Videology Measures Offline Segments Of In-Stream Videos
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.
Publishers urged to take the plunge into private exchanges
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.”
33Across Acquires Publishing Data Gold Mine Tynt
Facebook may be the biggest social network on the planet, but social ad targeting firm 33Across says it now has the distinction of managing the world’s largest social and interest graph.
The company was set to announce today that it has acquired San Francisco-based publishing sharing tool Tynt, which says it reaches more than 1 billion global users monthly. Ostensibly, the acquisition expands 33Across’ data footprint to more than 1.25 billion people worldwide (which the companies say eclipses Facebook’s 800 million, although comparing Facebook’s network to 33Across’ isn’t exactly an apples to apples comparison).
Tynt, which tracks when readers cut and paste content forsharing via email and other social channels, has more than 500,000 publisher clients, including NBCUniversal, Sports Illustrated and MarthaStewart.com. 33Across will maintain the Tynt brand but take ownership of all of the company’s assets, including technology, patents, filings, analytics and tool sets, as well as its roughly 17 employees, including senior leadership.
Mobile Video Primed, Ad Model In Early Stages
Growth in mobile video consumption is so poised, it’s difficult to predict how high and fast the curve might move, while the same goes for advertising and other revenue streams.
“The opportunity appears to be enormous by any stretch of the imagination,” said Nielsen Senior Vice President Scott L. Brown, noting the boom in smartphone penetration.
Mike Bloxham, the executive director of the Media Behavior Institute, said: “There’s a huge amount of growth yet to come in mobile-related revenues … we’re almost at a Jurassic stage of development.”
Bloxham did caution that analyst suggestions that the mobile advertising market would parallel growth in usage could be too ambitious. If mobile accounts for 8% of media consumption time, that hardly means 8% of ad dollars would be apportioned in the space, given the many other factors that impact media buying.
“That’s complete garbage,” he said in joining Brown on a panel at the NATPE event. “Media money is not allocated based on time spent alone. It’s much more complicated than that.”
