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.

Pixability’s CMO Rob Ciampa told me that the company has been experimenting and optimizing its system for Facebook for over a year using Facebook’s APIs. Pixability sees YouTube and Facebook as the main pillars of walled garden video advertising, combining to deliver reach and engagement for advertisers, in turn possibly challenging the supremacy of TV advertising.

Rob noted that YouTube and Facebook each have their own respective strengths, and Pixability’s testing revealed a blend of the two delivered the best campaign results. YouTube tended to deliver higher views, completion rates and a lower cost per view, while Facebook delivered higher clicks, click-through rate and engagement. Rob said that the exact targeted blend of YouTube and Facebook impressions for any individual campaign would vary.  

A key differentiator for v4 is that the proprietary targeting and optimization are based on data from the 4 platforms and Pixability’s own data from campaigns run over the past 5 years. These translate into lower cost per completed view and per engagement and for in-demographic views, as compared with industry benchmarks.

While YouTube and Facebook offer their own buying tools, Rob distinguished Pixability v4 both because it spans platforms and also because it allows more sophisticated campaign management and optimization. Still, if an advertiser or agency is using a platform buying tool for some of its buying, those results can be reconciled to v4 data as well.

Over the past year, Facebook has emerged as a new powerhouse in video, albeit with a very different approach than YouTube. Facebook’s reach has piqued the interest of many different types of advertisers. But planning and executing holistic campaigns across Facebook, YouTube and others remains a complex undertaking. Pixability v4 addresses these challenges, and will help drive even more spending across these platforms.