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Online Video Advertising's Number One Challenge: Measurement
Despite online video advertising's surging growth, its number one current challenge is a consistent and widely-accepted measurement system that allows media buyers, content publishers and brands to gain a clear understanding of how ad campaigns are planned, executed and evaluated. That was the consensus at a launch dinner for the upcoming ELEVATE: Online Video Advertising Summit I attended last night, which included about ten online video industry CEOs, plus brand and agency executives, which was hosted by the private equity firm The Blackstone Group and the law firm Sheppard Mullin.
Today, online video measurement tends to focus on that which is easily measured and at least relatively well-understood: number of views/impressions and the number of click-throughs (if applicable). While that's a good starting point, much more is required. As a number of CEOs noted, media buyers have set a higher standard for pricier online video buys; they need specific information about audience targeting, meaningful engagement, and importantly, the correlation between spending and brand/sales lift. There was agreement that many of these new requirements never entered the equation in traditional TV advertising.
Categories: Advertising
Topics: Nielsen
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Budweiser Rolls Out "Big Time" Social Media Reality Contest
Budweiser has rolled out a new reality show dubbed "Bud United Presents: The Big Time," (Facebook registration required) which lets four contest winners train for their "big time" dream with celebrities such as NASCAR driver Kevin Harvick, chef Hubert Keller and others. Entries are being solicited via Bud's Facebook and Renren pages. The project's creative team includes @radical.media and six-time Emmy winner Evan Weinstein. Big Time follows on "Bud United: Beer House," an online reality show the company launched during the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
Big Time is a perfect example of how online video and social media allow major brands to take greater control of how they interact with audiences, going far beyond the classic 30-second TV spot. Rather than the usual model where a TV network heavily guides a show's concept, scheduling and promotion, with Big Time, Budweiser has taken the reins on all of these aspects. With social media, Bud can generate awareness and interest, and with online video it has an avenue for both video-based submissions and for distribution.
Categories: Advertising, Social Media
Topics: Budweiser
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TED Executive to Present at ELEVATE on the Renaissance in Ad Creativity
I'm delighted to announce that Ronda Carnegie, Head of Global Partnerships for TED, the highly-influential non-profit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, will be the closing presenter at ELEVATE: Online Video Advertising Summit, on Tues, June 7th in NYC. This special session will be hosted by Dan Greenberg, CEO and Co-Founder of Sharethrough, a leading performance-based social video advertising program.
Ronda's presentation, "TED's Ads Worth Spreading and the Renaissance in Creativity," will focus on TED's recent Ads Worth Spreading competition which recognized breakthrough new ads that are infectiously compelling, have strong industry impact, are in the style of a TEDTalk (30 seconds to 5
minutes) and pursue a social good with a powerful idea or innovative approach. The 10 winning submissions, plus the 14 honorable mentions, are tangible evidence of the powerful renaissance underway in advertising creativity, as online video eliminates the traditional limitations of 15 and 30-second TV ads, unleashing a new level of ad creativity not seen in decades. Ronda will share a number of examples in her presentation.
TED's vision of advertisers and consumers being part of the same community, sharing ideas and engaging in a joint learning cycle, is perfectly aligned with ELEVATE's mission. As ELEVATE's agenda amply demonstrates, we're bringing together senior executives from throughout the ecosystem to understand online video's key trends, accelerate the future of online video advertising and tackle remaining challenges.
Ronda's presentation, part of which I viewed at the WPP Global Video Summit last week, will be the capstone to an action-packed day of learning and networking. It is an honor for us that TED has decided to participate in the inaugural ELEVATE conference. I'm confident that attendees will leave the closing session inspired and excited to be part of the action, and having a role in changing the status quo. Cocktails and a reception will follow immediately after this closing session.
Early bird discounted registration is available until this Friday.
Categories: Advertising, Events
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VideoNuze Report Podcast #98 - May 5, 2011
I'm pleased to present the 98th edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for May 5, 2011.
In this week's podcast, Daisy Whitney and I discuss YouTube's forecast that by 2015, 50% of video ads will include cost-per-view video, which I wrote about earlier this week. If the forecast pans out, it would cause a huge transformation in the way the online video ad market works, since virtually all of today's in-stream video ads don't have any performance aspect.
As we discuss, the move isn't that surprising, as it attempts to re-shape the video ad market to look more like the search advertising market, which Google dominates. By aligning engagement with advertiser payments, there's clearly more efficiency. But it would be a radical departure from the way TV advertising has traditionally been bought, so it would take a concerted effort by brands and agencies to adapt to the model. Listen in to learn more.
Click here to listen to the podcast (13 minutes, 18 seconds)
Click here for previous podcasts
The VideoNuze Report is available in iTunes...subscribe today!Categories: Advertising, Podcasts
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YouTube: By 2015, 50% of Video Ads Will Include Cost-Per-View Video
At WPP Group's Global Video Summit yesterday afternoon, hosted by Kantar Video, GroupM and WPP Digital, Baljeet Singh, YouTube's product manager for video monetization reiterated a bold assertion YouTube has made periodically
over the past 6 months: by 2015, 50% of video ads will include cost-per-view video.
Baljeet defines "cost-per-view" as an engaged view of a video ad where "engaged" means the user chose to watch that video in some way. The vast majority of today's in-stream pre-rolls, mid-rolls and post-rolls that auto-play during the content experience wouldn't qualify under the definition. If YouTube is right, then massive change is coming in how online video ads are created, purchased, valued and measured.
Categories: Advertising
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Survey: 65% of Media Buyers Plan to Shift Spending from TV to Online Video
Online video ad network BrightRoll has released results of its Q1 '11 survey of media buyers' attitudes towards online video, and no surprise, they are yet again quite bullish. Several data points highlight online video's growing appeal; in particular the survey found 65% of respondents said they plan to shift campaign dollars from TV to online video. Beyond TV, as the chart below shows, display advertising is actually the spending bucket likely to see the biggest shift to online video, with 86% of buyers planning to move some of their display budget to online video.
Importantly, 28% of media buyers forecast online video will see the largest increase in spending in 2011, with mobile video right behind at 27%. Online video is also becoming a more common component of all ad campaigns, with 27% of media buyers saying that over half of their request for proposals included an online video component. 41% of buyers reported targeting as the most valuable aspect of online video advertising to their clients. Within targeting, the most beneficial form is behavioral, followed closely by contextual and demographic.
Categories: Advertising
Topics: BrightRoll
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VideoNuze Report Podcast #96 - Apr. 22, 2011
I'm pleased to present the 96th edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for April 22, 2011.
In this week's podcast, Daisy Whitney and I discuss 2 new video ads that I recently wrote about, the Desperados Tequila Flavored Beer ad on YouTube, and the Evian "Baby Inside" ad. I thought they were both highly creative and offered great opportunities for viewers to become involved. On the other hand, Daisy did not like either one, the Desperados ad because it required too many actions, and the Evian ad because she's averse to the images of adult heads on babies' bodies. As Daisy explains, often she just wants to enjoy ads as entertainment, rather than be required to act.
Daisy draws an interesting distinction between "interactivity" and "engagement," two concepts that are often used interchangeably. But as Daisy points out, many ads incite deep engagement while not requiring any interactivity. I can relate to the point as I found myself very engaged with "The Force" Super Bowl ad from Volkswagen, though it didn't include any interactivity. The larger point is that even though opportunities now abound for brands to immerse users in online experiences, more than ever they need to strike the right balance between pure entertainment vs. requiring to users to act.
Click here to listen to the podcast (12 minutes, 20 seconds)
Click here for previous podcasts
The VideoNuze Report is available in iTunes...subscribe today!
Categories: Advertising, Podcasts
Topics: Desperados Tequila Flavored Beer, Evian, Podcast, YouTube
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With New "Baby Inside" Spot, Evian Once Again Cracks the Online Video Ad Code
Evian has released its latest online video ad - "Evian Baby Inside" this week, and once again it has cracked the code on executing a memorable, engaging, and likely-to-go-viral campaign. Baby Inside follows Evian's hugely successful "Roller Babies" ad from 2009 which has already racked up over 38 million views on YouTube. Both ads are part of Evian's "Live Young" theme and were created by the agency BETC Euro RSCG.
In the new Baby Inside campaign, a series of adults are shown dancing while wearing white T-shirts imprinted with the body of one of three different babies on them. By using stop-action and quick cuts, the viewer's eye quickly acclimates to the adult heads becoming one with the babies' bodies. It's very compelling concept and the catchy soundtrack further embellishes the experience.
Categories: Advertising
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Here's the Most Innovative Video Ad To Run On YouTube So Far
As brilliant as the video ads on YouTube were for Tipp-Ex and Sylvester Stallone's "The Expendables," it's time to crown a new champion as the most innovative video ad yet on YouTube - Desperados Tequila Flavored Beer (right, I'd never heard of the product either). I stumbled on this one yesterday (gotta love those random tweets on TweetDeck!) and the ad raises the bar once again for the rest of the market. I'm not going to spoil the fun, but suffice to say there are some great head-fakes and really well-done interactivity.
Desperados is further proof of how tantalizing online video advertising is for brands ready to think out of the box and engage their target audiences in completely unexpected ways. Over the last few weeks, as part of the planning for ELEVATE: Online Video Advertising Summit on Tues., June 7th in NYC, I've been talking to a lot of executives in the online video ecosystem and what I consistently hear is the genuine desire by brands and agencies to learn how to do breakthrough creative, at scale, in the bustling new medium of online video.
Categories: Advertising
Topics: Desperados Tequila Flavored Beer, The Expendables, Tipp-Ex, YouTube
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Jun Group Pioneers "Incentivized" Video Ad Views In Social Games
As a non-gamer, I've been fascinated, from a distance, by the whole "virtual currency" and "virtual goods" models that millions of gamers are so passionate about. Now it turns out there's a way of marrying gamers' pursuit of virtual currency with driving opt-in video views for major brands' online video ads. Jun Group, a social video company, has been a pioneer in this emerging space, and last week its CEO Mitchell Reichgut gave me a primer on how the model works, and why it's being adopted. Jun Group is also issuing an update on its progress today.
First, for those not familiar with virtual currency, it is used to purchase specific virtual goods which enhance the experience in online games, social networks and virtual worlds. Typically there are many different ways to earn virtual currency within any particular environment, including paying for it with actual cash (yes, buying "virtual" currency with "actual" currency - it's all part of the gaming experience!), all of which adds up to a reported $2 billion per year industry.
Categories: Advertising, Social Media
Topics: Jun Group
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FreeWheel Lands British Sky Broadcasting, Opens New U.K. Office
Video ad management provider FreeWheel has landed British Sky Broadcasting (Sky), the U.K.'s largest pay-TV operator, as a new customer, and it is also announcing the opening of its London office. Sky is using FreeWheel's Monetization Rights Management (MRM) platform as its exclusive ad manager for online and mobile video delivery.
Categories: Advertising, International
Topics: FreeWheel
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Visible Measures Leverages Data With New "Viewable Media" Video Ad Network
Just when you thought there couldn't be room for another video ad network, analytics provider Visible Measures is launching a new one this morning called Viewable Media. However, Viewable Media has a few key differentiators which will be fresh for publishers and advertisers, in turn raising the bar for other ad networks. Brian Shin, Visible Measures' CEO explained Viewable Media's approach to me late last week.
With Viewable Media, Visible Measures is leveraging its Viral Reach database that it has been building on viewership and engagement for over 400 million
different videos since it began operations. To date this data has been packaged into different products so that advertisers and publishers can track various videos' performance. But as Brian explained, advertisers and media buyers have been encouraging Visible Measures to also use the data to enhance the online video ad buying process with better targeting and improved efficiency. That's where Viewable Media comes in.
Categories: Advertising
Topics: Viewable Media, Visible Measures
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Innovid Launches iRoll Apps For Easy Interactive Pre-Roll Ads
Innovid is introducing "iRoll apps" this morning to allow easy creation and deployment of interactive pre-roll ads. In addition to popular engagement features like Facebook sharing, Twitter following, YouTube posting and custom text labels, iRoll apps also allows a range of additional apps (now or coming soon) like coupon downloads, store locator with Google Maps, ticket purchase, chat, related docs and more. Last week I got an in-person demo from Zvika Netter, Innovid's CEO and co-founder and Rob Banning, director of marketing.
With iRoll apps, Innovid is looking to jumpstart a world where all pre-roll ads include interactivity. As Zvika explained, Innovid sees the pre-roll ad itself becoming browser-like, with all interactivity built right into the video window. This kind of seamless experience means that when users click within the ad, new content and options are loaded in the window itself, rather than having new browser windows pop up, which often leads to delays and a process of getting oriented, not to mention leaving the ad behind.
Categories: Advertising, Technology
Topics: Innovid, iRoll Apps
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YuMe Relevance Engine Introduced for Improved Video Ad Buying
Video ad technology and network YuMe is taking the wraps off its new "YuMe Relevance Engine" this morning, representing another key step forward in realizing online video's potential for ad targeting. The Relevance Engine powers the new 3.0 version of YuMe's ACE for Publishers ad system. Last week, YuMe's Jayant Kadambi, president and co-founder and Ed Haslam, SVP, Marketing briefed me on how they work.
With the Relevance Engine, YuMe is helping empower publishers to attract TV ad dollars by addressing each piece of the relevance equation: advertisers' needs, the publisher context and the target consumer audience. Advertisers' needs include things like brand safety, targeted devices, reach goals, and context/audience targeting. On the publisher side, criteria include page and video content awareness (based on metadata ingestion), eCPMs, viewing environment (such as which OVP player is used), device and connection speed. Finally, for the consumer profile, this includes demographics, ad viewing history, preferences, targeting data and content interests (based on cookies).
Categories: Advertising, Technology
Topics: YuMe
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YouTube Dominating Online Video Ad Business; $1.3 Billion Forecast in 2011
A new report this week from Citi analyst Mark Mahaney forecasted that YouTube revenue could exceed $1.3 billion in 2011 and rise to almost $1.7 billion in 2012 (see below). Mahaney's conclusion is based on YouTube driving higher video views and an improved ability to monetize these views with advertising. Google has of course been famously tight-lipped about YouTube's financial condition, other than to issue increasingly optimistic statements in its quarterly earnings calls.
Categories: Advertising, Aggregators
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Online Video Advertising Industry Keeps Innovating
Speaking of online video advertising, once again there was plenty of news this week. Among the highlights, Adap.tv launched its video ad marketplace in the U.K., PointRoll added new partners to its "Included" Program and launched new mobile and in-stream Included program, Casale Media announced a new "Videobox" format transforming display ads into video ads, AdoTube released new research that in-stream ads perform 7x better than rich media ads, and blip.tv revealed that it has built a creative services group to produce ads for its clients.
The online video ad market continues to experience strong growth. I've been talking to a lot of companies in the space recently, related to the ELEVATE conference on Tues, June 7th in NYC. There is a ton of enthusiasm, but also a continued strong need for market education and best practices, which is what we'll focus on at ELEVATE (more info coming next week).Categories: Advertising
Topics: Adap.TV, AdoTube, blip.TV, Casale Media, PointRoll
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Six Ways to Increase Digital Video Revenue
Following is a contributed post by Steve Robinson, CEO of Panache, a digital video ad fulfillment provider. For all content providers looking to optimize revenues from their online video streams, it's timely and thoughtful advice, particularly in the lead-up to the new ELEVATE: Online Video Advertising Summit, coming up on Tuesday, June 7th.
Six Ways to Increase Digital Video Revenue
by Steve Robinson
With demand for streaming content clearly established, publishers have shifted from testing digital video advertising to bringing ad revenues toward parity with broadcast. Most publishers face two big hurdles to expanding revenues: Providing enough inventory to meet growing demand and fulfilling sold campaigns efficiently.
Both of these challenges result from an imbalance in the digital video ad market supply and demand. When it comes to inventory, premium publishers are typically only selling three to four pre-roll ads per show in digital video, compared to seven or eight in TV, and as such are only making a fraction of the revenues.
Categories: Advertising
Topics: Panache
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VideoNuze Report Podcast #90 - Mar. 4, 2011
I'm pleased to present the 90th edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for March 4, 2011.
In this week's podcast, Daisy Whitney and I first discuss Tremor Media's new video ad buying platform, which I wrote about on Tuesday. Then we transition to a quick chat about Comcast CEO Brian Roberts' comment this week in the WSJ that "What used to be called 'reruns' on television is now called Netflix." It was a little bit of unexpected trash talk and Daisy and I sort through what might have motivated it.
Click here to listen to the podcast (11 minutes, 48 seconds)
Click here for previous podcasts
The VideoNuze Report is available in iTunes...subscribe today!Categories: Advertising, Cable TV Operators, Podcasts
Topics: Comcast, Podcast, Tremor Media
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Exclusive: Tremor Media Launching Video Ad Buying Platform, Hires Risicato to Run It
Tremor Media is launching a video ad buying platform, in a bid to streamline how Fortune 1000 brands can capitalize on the explosion of online video. The move is Tremor's latest expansion, following the recent acquisitions of
ScanScout and mobile video ad network Transpera. To manage the video ad buying platform, Tremor has hired Anthony Risicato, formerly CEO of mobile marketing company Mobile Commons, with previous experience at Covario, Innovation Interactive (where he led development of its platform that has facilitated billions of dollars of search advertising buys) and DoubleClick. Anthony shared some of the background of Tremor's move with me last week.
The video ad buying platform addresses the two key marketplace issues Tremor has observed, scale and deliverability. Tremor likens the situation in online video advertising to what was happening in the search advertising market about 10 years ago. There is a lot of interest from big brands and agencies to participate, but still too much friction in buying and delivering plus measuring and optimizing their results. Too often brands are required to go to different publishers and video ad networks to assemble their buy, which makes it harder to leverage their spending and also to optimize their ads based on actual performance.
Categories: Advertising
Topics: Tremor Media
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Addressable TV Advertising Struggles To Keep Up With Online Video
An article in Multichannel News this week, "Online Video May Force TV To Pick Up The Pace," discussed how online video advertising is raising the bar on addressable TV advertising (i.e. ads delivered through set-top boxes against VOD streams and the like). That's an understatement to say the least. From everyone I talk to, and from following the activity in the market, online video advertising has lapped addressable TV advertising and then some. From every perspective - investment, innovation, brand adoption, distribution, interactivity, online video advertising is the place brands want to be. And I see this actually accelerating; every week I speak to an executive or two whose company is delivering another exciting online video innovation.
Categories: Advertising, Video On Demand
Topics: VOD
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