Pause for an Innovative Video Sales Tool from Soup Digital

While the rest of the online video industry was debating the merits of pre-roll, post-roll, banner ads, and other ad styles, Soup Digital Innovations was creating a novel way to insert ads. They did it with the Pause button.

Content creators who use the company's Pause Solutions product will find the pause buttons on their video players replaced by an animated button. Viewers will know something is different because on this new button the familiar pause lines are red and tilted to one side. When viewers click the new pause button, not only does the video stop, but the viewer is shown a pop-up window with up to 10 static images arranged side-by-side. These images are ads that the viewer can click to call up more information. The original video stays on the screen even when an ad is clicked, so the viewer can always resume play.

The unusual ad format could find a natural home with promotional videos, says Bob Gannon, the company's vice-president of business development. The inserted static ads could be used to sell related products or services.

Soup Digital formed a little over a year ago, in January, 2008, with a combination of advertising talent and tech experience. The company's goal is to change the way that people look at and use online video, whether that's the creator or the viewer.

According to Gannon, setting up Pause Solutions is easy for content creators and doesn't require any software to be installed since the tool is entirely browser-based. The encoding creates new files that need to be stored, but the experience is Flash-based and will play on most computers without a problem. Soup Digital provides a video player, but creators are free to use their existing player.

While Soup Digital doesn't have any major customers yet, it's been in talks with Lord & Taylor, Disney, and RIM. According to Gannon, the Lord & Taylor tests were especially effective, with 20 percent of people who saw the ads taking action.

Creators who use Pause Solution will need to pay a rate of $100 per hundred clicks. If you'd like to put downtime to good use and get people shopping when the video is paused, visit Soup Digital