Two sharply differing views about how advertising might help online video take off:

• Over at VideoNuze, Will Richmond is arguing that JP Morgan’s recently released Internet Investment Guide for 2009 is too pessimistic about the prospects for online video, in part because it underestimates brands’ interest in shifting their ad dollars to the new medium. He concludes: “Far from being the uninteresting medium that the Morgan report depicts, online video has already become a bright spot for many established content providers whose traditional models are under pressure. It is also opening up new opportunities for new ad-supported entrants. And it is threatening to completely up-end the paid part of the market through improvements in “over-the-top” technologies and consumer services.”
• On the other hand, according to Advanced-Television.com, “a survey of 2,023 people for Deloitte’s Media Democracy report suggests TV advertising is twice as effective as online ads”. Apparently, 84% of consumers said TV ads would influence them to buy a product - against just 45% for online. Indeed, around 64% of respondents said any kind of Internet ad was more intrusive than newspaper ads and 26% said they would be prepared to pay for Web content just to avoid online ads.

Of course, the alleged disadvantage online ads suffer versus the TV-based variety might be outweighed by cost-cutting advertisers seeking more accurately to measure the performance of their adspend. Faced with allocating a million dollars to a conventional broadcast TV campaign with questionable impact instead of a tenth that amount against an online video equivalent with poor conversion rates (but feedback on every view and click), who’s to say today’s hard-pressed media buyer wouldn’t choose the latter over the former?