Posts for 'SpotX'

One of the highlights of last week’s SHIFT // Programmatic Video & TV Ad Summit was a joint presentation from Brightcove (Mike Green, VP, Marketing and Business Development, Media), SpotX (Kevin Schaum, Sr. Director, Mobile and Connected TV) and the IAB Tech Lab (Amit Shetty,  Sr. Director, Video & Audio Products) on how server side ad insertion (SSAI) adds value to programmatic for both linear and on-demand advertising.

For those not familiar with SSAI (also known as “ad stitching”), this is a process for inserting ads into a piece of content (frequently long-form). There are multiple benefits of SSAI including better user experiences, reduced buffering, extended device reach, elimination of ad blocking and lower cost of deployment. Mike, Kevin and Amit elaborated on how these benefits are even more valuable for programmatic, especially in live and in skinny bundles, while also noting some of the key outstanding challenges.

The presentation clearly communicated how the industry needs to work together to evolve video advertising given new viewer behaviors, device proliferation and publishers’ pressures to fully monetize.

With the video now!

Watch the session video

Video distribution platform Vemba has raised $6 million in a series A-1 round, bringing its total funding to $11 million. The new round was led by Time Warner Investments and SpotX, with existing investors Upfront Ventures and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments participating as well.

Vemba’s CEO Garrick Tiplady told me in a briefing that the company’s vision is to become the industry standard platform for scale in video distribution on any device. Vemba’s platform allows content providers to create flexible models to distribute their videos and receive real-time analytics on their performance and monetization.

continue reading

Late last week SpotX announced that it has integrated its recently-launched header bidding solution for video ads with Amazon Publisher Services’ Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM). To learn more about the integration and the benefits to publishers, SpotX and Amazon, I spoke with Tal Almany, SpotX’s Senior Director, Advanced Integrations who recently joined the company from OpenX.

For those not familiar with header bidding, this is an approach that video providers use to offer their ad inventory simultaneously to multiple demand sources to optimize bidding and monetization. Amazon’s TAM is a header bidding solution that is cloud-based and server side, which means less code is running on the publisher’s site, creating efficiencies. TAM is relatively new to the market, but because it’s from Amazon, it has gained a lot of attention.

continue reading

There’s plenty of M&A and financing activity in the video adtech space, with the latest news coming this morning with RhythmOne acquiring YuMe for $185 million. The deal had been rumored for a while and unites YuMe’s demand-side capabilities with RhythmOne’s supply-side and programmatic platform. YuMe was one of the earliest video adtech players to go public, back in 2013, but has had a bumpy ride as the industry rapidly evolved.

continue reading

Yesterday I posted the recent Video Ad Summit keynote interview with Brian Lesser, CEO of GroupM North America, in which he articulated some of the key challenges facing advertisers today: consumers are harder than ever to reach, data is becoming more valuable, workflows and media buying need to be simplified and agencies need to be more streamlined, among other things.

Video ad tech providers are well aware of these imperatives and this week, 2 new partnerships that were announced (one between YuMe and Mediaocean and the other between DataXu and Teads), along with a new strategic consulting initiative announced by SpotX, all pick up, in one way or another, on the points Brian made.

continue reading

Samba TV and SpotX have announced a partnership to improve video ad targeting to viewers on the web and in apps and connected TVs. Under the deal, Samba TV’s TV viewership data will become available in SpotX’s ad server, so that custom TV audience segments can be built using combined TV and digital data.

SpotX will become Samba TV’s primary connected TV ad server enabling advertisers to buy connected TV ads either programmatically or direct.

continue reading

SpotX and Vemba have teamed up to ensure that video syndication is profitable for both video content providers and online publishers. The companies have jointly launched a new product that enables publishers to set minimum profit margin parameters which determine whether a pre-selected video from Vemba’s library should actually play.

SpotX’s SVP, Global Revenue Sean Buckley and Vemba’s CEO Garrick Tiplady explained to me how the product addresses critical syndication challenges and works at a practical level.

continue reading

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.

continue reading

More evidence this morning of how online video and TV are continuing to converge: SpotX and clypd have announced a new joint solution for content providers to manage all video and linear TV ad inventory whether it’s sold directly or programmatically. The goal is to optimize the value of all inventory and audiences with dynamic, targeted ads across all screens. The joint solution is currently available.

continue reading