One of the reasons I enjoy reading Joseph Jaffe's blog - and book - so much is that the guy never cuts any corner, never hedges and tries to see all points of view and certainly never tries to sugarcoat his opinions. So that's why I got a kick out his response to someone asking him what the best length for a pre-roll video ad was.

His response is the title of this post.

As he rightly says, pre-roll video advertising is simply an unimaginative knock-off of television advertising and that's an industry that's wilting and not growing. So why would you try to figure out the best way to do a bad thing? Jaffe says he would never advise a client to do so since, like TV commercials, they mainly result in honking off the viewer while they're trying to watch their selection.

That pretty much sums it up. It remains to be seen what other alternatives come to the forefront since pre-roll ads seem to be the way anyone and everyone is trying to monetize their video offerings. It will take someone who's willing to think outside the norm for that to change.