Posts for 'Advertising'

Everyone knows that video viewing is exploding, but for content publishers and creators, figuring out how to monetize all that usage is an ever-present challenge. This question was the focus of our Video Ad Summit session, “Unlocking Video’s Value in the OTT Era,” which included Jarrod Dicker (Head of Ad Product and Technology, Washington Post), Nathan Guetta (VP, Product and Technology, Conde Nast Entertainment), Shaun Koiner (Chief Product Officer, Perform Media), Brian Rifkin (Co-founder and SVP, Video Sales, JW Player) and Mark Yackanich (CEO, Genesis Media), with Tom Herman (CEO, DashBid) moderating.

The panelists addressed a number of critical issues including how to deliver world-class user experiences that combine both content and advertising, why it’s critical to distribute content to as many places as possible, how to help advertisers capitalize on emerging opportunities like vertical video and other new formats, the role that data is playing in their monetization strategies and what important trends are going to play out over the next year, among other things.

It’s a dynamic discussion with lots of insights for anyone involved with content creation and monetization.

Watch the video now (34 minutes, 52 seconds).

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As I wrote last week and previously, the TV industry is in a race to data enable its ad inventory to retain its value relative to online video alternatives and platforms like Facebook and Google that provide audience data at huge scale. Many technology providers are innovating to provide the software tools necessary for the TV industry to make this transition and the latest example is from clypd, which yesterday introduced Optimize Private Marketplace (PMP), which adds to existing features in clypd’s linear TV PMP offering.

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Mobile video is growing fast, but monetizing it fully is a work in progress. At the recent Video Ad Summit, participants on the “Capitalizing on Mobile as the First Screen” session included Justin Fadgen (VP, Business Development, Beachfront Media), Kevin Hein (U.S. Industry Lead, Technology and Telecom Vertical, Facebook), Manny Puentes (Chief Technology Officer, Altitude Digital) and Blake Sabatinelli (GM, Newsy) with Anna Bager (SVP, Mobile and Video, IAB), moderating.

Particular challenges for mobile video that the panelists raised included ad/video load times, a limited window to gain the viewer’s attention, standardized measurement, consistent user experiences and the growing role of data. The panelists also discussed the opportunities and challenges around distributed video models on social platforms and how much effort is required to optimize each, among other topics.

The conversation balanced perspectives from the advertiser, publisher, platform and technology perspectives really well. Mobile video has gained a lot of usage, but it’s clear that it’s still early days in fully monetizing it.

Watch the video now (41 minutes, 23 seconds).

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The TV industry is in a race to data enable its ad inventory to keep pace with online video and digital alternatives like Facebook and Google that offer finely-grained audience data at massive scale. Earlier this week TiVo Research and Cadent announced a new joint solution that is another good example of how the industry is creatively pursuing data enablement to build more targeting value across its inventory.

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One of the highlights of the recent Video Ad Summit was the keynote interview I did with Marc Debevoise, who was just promoted to be President and COO of CBS Interactive.  Marc oversees strategy and operations for all of the CBSi’s 25+ entertainment, sports, news, technology, gaming and media brands. Marc has also led the development of the CBS All Access SVOD service and CBSN 24/7 digital news service.

In the interview Marc shares the 3 biggest market trends that are guiding CBSi’s strategy and what’s ahead. We discuss in detail the strategic drivers behind the launch of CBS All Access and CBSN, including advertising strategies for both and how well they’ve been accepted by viewers. Marc shares lots of details about viewers’ profiles, how they engage with the two services, the devices that are most successful and how CBS is using them to broaden its appeal to younger viewers. Marc also explains how original programs (e.g. “Star Trek” and “The Good Wife” spinoff) are playing a big role in CBS All Access game plan.

We also talk about how CBS has become a leader in online sports, trailing only ESPN overall in the first part of 2016. Streaming the Super Bowl to connected TVs was a big milestone earlier this year and Marc discusses why CBS decided to do this and what impact it will have on streaming other sports. We wrap up by looking ahead to big challenges that CBSi is addressing.

There is a lot of skepticism floating around about the role of broadcast TV in the fast-evolving online video landscape, but Marc does a great job of explaining all the moves CBS is making to remain a leader.

Watch the keynote interview (35 minutes, 30 seconds)

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One of the most interesting panel discussions at the recent Video Ad Summit was “Reaching Audiences at Scale: Will TV Succeed in the Digital Age?” which included Adam Gerber (SVP, Client Development & Communications, ABC), Mike Germano (Chief Digital Officer, VICE Media), Melissa Kihara (Global VP of TV & Video Products, Xaxis), Bob Toohey (President, Verizon Digital Media Services) and Lorne Brown (Founder and CEO, Operative) moderating.

It’s no secret that video viewing is fragmenting and linear TV is declining as new video sources proliferate and behaviors change. Still, TV networks are running fast, distributing programs in new ways, investing heavily in data to better enable targeting by advertisers and leveraging social media to better engage viewers.  

As Adam pointed out, research suggests that scale in long-form ad-supported online viewing is dominated by TV networks. But as he also pointed out, scale in data and audiences is dominated by platforms like Facebook and Google. This is one of the key sources of tension for advertisers - how to combine the best of both, to achieve scaled, targeted, efficient, effective, trusted advertising in premium video?

The panelists agreed that for lots of reasons the market is nowhere close to reaching this nirvana state. They explored all the reasons why, along with things that are being done to move the ball forward. For anyone trying to better understand how TV is evolving in the digital age and what role it will play, it’s a fascinating discussion.

Watch the video now (39 minutes, 48 seconds).

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Facebook is pouring lots of resources into video and according to a new report published by ad tech provider Mixpo this morning, the strategy appears to be bearing fruit. In its “State of Digital Advertising for Publishers” report, based on a survey and interviews with 263 digital publishing and advertising executives, Mixpo found that 50.2% of respondents had run video campaigns on Facebook, compared to 31.1% on YouTube. Twitter followed with 17%, then Instagram with 13.2% and all other social platforms were in single digits.

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At the recent Video Ad Summit, one of our most popular sessions, as always, was a fireside chat debriefing the NewFronts and Upfronts with senior ad agency executives. This year, Maureen Bosetti (Chief Investment Officer, Initiative) and Adam Shlachter (President, VM1, Zenith Media) participated, with Tim Hanlon (Managing Director, FTI Consulting) moderating.

The wide-ranging discussion began with Maureen highlighting the continued strong relevance of the upfronts for clients who need to plan ahead and efficiently allocate spending to reach mass audiences. But the upfronts are becoming less about linear TV specifically (which is of course shrinking, in turn driving up pricing for scarcer inventory) and more about longer-term investments in video holistically.

This is a much more complicated buying process which, especially given how audiences are fragmenting to new video outlets on multiple devices. Adam and Maureen discuss some of the key challenges including how to use clients’ data, how to navigate TV networks’ disparate audience targeting initiatives and how their agencies are organized to succeed, plus lots more.

Adam and Maureen also share their thoughts on the NewFronts, which they see as maturing in certain respects, though still not offering the level of scale and efficiency as traditional TV.

All in all the session provides numerous insights from the buy side on how the TV/video ad landscape is fast-evolving and what’s being done by agencies to help clients stay ahead of the curve.

Watch the video now (32 minutes, 5 seconds).

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The convergence of TV and online video advertising is happening, but there are still many operational challenges to realizing its full potential. At the recent Video Ad Summit, we zeroed in what still needs to be done in a session titled “How to Move Ads at the Speed of Today,” which included Melinda McLaughlin (CMO, Extreme Reach), Peter Olsen (EVP, National Ad Sales, A+E Networks) and Mitch Weinstein (SVP, Director of Ad Operations, IPG Mediabrands), with Steve Grubbs of Prohaska Consulting serving as moderator.

The panelists dug into issues including the diverse ad operations workflows for TV vs. online video, the confusion caused by today’s metrics, the huge amount of time industry executives currently waste just trying to sync up on common standards and terminology, why reach is so important, yet so elusive across TV and digital, plus lots more.

It’s a fascinating, well-grounded discussion of the practicalities required to make converged campaigns and spending really take off.

Watch the video (33 minutes, 5 seconds).

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The opening session of our recent Video Ad Summit, “Convergence Realized: Why TV and Video are Now Inseparable,” featured panelists David Bickford (Head of TV Sales & Multi-Platform Group Director, Bloomberg Media), Jon Heller (Co-founder and Co-CEO, FreeWheel), Nick Johnson (SVP, Digital Ad Sales Strategy, Turner Ad Sales) and Paul Williamson (Chief Investment Officer, Publicis Media Exchange U.S.).

Tim Castree (Managing Director, North America, Videology) moderated the session and also shared a 10-minute presentation at the beginning providing some of the key contextual drivers for why TV and video are converging for advertisers and publishers (Tim’s slides are posted here).

Topics of discussion included changing viewers’ behaviors leading to fragmentation, the resulting measurement challenges and what’s being done to overcome them, how advertisers are coping with “patchwork” metrics, how content providers should think about cross-screen distribution, how advertisers are planning campaigns across different and much more.

Watch the video (52 minutes, 43 seconds).

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In his keynote interview at the recent Video Ad Summit, Charlie Chappell, Hershey’s head of global integrated media, shared lots of great insights on how the company is adapting to the fast-changing video landscape. Interviewed by MediaLink’s Matt Spiegel, Charlie explained that until just a few years ago, Hershey’s spend virtually all of its ad dollars on TV, but now it is diversifying to capitalize on new opportunities.

Charlie talks about how reach is still the most important objective and ROI is measured by actual product sales. But that metric isn’t fully formed yet for many digital outlets, so the company is improvising, for now, how to measure success with video and social platforms as it moves beyond basic age and gender.

Importantly, Charlie discusses the impact of video and social on the company’s brand leaders and how the company is organizing itself to succeed. Charlie also describes how creative isn’t optimized solely for TV ads any longer, but needs to work across all platforms.

These are just a few of the highlights of the wide-ranging interview. Watch the interview (32 minutes, 15 seconds) for lots more.

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Online video and YouTube specifically are playing big roles in the auto industry for prospective buyers and enthusiasts, according to new research from video ad tech provider Pixability. The company found that auto-related video views on YouTube increased 42% from 2014 to 2015. There are currently 244K auto-related channels on YouTube with 3.5 million videos that have driven 73 billion views. Searches for “car reviews” specifically on YouTube have outpaced the same searches on Google itself over the past 5 years.

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News Corp. announced this morning at Cannes Lions the availability of a new viewable vertical video ad for mobile devices that can be bought initially on The Sun and The New York Post. The ad is an outstream format against vertical video content, plays only when in view and can be scrolled past. The ad appears with audio off, which viewers can toggle on. Viewability is measured by Moat per MRC standards.

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We had a hugely successful 6th annual VideoNuze Online Video Advertising Summit this past Tuesday in NYC, with over 425 industry colleagues attending. 50 executives participated on 13 sessions focused around our theme of how TV and online video advertising are converging.

All of the sessions were video-recorded and I’ll be posting the videos with summaries over the next couple weeks as they’re edited. I received tons of great feedback on the sessions. There are countless insights about the current landscape for online video advertising currently and where things are heading.

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The 6th annual VideoNuze Online Video Ad Summit is tomorrow, Tuesday, June 14th in NYC. So if you've been debating whether to attend, it’s time to get off the fence! Here are some highlights of what to expect:

50 industry executives speaking on 13 different sessions. The overarching theme of the Video Ad Summit is the convergence between online video advertising and TV advertising. The program includes multiple sessions that will address the subject from different angles and in different formats. Additional sessions will focus on capitalizing on mobile video, finding video success in the “platform economy,” optimizing video ad targeting through data, what’s ahead for programmatic video and TV, unlocking video’s value in the OTT era and lots more.

2 fantastic keynote sessions. Our morning keynote interview is with Marc Debevoise, EVP/GM of CBS Digital Media, who I will interview about how CBS is embracing a new world of video opportunities. Then in the afternoon, Charlie Chappell, Head of Global Integrated Media at Hershey’s will discuss how the company is adapting to a new media landscape, in an interview with MediaLink SVP Matt Spiegel. Both sessions promise executive level insights and best practices sharing.

Superb networking with hundreds of industry colleagues. As always the Video Ad Summit provides some of the best networking around, with colleagues from throughout the ecosystem. The day will wrap up with an hour of cocktails.

Learning from our sponsors. I’m extremely grateful to the Video Ad Summit’s 17 fabulous sponsors, who will have table-tops and staff attending. They’re all doing cool stuff and the Video Ad Summit is premier opportunity to learn from them and understand how they’re moving the industry forward.  

Join us by registering now!

Video ad tech provider Genesis Media has introduced Trending Topics, enabling advertisers to capitalize on temporary traffic spikes in particular web content. As Genesis Media’s CEO Mark Yackanich explained to me in a briefing, Trending Topics provides unique opportunities to advertisers to hop onto surges in web content triggered by hot cultural events, even before they’ve been detected by Google, Facebook or other sources.

Trending Topics leverages Genesis Media’s core competencies in web content monitoring and analysis. The company is scanning for web content that has the highest velocity, or rapid movement, in page views. Genesis Media then marries this data to its proprietary Page Attention Rank (PAR) which measures users’ attention, retention and time spent to create an index revealing which trending pages represent unusually high value for advertisers based on their objectives.

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The 6th annual VideoNuze Online Video Advertising Summit in NYC is coming up next Tuesday, June 14th, with over 400 executives from throughout the ecosystem already signed up to attend, once again making the event a premier day of networking.

The program is also now finalized, with 50 speakers appearing on 13 sessions including keynote interviews, fireside chats, panel discussions and presentations that cover the most important topics in online video. A ton of hard work has gone into curating the program and optimizing each session’s particular focus. All of this means that the Video Ad Summit will be a top-notch day of learning for all attendees.

The conference’s over-arching theme is the convergence between online video and TV. Two sessions to highlight will occur in the morning. The first, “Reaching Audiences at Scale: Will TV Succeed in the Digital Age” will examine the fast-changing landscape for TV advertising, with major competitors like YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and others offering advertisers unprecedented scale (see today’s WSJ interview with YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki for more). Lorne Brown, founder and CEO of Operative (who’s also leading the NAB’s Digital Committee) will moderate, with Adam Gerber (ABC), Mike Germano (VICE Media), Melissa Kihara (Xaxis) and Bob Toohey (Verizon Digital Media) participating.

Then, following the morning break, the next session, “Optimizing Video Ad Targeting Through Data and Analysis” will dig deeply into how TV networks are investing heavily in data to enable their inventory to be more targeted and valuable. The session will also explore how networks are enabling holistic, targeted campaigns across their TV and online video properties, and across devices. Mike Chapman, Managing Director at Accenture Strategy (who co-authored the ABC study on TV advertising ROI, released during this year’s upfronts) will moderate, with Gabe Bevilacqua (Viacom), Denise Colella (NBCU), David Ernst (Discovery), Mark Gall (Alphonso) and Vikram Somaya (ESPN) participating.

Together, these sessions are going to provide fantastic insights into the intersection of TV and video advertising and what TV networks, as the biggest source of premium programming online, are doing to remain competitive.

Learn more about the Video Ad Summit and register now!

Seeking to further educate the market about the benefits of outstream video advertising, ad tech provider Teads has unveiled a first-of-its-kind programmatic outstream accreditation program for ad agencies and trading desks.

Teads was a pioneer in outstream ads, which are video ads that play against non-video inventory. Given the high expense of creating premium video content and its scarcity, outstream ads have become a hugely popular way for premium publishers to monetize their content.

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Online video and TV advertising are converging as viewers increasingly watch long-form content - entertainment, news and sports - on multiple devices. How this convergence is actually happening and the key challenges that remain are a critical focus of our 6th annual VideoNuze Online Video Advertising Summit, coming up 2 weeks from today, on Tuesday, June 14th in NYC.

Two of our sessions will directly address convergence, one from the opportunities standpoint and the other from the challenges standpoint. Our opening session, “Convergence Realized: Why TV and Video are Now Inseparable” will set the stage for the day, by exploring strategic drivers behind convergence such as fragmenting viewership, advertisers’ interest in efficient, cross-platform campaigns, the unifying role of data, etc.

Videology’s Managing Director, North America Tim Castree will share a short presentation with the latest data, and then moderate a session with David Bickford (Head of TV Sales & Multi-Platform Group Director, Bloomberg Media), Jon Heller (Co-Founder and Co-CEO, FreeWheel), Nick Johnson (SVP, Digital Ad Sales Strategy, Turner Ad Sales) and Paul Williamson (Chief Investment Officer, Publicis Media Exchange - U.S.).

Even as the convergence opportunities are sizable, so too are the challenges, with many moving pieces, manual inefficiencies and disjointed workflows. So the afternoon companion session, “How to Move Video Ads at the Speed of Today,” will dig into these and other challenges, as well as explore current solutions.

The session is moderated by Prohaska Consulting’s Steve Grubbs and includes Peter Olsen (EVP, National Ad Sales, A+E Networks), John Roland (CEO and Co-Founder, Extreme Reach) and Mitch Weinstein (SVP, Director of Ad Operations, IPG Mediabrands). Expect to come away from both sessions with an improved understanding of how convergence is playing out and what still needs to be done.

In addition, there are 11 other sessions planned at the Video Ad Summit, which features 50 speakers in total. All of the most important industry topics will be explored, with convergence as the over-arching theme.

Review the whole program and register now!