New standards in online advertising?

There is a company in the US (again US! ) that wants to change completely the face of the online ad as we knew it. Recently Short Tail Media announced that wants to test a new online ad format, based on video and that can be sold much like in TV. The beta test will take place this summer and will feature Digital 30 (D30) format which consists of a 15 and 30 secs full-page video served between pages (much like the videostitial).

Who’s the man with the plan? David Payne, the former head of CNN.com and currently CEO of ShortTail.

Who are the publishers to accept such ads? Reuters, who joined the beta-test initiative, MSNBC.com and Weather.com which are very likely to join also, and other 17 top publishers in US approached by Payne to convince them to join.

So, will we start again the discussion about “bigger is better”, “intrusive banners are not good” and “no money will decide us to run that banner”? I wonder: Reuters doesn’t care about its users or they know something extra that we haven’t learned until now?