Posts for 'Advertising'

Demand-side video ad platform TubeMogul reported record Q4 2015 and full year 2015 financial results yesterday, once again beating its own forecasts, as investments in programmatic TV (PTV) and cross-screen planning paid off.

For 2015, total ad spending through TubeMogul was $414.2 million, up 63% vs. 2014 (above the most recent forecast of $406-$408 million), revenue was $180.7 million, up 58% vs. 2014 (above the forecast of $173-$175 million), gross profit was $122.5 million, up 53% vs. 2014 (above the forecast of $117-$119 million) and adjusted EBITDA was $3.4 million, up 31% vs. 2014 (above the forecast of a loss of $1-$3 million).

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Extreme Reach has operated under the radar for many years, but this Boston-area company has become a powerhouse in the delivery of both TV and video advertising. Now it’s poised for a much higher profile, following the recent hiring of industry veteran Melinda McLaughlin as Chief Marketing Officer, who most recently had the same role at Tremor Video. Melinda’s an old friend and I recently discussed her move, plus what’s ahead for Extreme Reach and the industry. Following is the transcript.

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I'm pleased to present the 311th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week we discuss NBCU’s announcement on Wednesday that it will allow select advertisers and agencies to buy ads programmatically in its linear TV networks. It’s another important step in advertising becoming more data-infused and targeted, though as I explained, it’s not yet a full-blown programmatic offering like we’ve seen in video and display. Colin and I dig into the details.

We then turn to new research on connected TV adoption and forecasts. Colin details findings from 3 different sources, which differ from one another. We attempt to reconcile them, although not fully successfully. Regardless, connected TVs remain one of the pivotal areas of online video, providing access to high-quality long-form content in the living room.

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NBCU made a big move to embrace audience-based buying yesterday, announcing that select advertisers and agencies will be able to use data and automation to buy ads on linear TV. The expansion of the company’s NBCUx platform represents the most significant step by a TV network group yet to adopt a programmatic approach to buying traditional TV ads. NBCU called its initiative “unprecedented.”

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Newsy, a popular video-based news service for millennials, has partnered with SpotX for programmatic video ads in Newsy’s Apple TV app. The companies believe they are among the first to monetize Apple’s tvOS which was itself first announced by Apple last September in conjunction with the launch of the new Apple TV.  SpotX released an SDK for Apple TV last November.

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Video ad tech provider Pixability has unveiled v4 of its platform, enabling unified video ad buying across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. With v4, agencies and advertisers can plan, execute, measure and optimize video ad campaigns through one dashboard, greatly streamlining the workflow. With v4, Pixability is expanding beyond its traditional focus on YouTube ad buying.

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With audiences shifting seamlessly between screens, evidence that TV advertising and online video advertising are also converging is mounting. The latest is from Videology, which has released its Q4 ’15 U.S. Video Market At-A-Glance report, finding, among other things that online video campaigns using TV audience data for targeting increased by 114% year-over-year.

The top segment used was advertisers’ current TV advertising schedules, followed by sports viewers, political show viewers, competitors’ TV schedule and daytime viewers.

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Video ad tech provider Genesis Media has launched “Adaptive Formats,” which dynamically delivers video ad units that are optimized to an individual web page’s editorial and to the user’s behavior. The goal is to enable content publishers to best monetize each individual piece of their content while providing an outstanding user experience and full value to advertisers.

Genesis Media’s CEO Mark Yackanich explained to me that Adaptive Formats automates a previously manual process. He added that Adaptive Formats directly addresses key publisher pain points of how to select from the myriad video ad units which are now available and then how to scale the ones that are selected.

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After a 4 month beta, video ad platform Mediabong has launched its Syncroll outstream video ad unit, aiming to go beyond viewability, to focus on viewer attention. With Syncroll, outstream ads can be triggered in the reader’s “attention zones” as they scroll down the page. The ads change and update based on a patented algorithm of the user’s real-time behavior while scrolling.

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Facebook reported record results for 2015 late yesterday and on the earnings call, video was the first thing Mark Zuckerberg highlighted when discussing the company’s product strategy for delivering more engaging experiences. He added that 100 million hours of video are now watched daily on Facebook by 500 million people (though “watch” can be an ambiguous term for Facebook given its autoplay, audio-off format).

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At last month’s SHIFT // Programmatic Video & TV Ad Summit, David Szahun, American Express’s Director of US Media, Global Brand Marketing and Digital Partnerships shared his insights about the evolution of programmatic video & TV and why he’s bullish on both. In particular, David zeroed in on the need for “premium programmatic video” which he defines as a direct buyer-to-publisher relationship, with a fixed CPM, guaranteed premium reserve inventory and first-party data overlay. David explains more about why he believes this is valuable.

In a follow-up interview with me, David also provides thoughts on why programmatic TV is developing more slowly than video, why addressable TV with automation isn’t here yet, how American Express is organized and what role its agency plays, and the key challenges for programmatic. Throughout, David is quite candid and thoughtful about how AmEx views programmatic and how it’s being incorporated into the company’s marketing mix.

Note, all of the SHIFT session videos are now included in the player below.

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Just before the holidays, Innovid, one of the pioneers of online video advertising, raised a $27.5 million round, including $12.5 million in debt. It was one of the larger financings in the video ad tech space in the last several months and followed a March, 2015 $10 million investment in Innovid by Cisco. Innovid’s CEO and co-founder Zvika Netter caught me up on plans for the new funds and the company’s transition to a leading video ad server. Following is an edited transcript.

VideoNuze: Congratulations on the new financing. How will you use the funds?
 
Zvika Netter: We plan on using the funds for 2 main purposes: First, technology - We are continually innovating based on both what our partners need to help grow their businesses and how we envision the Future of TV advertising. And second, international expansion – 80% of our clients are global brands and agencies. We’ve been asked by most of them to provide similar solutions and services in new markets in EMEA and APAC.

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Videology announced this morning that its clients will be able transact video ad campaigns on a new viewability currency (“vCPM”) for a guaranteed price on guaranteed viewable impressions. The impressions are measured by third-parties Moat, DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science.

Clients can use the MRC viewability standard (50% of pixels on screen for at least 2 consecutive seconds) or the stricter Extended Viewability Standard (100% of pixels on screen for at least 50% of the video’s duration with audio on and not autoplay).

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iSpot.tv has announced it is now measuring TV ad performance in linear, time-shifted, VOD and OTT video across 10 million connected TVs. iSpot is tracking TV ads’ view rates, impressions and unduplicated reach, providing unprecedented granular insight into actual TV ad performance.  

iSpot’s founder and CEO Sean Muller explained that the new measurement system is enabled by deals the company has made with select TV manufacturers to integrate its technology with newer connected TVs automatic content recognition. As the ads viewed are anonymously relayed to iSpot, they are checked against the company’s database of ads, gleaned from its core platform which tracks the entire media schedule in linear TV. The ads are then sorted as linear national, linear local or VOD/OTT as well as live vs. time-shifted. The length of each ad’s play is tracked to provide the view time metrics.

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Supply-side platform ConvertMedia has introduced a portfolio of outstream video ad units. While video is the hottest ad category, the scarcity of premium inventory and expense of creating high-quality video continues to be an issue for publishers eager to attract video ad dollars. Outstream ads - video units that can play against text and other non-video content - have become a popular way of addressing this issue.

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What’s driving the growth in programmatic video & TV and what’s ahead? These questions were the focus of our opening and closing sessions, respectively, at last month’s SHIFT // 2015 Programmatic Video & TV Ad Summit. Together, the sessions present a compelling picture of the shift to programmatic and its potential going forward.

In the opening session, Magna Global’s EVP and Director of Global Forecasting, Vincent Letang shared the firm’s forecast that 56%, or approximately $11 billion, of online video ad spending in 2019 will be programmatic. Of this, almost $8B will be RTB. The panel, which included Vincent and Keith Grossman (Head of US Sales, Bloomberg), Jason Lopatecki (Chief Strategy Officer, TubeMogul), Trevor Mengel (Director, Programmatic Product - HX, Horizon Media) with Sorosh Tavakoli (SVP, AdTech, Ooyala) moderating, then dug into what’s driving the rapid growth.

Then later in the day, our “Looking Ahead” session focused on how programmatic is going to play out and over what timeline. In particular, key nuances were discussed, such as legacy systems and motivations in TV. The session included Lorne Brown (Founder and CEO, Operative), Noah Levine (SVP, Revenue Operations, Advanced Advertising Product Team, Fox Networks Group), Scott Rosenberg (VP, Advertising, Roku), Alan Smith (Chief Digital Officer, Assembly), Rich Sobel (SVP, Solutions, VivaKi Operating System) and David Silverman (Assurance Partner, PwC), moderating.

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I'm pleased to present the 306th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week Colin and I share our top predictions for the video industry in 2016. We also look back at our predictions for 2015 and rate how we did (how’s that for accountability?).

Listen now to learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (26 minutes, 38  seconds)



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As the traditional bridge between buyers and sellers in the video ad business, agencies have a huge vested stake in how programmatic plays out. On the one hand, programmatic gives advertisers more control than ever in terms of managing their spending and targeting their audiences. But on the other hand, programmatic requires highly specialized new skill sets and investments to truly pay off.

These topics and more were part of our “Agency of the Future” session at last month’s SHIFT // 2015 Programmatic Video & TV Ad Summit. The session included Christina Beaumier (SVP, Xaxis Media), Adam Kasper (Chief Media Officer, Havas Media North America) with Steve Grubbs (Prohaska Consulting and former CEO, PHD North America), moderating.

Adam and Christina shared how their organizations are structured to capitalize on programmatic, why automation does not lead to staffing cost savings, what the proper agency compensation models are for programmatic, whether programmatic video and TV should be planned/executed in one group, why connected TV advertising is gaining momentum and much more. It’s a fascinating discussion for anyone with an interest in agencies’ role in the programmatic future.

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What exactly is “programmatic TV” and what are its main challenges and initial successes? These were the topics of two of our sessions at last month’s SHIFT // 2015 Programmatic Video & TV Ad Summit. While the term “programmatic” was in the conference’s title, as our panelists explained, it means something very different when applied to online/mobile video vs. when it’s applied in TV.

In fact, a number of the panelists on the two sessions objected to the very use of the term “programmatic” for TV advertising (as did our morning keynoter, Turner Ad Sales president Donna Speciale), believing it shouldn’t be carried over from video and display advertising because TV’s specifics are so different.

Regardless of terminology, both sessions highlighted how TV network groups are building out their own data platforms to support a shift to audience-based targeting/buying beyond just age and gender. But many panelists noted that these disparate efforts will cause even more market complexity compared to the singular (if imperfect) current Nielsen system.

Panelists also explained that data-centric buying in TV advertising is happening in many different ways, and “addressable TV” (which uses set-top box viewing data) appears to have emerged as an early favorite.

All in all the two sessions provided many critical insights on programmatic TV (loosely defined), the key hurdles, early successes and likely trends for 2016. For anyone trying to better understand how TV advertising is going to evolve in the face of OTT’s growth, watching the session videos below, will be time well-spent.

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