Interactive video ad formats help drive up content creativity, according to YouTube’s head of solutions Harry Davies.

Speaking at the Internet Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Video: In demand conference yesterday, Davies said the power of video advertising lies with the content regardless of which screen it is on, and that interactive formats such as Youtube’s skippable ads, are encouraging advertisers to be even more creative.

“It doesn’t matter what device videos are watched on – whether it is TV, laptop, mobile or tablet – it is the content that matters. If the content is good people will watch it on any device. But there is no point coming up with great content if no one sees it,” he said.

Skippable video ad formats can help advertisers ensure their videos become more sharable, according to Davies. “You have five seconds of exposure and then can be skipped, and it’s amazing when someone does something creative with it.”

He pointed to a campaign for Euclideon as an example, in which the brand used the skippable ad format In-stream, and subverted it, aligning its message with the skipable nature of the ads. It asked people a series of questions regarding sustainable energy habits and invited them to “change their habits” while simultaneously showing them the option to skip. In one week 800,000 of the views were not skipped, according to Davies.

YouTube has now extended its skippable ad format In-stream, part of the TrueView interactive ad format suite, to mobile devices for the first time (nma.co.uk 22 August 2012). It has started rolling out on Android devices, but will later extend it to all mobile devices. Last month YouTube’s head of Phil Farhi told new media age it plans to eventually roll out all its interactive video formats, including its ad selector format, to mobile devices, as well as connected TVs (nma.co.uk 28 August 2012).