Today eMarketer released stats around trends in online video advertising. The article, Options for Online Video Ad Viewers Lead to Greater Engagement, cites consumer choice as driving much of the future of ad engagement. The findings are from online video ad provider AdoTube, and project that dismissable pre-roll ads where consumers have choice (described as “polite pre-roll”) are displacing other online video ad types:

These “polite pre-roll” ads are also outperforming standard pre-roll video ads in both click through and engagement rates:

Boston based online video analytics company Visible Measures recently launched an ad network around this trend called Viewable Media. It is a first-of-its kind ad network that allows advertisers to buy user-initiated views in social videos, whereby the consumer chooses when to watch ads as opposed to being forced to watch something pre-roll.

In May the company’s marketing director contributed an article titled Social & Viral Are Great, but the Real Future of Video Advertising is Choice. In it he explains how the future of video advertising is choice:

Choice changes the social dynamics between ads and consumers. When consumers can choose to watch ads, as opposed to being interrupted by them, they share and recommend those ads to friends and family, blast them across social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, embed them on their blog and site, copy and repost them across hundreds of video-sharing sites, and more. This is Earned Media, and it’s the crown jewel of advertising.”

Visible Measures was founded in 2005 and raised an additional $7.7M in venture financing the end of April, bringing their total financing raised to $37M.