Jeremy Steinberg is VP, Digital Sales & Business Development, FOX News Network.

Late last week, Steinberg offered an update to AdExchanger on his company’s efforts in the online audience buying space.

AdExchanger.com: Last May, you discussed with AdExchanger.com some of the things you were doing on the product side to address audience buying.  How has it worked out?

JS:  Really well, and – within the next couple months – we’re going to be rolling out a fully-revamped audience insights suite of services for our advertisers, which will provide enhanced targeting opportunities for audience, as well as context.

It’s equally important to marry the two together and is a key differentiator for us. This is a big investment in our business and in our future.

We’ve known for quite some time that we have by far the most engaged audience in news, and the numbers in comScore really speak to that.  We’re investing in new technology because we want to prove it to our advertisers that our advertising works.

We’re doubling down and offering robust segmentation of our audience so advertisers can dive in deep to reach their targets, or, even better, to find out who their ads are performing best against, and then optimizing accordingly.

Will the focus of this product be on PC-based display?  Mobile, video?

It’s focused on [PC-based] display to start. We’re certainly going to explore expanding it to other channels down the road.

Any trends you can share that you’re seeing with display today in your business?

There’s a lot going on in this area. There’s the direct, and indirect.

On the direct side, we’re seeing increased demand from the prior year, and one of the reasons for that increased demand is my team is out in the marketplace proving the value of our inventory. We’re doing that through our investments in custom solutions, and in ad technology. We’re talking about audience targeting about real‑time bidding. That’s something that has been of keen interest to our clients.

In addition, my national team is out there talking about how we can activate campaigns socially. We believe all of these solutions are differentiating us from the competition and the general Web. That’s why we’re seeing great demand.

Read more: AdExchanger

Given the nascent quality of connected TV advertising, it’s hard to really offer a substantive comparison between the value of such placements versus the comparatively more established PC-based video and mobile ads.

But you have to start someplace and Videology (the video ad network recently formerly known as TidalTV) has a few stats that appear to offer further evidence of the complementary quality of connected TV media buys as part of a larger video ad strategy.

Since there’s currently no uniform way to “click” a connected TV video ad the company’s study (pdf) discusses the value of video completion rates (VCR) for ads seen on wifi-enabled televisions.

The number that jumps out about connected TV ads is that it has a 110 percent video completion rate over regular online video. As if that we’re special enough, mobile video’s completion rates are around 10 percent lower than ones seen on PC-based web video ads. And the prices for ads across those devices tend to reflect that.

As Videology notes, the divergence in completion rates between mobile and connected TVs make obvious sense: mobile phone users tend to be on the go and given 3G buffering, people give up on a video that doesn’t load in a matter of seconds. With wifi-TVs, users probably are planted on their couch and home connections tend to be infinitely better than access a user can get on a street or a moving bus/train.

For an advertiser looking at click-through rates, mobile is still a very good addition, as smartphones deliver a 350 percent CTR increase for an average price increase of 30 percent. That’s a very strong, over 10 to 1 ratio.

If  ”engagement” like video completion is the main aim, connected TV delivers improved completed views at a ratio of 2 to 1 compared to cost increases, which is roughly 54 percent higher than online video prices.

But do these improved rates equal the cost required to reach them?

Videology just looked at eight campaigns — it doesn’t identify them further — and found that using multiple screens showed brand lift

increases between 70- and 300 percent, while the online video campaigns showed brand lift in the 15- to 130 percent range.

On average, multiple screen campaigns using  online video, mobile and connected television screens showed average brand recall rise 9 times higher than those relying solely on online video.

Read more: TVExchanger

Can you accurately measure the impact of online video advertising on offline consumer purchases?

Videology is going to try. The ad platform, formerly known as TidalTV, is entering into dual partnerships with database marketing and behavioral targeting services provider I-Behavior and Kantar Shopcom, which runs a database containing information from 231 million consumers across 270 CPG, retail, travel, lodging and services categories.

The goal is to help marketers reach users based on their demographic makeup or in-store activity, explained Kevin Haley, Chief Scientist at Videology.

“What advertisers really want to know is if their advertising moves soap off the shelves,” says Haley. He says the ability to provide advertisers with ongoing, offline ROI measurement should have a “significant impact on advertising strategies within the digital video space.”

With the three-way partnership, advertisers can target offline purchase-based segments across Videology’s in-stream video network of more than 80 million consumers, Haley promised.

Meanwhile, given the volume of data that will result from the enterprise, Haley sees an opportunity for analysis of purchase behavior at the brand level, including increases in sales volume, frequency of purchase and retail penetration.

Launched in late 2007, Videology was known to the world as TidalTV until earlier this month. The name change was meant to convey a more video- and technology-heavy image.

Read more: MediaPost

Future Publishing and The Guardian have encouraged companies to embrace private exchanges while there is still time to learn.

Agencies and publishers have downplayed calls this week for more industry education (nma.co.uk 19 January 2011) to reduce nervousness around private ad exchanges.

Marco Bertozzi, MD of research firm VivaKi Nerve Center (right), said, “I don’t buy the nervousness anymore. A year ago not many publishers were as involved as they are now. Most didn’t trust it. Nine months later it’s a very different story. If you can get the FT to work with you in a private marketplace you can get anyone.”

He reckons almost every publisher is “dipping their toe in the water”, with feedback showing that they are seeing better returns through the exchanges than selling to ad networks.

He points to The Guardian, Future and Associated as some of the early adopters.

The Guardian began trading premium performance inventory via a private exchange with Rubicon Project in October 2011, but it first experimented with exchange trading in 2008, which it scaled in 2009 before developing new UK inventory to trade programmatically in March 2010.

Tim Gentry, Guardian News & Media’s commercial effectiveness manager, said the early move was driven in part by being able to gain experience while volumes were relatively low and the market was relatively immature. “The short-term aim for us is to grow our share of market by capturing trading-desk spend that was previously going to networks,” he said. “Longer term, we are aiming to gain the skills and experience that will make us one of the best premium publishers.”

Read more: newmediaage