertising seems to be the way of the future with many different sites attempting to match videos with advertisements that are most relevant to the subject matter. Users like this format more as well as it does not disturb the experience of watching the entire video. This quality of the format makes it one of the most promising advertising formats for the future and there are many diverse ways in which to serve either images, clips, or text ads.

Some of the video sites like to go through the video and include only relevant in-video text advertisements, which match the contents of the video and at the same time it does not disturb the process of video watching by the viewer. Youtube was one of the first sites to adopt this format as a standard and it is called Overlay Video Ads.

I have given you a brief overview of the most common formats of video ads that are being tested and utilized at the moment. That being said, with growth being what it is, and video discovery as new as it is, we will certainly see many different companies innovating in regards to developing new and exciting formats for online video advertising.

For pretty obvious reasons, nearly everyone who wants to improve traffic to his/her website is heavily involved in article marketing.

There are two keys, and two keys only, to a successful website…content and traffic (visitors). And, while traffic can come from many sources, the best traffic comes from organic listings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

To begin with, although it takes time and energy to build and optimize a site which ranks well in the search engines, the traffic your site receives from the search engines is free. If you advertise, it may cost you $5 or more to generate a visitor to your site. And, research has clearly revealed that visitors who reach you because they found your site in a Google or Yahoo search are far more likely to be buyers than those who come to you as a result of advertising. Four times as likely, in some studies.

In other words, because these visitors have gone to the trouble of searching for information related to the websites on which they wind up, they are more likely to buy, donate, request further information, add themselves to a newsletter mailing list, etc.

No wonder goal-oriented site owners dedicate so much time to ensuring good search engine rankings by conducting intensive link building campaigns. And, no wonder article writing is such a big part of those campaigns. There is no other method of obtaining as many good links as quickly. An article written and sent out in an hour or two today can result in hundreds of links…maybe more…in a few short weeks.

Almost always, for fairly obvious reasons, people write articles about the same subjects which are the themes of their websites. It just makes good sense.

The mistake they make all too often is that they do not write about anything else.

Website owners who choose to write only on one or a narrow range of topics will miss out on lots of potential links. By branching out a bit, their writing and their links can be far more widely published. I’m an education writer who already has thousands of links on education-related websites. But not everybody is interested in higher education, so my articles have reached a limited audience and my links appear primarily on specialized websites. By writing on unrelated but popular topics, like this one, I can reach whole new audiences and earn links on countless more websites.

Do write about the subject(s) of your website(s). That’s how you’ll get links which will do the most to boost your search engine rankings for the keywords that can bring you the most targeted traffic. But, don’t make mistake #1 of article writers…don’t limit your range of topics. Every few weeks, choose a popular topic…one with mass appeal…and write on it. The new audiences such articles can help you reach, and the increase in links you will gain will give your website a big boost.

Obviously there can be many reasons why your business isn’t making any money. Since I do not have the power to connect with you through the computer screen, tap into your brain, analyze your business and discover exactly why your business isn’t making any money, I really cannot definitively answer this question specifically for your business in this article.

That being said, I can share with you one of the TOP reasons why most businesses don’t make any money. There is a good chance that if your business isn’t making any money either, this might be the exact reason.

The reason why your business isn’t making any money is because your marketing is terrible.

It’s that simple.

Fix your marketing and there is a very good chance that your business will start making money even if there are other fundamental problems with your business that need to be fixed as well.

T Harv Eker, one of the foremost business trainers in the world today teaches marketing and business principles to thousands of entrepreneurs across the world. In one of his classes, he asks everyone in the room to come up to the room and tell everyone in the class what business they are in.

“I’m in the personal development business” some say.

“I’m in the computer business” others might say.

“I’m in the printing business” still others might say.

After each student comes up and shares what business they are in, T Harv Eker comes up and I will paraphrase what he says here because the language probably wouldn’t be appropriate for this article. Let’s just say he says “All of you are a bunch of complete idiots and that’s why you aren’t making any money.”

Here’s what he follows this up with and understand, if you get this point right here, you will likely identify why you aren’t making any money.

He says…

“None of you are in any of those businesses that you just mentioned. You are in the MARKETING business!”

It doesn’t matter what your product or service is that you are offering. You are in the marketing business. Your job is to attract prospects to your offer and to convince them to exchange their money for your product or service. Your income from your business is in direct relation to your ability to get those prospects to give you their money for your product or service.

Obviously you have to have a product or service worth buying, but the bottom line is even if you have the greatest product or service in the world, if you don’t have strong marketing to support that product or service, you’re not going to make any money.

I will leave you with this.

Do you think you can make a better hamburger than McDonalds? Of course you can. Most of us, I’m sure can make a hamburger that taste better than the hamburgers that McDonalds makes. However, can you MARKET a hamburger better than McDonalds? I doubt it. If you could, you would own a billion dollar company like the shareholders of McDonalds own.

So if your business isn’t making any money, take a good hard look at your marketing. It could be the exact reason why your business isn’t making the money that you would like to make.

As you probably know by now I have recently released a marketing eCourse for websites and small businesses. If you would like to learn effective marketing and what it is all about you will want to grab a copy by Clicking Here.

I am releasing a brand new business training area on April 2nd, 2008 that will actually train you to build a business online that makes you a great income or will help you convert your current business into a more profitable venture. If you are interested in learning to make money online then you will want to stay tuned here because I will provide you with an update.

To Your Success!

Mark Garland
AnalyzedMarketing.com