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Pre-roll has taken the online advertising world by storm. This time last year, it was clear consumers were taking less and less notice of banner ads, but as they flocked to view the new video content that was pouring on to the internet, it seemed the solutio was to place ads at the start of the clip.

Oliver Smith, sales director at digital content producer Perform, is getting great results. He says: "The in-stream video formats are still in their honeymoon period of terrific click-through rates. We're getting rates of between three and eight per cent."

However, there are signs that pre-roll blindness is beginning to affect advertising effectiveness. Andreas Bernstrom, chief operating officer at digital marketing company TradeDoubler, explains: "Pre-roll is a disruptive method of advertising, not dissimilar to pop-ups. Conversion rates and effectiveness of this kind of method are traditionally very poor. Advertisers should not do pre-rolls. They should opt out and instead find better, more relevant placements."

Obviously, not everyone believes in pre-roll blindness. Diane Rowe, business director at media agency Zed, says: "Pre-roll blindness is not an issue yet. Last year was the year the UK public embraced online video advertising and I expect take up to grow in 2008. As it's still relatively new, we see video advertising and pre-roll as an opportunity to achieve cut-through in a very busy online environment."

However, Smith believes that this will soon change. "The UK video advertising market is probably 12 to 18 months younger than that of the US," he says. "Advertisers there are having to work harder to achieve results now."

For many then the answer is to develop a new format that stops the ad interfering with the content. An example of this is InSkin ads, which wrap around a media player like a frame. The ad plays independently of the content, and each ad can include calls-to-action, peel-down banners, advertiser's promotional videos, links to websites, data-capture and lead-generation forms.

Patrick Knight, chief executive at InSkin Media, says: "Consumers are sick and tired of TV commercials interrupting their viewing experience and pre-roll blindness provides us with the evidence to suggest that online video viewing is not the place for an intrusive ad format like pre-roll."

The early success of InSkin suggests it may be the successor to pre-roll. Test data has shown click-through rates of between five and 20 times that of banner campaigns on the same page. It has been adopted by publishers such as Dennis, Emap and Mirror Group, and by advertisers such as Coca-Cola, Warner Bros, and Kia Motors. In fact, the buzz around it is similar to that which surrounded pre-roll a year ago, or search marketing five years ago, or email marketing a decade ago.

The problem of course is that it will become redundant just as quickly, if not more so, as all those other technological developments. Advertisers need to confront the fundamental issue here: good advertising works regardless of where it plays.

There are two fundamentals of good advertising. First, it must be properly targeted. Jamie Estrin, director of the Web TV Enterprise, says: "We're seeing a huge take-up in pre-roll because our users are engaging with short ten-second ads that are relevant to the clips they've selected. So if you click on a video clip on Maxim TV, you'll see a short movie trailer for the new Rambo film. Consumers are watching that channel to find out about the latest movies, so that ad is directly relevant to them."

Second, the creative must be high quality. Jonnie Coffin, director of digital content at Film38, believes the main cause of pre-roll blindness is poor creative. She says: "Traditional ad agencies are holding back brands by making them re-purpose their TV ads, which are designed for the broadcast medium only."

When it comes to making consumers take notice, getting the fundamentals right is far more important than where it runs. As Andrew Brown, creative director at ad agency Swamp, concludes: "Consumers say they hate pre-roll advertising. But consumers hate all advertising, except good advertising."

XLeague.TV focuses on content

XLeague.TV launched on Sky in May 2007 as a channel dedicated to electronic games. It has advertisers such as Nationwide, which sponsored its Fifa 2008 tournament, and it makes extensive use of pre-roll advertising.

Ray Mia, channel head, admits pre-roll blindness is creeping in. He says: "Web TV viewers are becoming blind or immune to the messages advertisers want to impart. We're particularly conscious of this because we cater for the most marketing-savvy demographic - video gamers."

He continues: "People now expect to see pre-roll, but they are simply not as patient as they were two or three years ago. I don't believe that the vast online audience has become completely blind, but early adopters have. At best it induces blindness; at worst, it loses the audience and dramatically reduces the stickiness of a website."

There is only one way to solve this problem, he says: provide content consumers want to see. He says: "The more dynamic and thought-provoking the content and the more closely it is linked to the values and demographic of the target market, the more likely it is that surfers will accept any associated advertising. Video gamers are so keen to see our programmes that they engage with the ads that play while they wait."