Outdoor enthusiasts are a picky bunch.  Over the last year, with countless campaigns under our belt, the one common thread has been the notion that simpler is better.  This goes against the grain of technology and its use in online media, as most would think you need to run multiple rich media specs with slick flash integrations in order to meet your target audience.

In fact, the opposite is true.  While you still need a strong call to action in the ad, its the ones that paint this message in a simple format that get the results.  Serving up rich media against a standard .gif logo, we've found that engagement with the logo wins hands down....by a factor of 5:1.

Which is why I think for 2010, outdoor brands should take a hard look at how they are approaching the design of their ads.  All of the major research panels point to video being the best thing since sliced bread, and one company is leading the charge.

Enter the mind boggling intelligence of Innovid.  Based out of Tel Aviv, these genious programmers have figured out a way to insert your product inside streaming ads, and allow users to engage at will.  This is huge, because here at the Outdoor channel we already know that outdoor folks hate it when a brand inserts what is called a "pre-roll" before their favorite climbing or sufing video.  Heck, even I hate them and I sell them.

Pre-rolls aren't all that bad, but the signal you are sending to the outdoor consumer is that your message is more important than their time.  With Innovid, the opposite is true:

"Go beyond conventional advertising limits using existing videos as your canvas. Integrate images into movies or use existing objects in the video, hotspot them, or tie them in with any rich media solution you want."

In the case of our outdoor network, take climbing for example.  On a monthly basis, we serve over 18 hrs per day of video content to our 1.7 million outdoor enthusiasts.  The solution from Innovid would be to insert your backpack into all the episodes where a backpack is visible and then the user could choose to click on it to learn more about your company.

Very powerful and amazing stuff.  And like I said in the beginning.  Outdoor folks are picky, so if you let them choose when they want to engage you as opposed to forcing the engagement, I think you'll find quite a few more fans in 2010.