Posts for 'DoubleClick'

Kiptronic, a dynamic ad insertion service provider for broadband-delivered video and audio has announced integrations with the two dominant ad management systems, DoubleClick's DART for Publisher and Microsoft's Atlas Ad Manager. This allows Kiptronic customers to traffic their ads from within these familiar ad management consoles beyond browser/PC-based environments.

Kiptronic plays an important role delivering ads against video that's increasingly consumed outside the browser/PC. These days video consumption is being fragmented to widgets, smartphones, downloaded apps like Adobe Media Player, gaming devices, Internet-connected TVs and more coming as the syndicated video economy gains steam.

While more viewership is obviously a plus for content providers, this new heterogeneity creates headaches for ad operations staff tasked with running the correct ads wherever the video is consumed. Kiptronic's secret sauce is inserting both in-browser and also in these disparate environments after recognizing their specific attributes. I'm only aware of one other company in this space, which is Volo Media, but as I understand it, they only insert in downloaded video.

Last week Bill Loewenthal, Kiptronic's President and CEO, and Jonathan Cobb, the company's founder and CTO briefed me on the new integrations as a follow up to a background call Bill and I had about a month ago. Kiptronic's customers are mainly premium content providers such as divisions of Fox, CBS, Time Warner and Sony BMG who place a high value on control and who have their own sales teams.

Kiptronic's key mantra has been enabling ad insertion to all these new environments without requiring any changes to customers' publishing processes. However, to date Kiptronic had required customers to use its proprietary management tool to insert their ads. For customers who use DART and Atlas, these new integrations now eliminate this step, likely boosting Kiptronic's appeal.

The whole concept of video consumption outside the PC/browser domain is a fascinating topic that content providers need to be mindful of. In the next couple of months Kiptronic is going to make data available showing the breakdown of all the places its ads are served. It's a pretty accurate data set given Kiptronic's role. Bill gave me a preview and it is definitely eye-opening. I'll be sharing the info as soon as it's available.

What do you think? Post a comment.

Maven Networks got a lot of ink today with 2 announcements, first the launch of a new broadband ad platform and the second, the launch of a new industry collaboration dubbed the "Internet TV Advertising Forum." These have been in the works for a while and Maven gave me a heads up on both over the summer.

The Ad Forum is noteworthy, as it appears to be a genuine "good guy" effort to move the whole industry forward in optimizing the ad model. Ten companies signed on for launch, including heavies like Scripps, Fox News, Oglivy, TV Guide, Microsoft, DoubleClick and 24/7.

I caught up by phone with Kristen Fergason, Maven's VP of Marketing to learn more. First, the Forum is completely open to everyone. Though initially underwritten by Maven, over time it will probably take on more of a "dues-paying" model. And to show that "open" really does mean open, I asked what happens if competitors like Brightcove for example, wanted in? Her reply: "we'd happily accept them".

The forum is mean to bring together agencies, content providers and vendors to build consensus about how to move past the market's current reliance on pre-rolls. Kristen said industry players have been "chomping at the bit" to get involved and Maven received 40 applications today alone. Importantly, the Forum is meant to augment IAB initiatives, not compete with them. The Forum will run focus groups and collect research based on ideas generated by Forum members to see what works and what doesn't. Results will be available to everyone.

Maven believes that a "rising tide lifts all ships", but because its ad platform is ready now, it will benefit disproportionately. That's where today's other announcement comes in. The demo I saw shows how new ad units (videos, overlays, banners, etc.) can be dynamically inserted, not just at the beginning of the video, but throughout. The result is that a lot of new inventory is available. The below graphic shows "cue points" for manual insertion, but an algorithm can also be used to insert based on what the system knows about things like clip length, average user session time, click-thru, etc. Note I didn't see this feature in action, so I can't say for sure how well it actually works.