Posts for 'Advertising'

Reading through a WSJ article yesterday, "Advertisers' Dilemma In Online Video - Reach or Frequency?" it struck me once again how silly it is to keep reinforcing a debate of online video advertising versus TV advertising. Five years ago this debate may have had some merit. But in 2014, savvy advertisers know it's really online video advertising and TV advertising. The two are highly complementary and are actually blurring as many of the traditional distinctions between them continue breaking down.

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Early bird discounted registration is now open for the 4th annual VideoNuze Online Video Advertising Summit on Wednesday, June 25th in NYC.

The Ad Summit will once again be a highly-focused, immersive day with industry leaders from brands, agencies, content providers, technology companies and others in the ecosystem. Last year's Ad Summit drew over 350 attendees, featuring 40+ speakers and I'm confident this year's event will be even better. Detailed program info will be posted soon; executives from Comcast, Conde Nast, Digitas, eMarketer, Forrester, News Corp., Starcom MediaVest, Weather Company and others are among those participating.

I'm thrilled to have 10 fantastic companies on board as initial sponsors. These include Title Partner ILoveVideo.tv/Castaclip; Headline Partners Active Video, Brightcove, Eyeview, FreeWheel, LiveRail, TubeMogul and Videology plus Branding Partners Innovid and Mixpo. All of these companies are key players in the online video advertising ecosystem and I'm honored they've decided to be a part of the Ad Summit.

The online and mobile video landscape is more vibrant than ever, with both high-quality online original programming and monetization opportunities proliferating. Yet we're still in the early innings and the opportunity to learn, share and build relationships makes the Ad Summit a must-attend event for industry executives.

This year's Ad Summit will be held during CE Week, a weeklong event in New York City presented by the Consumer Electronics Association, producer of International CES. Last year CE Week attracted 6,000+ technology leaders. As a bonus, all Ad Summit attendees registered by June 11th will be provided a badge to attend CE Week exhibits and free conferences.

If you'd like to learn more about speaking and sponsorship opportunities, please contact me.

Register now and save!

It's becoming harder and harder to remember the days when YouTube was principally known for its quirky  user-generated videos featuring cats on skateboards and the like. The evidence of YouTube's transformation into a legitimate video distribution powerhouse seems to pop up on an almost daily basis. Here are a few of the disparate items that have hit my radar:

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PointRoll's 2013 Benchmarks report finds, among other things, that in-stream video ads achieved a .46% click-through rate, 4.5x higher than the CTR of Flash ads. In-stream video ads also had a 75.3% completion rate, far better than rich media with video (31.7%) and mobile rich media (25.2%). Conversely, rich media with video had a 2.2% interaction rate compared to 1.3% for in-stream video (interaction rate defined as percentage of interacted ad impressions).

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According to data from ad management platform company Vindico, interactive video ad impressions are up 77% from a year ago. It also found that on average, brands can expect a nearly 3x engagement lift when utilizing interactive ads vs. repurposed TV ads.

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As people splinter their video viewing across multiple devices, reaching them across screens  with video advertising has become has become a growing imperative. Still, TV is tried and true, and the tools for planning, managing and measuring cross-screen campaigns are not yet widely understood.

To help illustrate early success of cross-screen advertising, Videology has published 4 case studies on different clients who augmented their TV campaigns with online video buys, resulting in significant improvements to audience reach, brand awareness, offline sales and market share.

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YuMe, Frank N. Magid Associates and Razorfish have released results of a study on how consumers interact and view content/advertising on Connected TVs (CTV). Among the key findings are that consumers are receptive to CTV advertising and that choice and control in advertising are a priority for them.  

For example, participants said that they have a low tolerance for interruption and would rather be shown ads that have relevant calls-to-action, rather than something completely unrelated to the content being viewed. Participants also said that their attention is drawn to on-screen animation but want ad interactions to be kept simple and easily accessible. Additionally, utilizing video advertising works best because CTV should be a lean-back experience.

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Comcast has acquired video ad manager FreeWheel for $375 million cash, validating reports that have been circulating since the weekend, but at a higher valuation than rumored. The deal is subject to customary regulatory approvals and is expected to close in a couple of weeks. FreeWheel will become an independent operating subsidiary within Comcast, comparable to how thePlatform and STRATA, two prior Comcast acquisitions, function. FreeWheel's 3 co-founders, Doug Knopper, Jon Heller and Diane Yu have signed multi-year employment agreements.

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Innovid announced today that it has been chosen as the preferred video ad partner for Atlas, the ad serving and measurement platform which Facebook acquired from Microsoft last year. As a result of the deal, Innovid will be integrated with Atlas so that clients can run addressable and interactive video ad campaigns across screens via one unified console. Analytics for the Innovid video ads will also be provided within Atlas and billing is integrated.

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FreeWheel has released its Q4 '13 video monetization report, revealing among things, that ads viewed in live streaming jumped 148% vs. Q4 '12, and now account for nearly 10% of ads viewed in online video streams served by pay-TV operators and TV networks. Related, ad views in authenticated, TV Everywhere content rose 268% vs. Q4 '12. Overall, ad views were up 30% year-over-year. Brian Dutt, who manages Advisory Services at FreeWheel and oversaw the report, shared more detail behind these and other data being released.

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SpotXchange landed at the top of comScore's January, 2014 U.S. rankings with nearly 3.5 billion video ads viewed, up from 2.9 billion in December, 2013. I spoke to SpotXchange's CEO Mike Shehan to learn more about what was behind the rise and get his overall take on the video advertising landscape and programmatic. Mike patiently shared an extremely detailed window into this quite complicated market. An edited transcript follows.

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Please save the date for the 4th annual VideoNuze Online Video Advertising Summit on Wed., June 25th in NYC.  

The Ad Summit will once again be the premier learning and networking event for video industry executives. Last year's Ad Summit drew 300+ attendees and 40+ speakers for a full day of thought-leader keynotes, panel discussions, fireside chat interviews, presentations and technology demonstrations.

This year's Ad Summit will be held during CE Week NYC, a sister event to the Consumer Electronics Show.  VideoNuze is collaborating with the Media and Entertainment Services Alliance (MESA), which hosts CE Week NYC, on co-promotional initiatives that will drive an even bigger and more engaged audience at this year's Ad Summit.

The Ad Summit provides a deep dive into the hottest video industry topics such as programmatic, RTB, multi-platform, audience measurement, online originals, content marketing, branded entertainment and lots more. Attendees can expect to take away actionable insights and develop new relationships.

For decision-makers at agencies, brands, content providers, technology companies and others in the video ecosystem, the Ad Summit is a must-attend event.

The 2014 event web site is coming soon. In the meantime see LAST YEAR'S event web site for more background.

If you'd like to learn more about speaking and sponsorship opportunities, please contact me.

I'm pleased to present the 215th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. In today's podcast, we welcome as our guest Mark Trefgarne, CEO and co-founder of LiveRail, a leading provider of programmatic video advertising solutions for content providers.

In the podcast, Mark explains what LiveRail does, defines what "programmatic" means to the company, how humans will always be involved in the buy/sell, offers a timeline for how programmatic will take more share of video advertising and articulates the benefits of programmatic to content providers. Mark also delves into the impact of multi-platform, mobile and TV Everywhere delivery plus key challenges ahead and more.

(Apologies in advance, Colin's and Mark's audio levels are a little low. Update - audio levels are fixed)

Listen in to learn more!

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For a glimpse into cloud computing's significant contribution to the successful scaling of online video advertising, yesterday BrightRoll shared some details of its relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) which it has been working with since 2008. According to BrightRoll, AWS now processes 30 billion data points per day in order to deliver 3 billion video ads per month. BrightRoll said in 2013 it delivered over 23 petabytes of content, which will double in 2014. In a related case study, Kenneth Cheung, BrightRoll's senior director of engineering said that "If AWS didn't exist, BrightRoll would be a different company."

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Extreme Reach has closed its $485 million acquisition of DG's TV ad business, approximately 6 months after announcing the deal. Extreme Reach's CEO and co-founder John Roland told me this morning that all DG customers are being transferred to Extreme Reach's cloud-based delivery platform. The combined company will have $270 million in revenues and 750+ employees.

As John explained, while the short-term tactical benefit of the deal is to gain significant scale in the core business of delivering TV ads to over 7K different broadcast TV stations in North America, the  longer-term, more strategic play is to better position Extreme Reach for the fast-approaching era of multi-screen advertising.

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I'm pleased to present the 213th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Today we focus on Amazon, which is already an important player in video, and is poised to become more so. Among the topics we discuss:

- plans to increase the price of its Prime service (and the role of expensive video licensing in driving this)

- the possibility video could be split off from Prime and become a more pure competitor to Netflix and others

- the many roles that video advertising could play as part of a new deal with FreeWheel

- why an Amazon connected TV device (widely rumored) would be highly strategic

- whether Amazon will enter the pay-TV business (as has also been widely rumored)

- the role of Amazon's original online productions

All in all, Amazon is circling the video space in many different ways, with potential to be quite disruptive. It's still very early in the game for Amazon and 2014 could be a big year. We'll see how it plays out.

Listen in to learn more!

Click here for previous podcasts

Click here to add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today!

Yesterday, FreeWheel quietly announced that it's powering video ads for Amazon. Though the announcement was light on details, anytime Amazon moves into a new space, as it's doing with video ads, it's noteworthy. I spoke to Doug Knopper, co-CEO of FreeWheel, who noted this is the company's first customer that isn't a pure media company, underscoring for him how  ubiquitous video and video advertising are becoming.

Though under tight constraints from Amazon about what he could say, Doug emphasized that, as with all Amazon initiatives, the focus is on creating a better customer experience. In FreeWheel's release, Lisa Utzschneider, Amazon's VP of Global Ad Sales positioned video ads as a discovery vehicle, helping customers learn about related products.

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