Scott Ferber, Chairman and CEO, Videology

2012 promises to be a pivotal year for video advertising. It’s an exciting year for our company, as we launch our new Videology brand and roll out a host of new products for agencies, advertisers and publishers. And it’s an exciting year for the industry, as increased media demand in 2012 promises to open new opportunities for video as advertisers seek new solutions and sources of inventory to meet their marketing goals.

I believe 2012 will be the year that video advertising as an industry gets our focus clear. Like any industry experiencing such burgeoning growth, the past few years were a bit chaotic for ad tech companies and our partners alike, as we all struggled to find our way in a new space. Since no one was sure exactly how the ecosystem would ultimately evolve, tech companies and networks alike all wanted to protect their future share of market by tapping into multiple segments of the demand chain. Exchanges became platforms, platforms became networks, networks become DSPs. Unfortunately, all of this shape shifting led to confusion in the marketplace—and confusion isn’t good for anybody. As the video ecosystem evolves and firms, it is time to focus once again on two key tenants of all successful technological innovation: Simplify and Solve.

Read More: Videology

Yahoo’s Choice: Double Down on Data

The choice of Yahoo’s new CEO can be interpreted as saying a lot about the company’s future. It is often held as being stuck between a tech-driven Silicon Valley company and a media company. The thought is often that it needs to choose one over the other. Maybe not. New Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson might not be well-known to Madison Avenue, but he’s got a keep grasp on the power of data after serving as the president of PayPal and formerly its head of tech.

At Yahoo, Thompson will enjoy a honeymoon period where he can square away some unfinished business. One obvious place to start is sorting out the Alibaba situation. After that, he can turn his attention to identifying what Yahoo is good at and what it’s not. Despite all the scorn heaped on Yahoo by the Silicon Valley press, it remains a powerful player in digital advertising with enviable scale and a trove of data assets. Thanks to Yahoo’s e-mail service, Yahoo has personal information on hundreds of millions of users. Unlike much of the data collected online, Yahoo’s is voluntarily given and verified. Thompson, no stranger to the power of data as PayPal’s tech lead, could easily double down on those and make Yahoo a distinctly modern data-driven media business that caters to brand advertisers. Here are three steps Thompson can take to make the most of those advantages:

Read More: DigiDay

Which vendors should publishers trust to help manage the sale of display ads? A new report from Forrester names AppNexus and Admeld as the two top-performing sell-side platforms.

In Forrester’s 34-criteria evaluation, each stood out for their highly granular controls and ability to support an array of sales opportunities.

Strong competitors include PubMatic and Rubicon Project — which, according to Forrester, are aggressively ramping up their development efforts and turning once-distinguishing platform features into standard offerings.

Forrester analyst and report author Michael Greene says sell-side platforms represent a key component of the new ad technology ecosystem.

“Managing multiple indirect sales channels can be an operational nightmare,” according to Greene. “It’s unlikely that sales teams fill 100% of their site’s inventory every month. To fill the gap, indirect sales channels like ad networks have helped publishers squeeze extra revenues out of their inventory, but put logistical strains on an ad operations team. SSPs help aggregate multiple indirect sales relationships and optimize revenue across them.”

Read More: MediaPost

US Companies Face Big Hurdles in ‘Big Data’ Use

Definition of ‘Big Data’ remains murky for some companies

Today’s uncertain economy has companies looking to data to influence decisions, inform strategy and anticipate outcomes. Marketers too are using such data to gain insight into consumer interests and preferences to better their customer retention and acquisition programs.

For many data-conscious companies, the use of “Big Data” has become increasingly important. Big Data incorporates multiple data sets—customer data, competitive data, online data, offline data, and so forth—for a more holistic approach to business intelligence.

Though the term Big Data is becoming more common within the online advertising industry, web data monitoring and collection company Connotate showed just how unclear many companies are on its definition and use.

Though almost half (49%) of US data aggregation leaders defined Big Data as an aggregate of all external and internal web-based data, others defined it as the mass amounts of internal information stored and managed by an enterprise (16%) or web-based data and content businesses used for their own operations (7%).

Read More: eMarketer

Over the last five years, we’ve seen a growth in companies that generate audience data, like BlueKai, Exelate and 33Across, and those that capture transactional and conversion data, like Datalogix, Compete and Criteo.  These companies have created new layers of business intelligence reporting aimed at helping advertisers to better monetize and analyze their media spend.  Consequently, there has been an explosion in data, now widely referred to as “big data”. 

The goal of “big data” is to bring an increased level of transparency and control to both buyer and seller, enabling more accurate evaluation of audiences, the ability to customize and blend behavioral segments and deliver optimal performance for marketers.  This exercise has helped to educate the market about the potential of clustering and targeting and the resulting momentum has led to the creation of new businesses along the way.  However, the industry’s thirst for data seems to be insatiable and the sheer volume now available to us has become overwhelming.  This data explosion now requires automation in the simplest and most streamlined form via the application of predictive modeling. 

Ad technology should dynamically build audience segment recommendations for buyers based on known (or observed) performance objectives, and the cheapest and most effective attributes for delivering that performance.  For the seller, the technology should monitor market pricing for specific attributes and automatically package audiences that meet those needs.  Additionally, it should also provide the opportunity for sellers to align those audiences with the highest quality content and environment to maximize value and performance.

Read More: Business Insider

Frenemies With Benefits: comScore, Nielsen Deal Seen As Positive For Online Ad Market

Wednesday’s surprise patent litigation settlement between online audience measurement giants comScore and Nielsen is expected to accelerate innovation, creativity, improvements, and possibly even better standards for the Internet advertising marketplace. That was the initial takeaway from observers who were trying to figure out the ramifications of the settlement, which one influential Wall Street group said made the two previous arch rivals, “frenemies.”

The settlement has the power, Deutsche Bank securities analyst Matt Chesler wrote, “to change the scope of the relationship between the two fierce competitors, which is the potentially more interest long-term implication.”

What the long-term will ultimately will bring will depend on a number of market developments, but in the short-term a few things are very clear, Chesler noted, including removing an unnecessary distraction for both companies that ran up significant time and legal costs that could’ve been better spent developing systems and services and improving methodologies for online advertisers, agencies and publishers.

In particular, Chesler said the deal is likely to help accelerate the deployment and acceptance of Nielsen’s new Online Campaign Ratings service, which Nielsen has been pushing hard to make for the online advertising industry, what its TV ratings are for the television industry, a “currency.”

Another clear near-term result is that comScore’s stock value will dilute by about 3%, due to the $19 million in shares it is giving to Nielsen as a form of payment to license its patents for online audience measurement

Read More: MediaPost

RESTON, VA, December 15, 2011 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 183 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in November for an average of 20.5 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience viewed 40.9 billion videos.

Top 10 Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers

Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in November with 151.6 million unique viewers, while VEVO ranked second with 55.4 million. Facebook.com ranked third with 50.8 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 50.4 million and Viacom Digital with 47.4 million. More than 40 billion videos views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 20.5 billion. The average viewer watched 20.5 hours of online video content, with Google Sites (7.4 hours) and Hulu (3.3 hours) demonstrating the highest engagement among the top ten properties.

Top 10 Video Ad Properties by Video Ads Viewed

Americans viewed 7.2 billion video ads in November, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1.3 billion, followed by Tremor Video in second with 1.1 billion. Adap.tv crossed the 1 billion mark for the first time earning the #3 spot, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 722 million and Specific Media with 513 million. Time spent watching video ads totaled more than 3 billion minutes during the month, with Tremor Video delivering the highest duration of video ads at 594 million minutes. Video ads reached 53 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 45 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 44.

Read More: comScore

Microsoft Accelerates Rollout In Yahoo, AOL Display Deal

Data has become one of the most important pieces in the recently announced Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo display ad alliance. Microsoft ad executives have found that data-rich markets tend to have the greatest success for bidders and buyers tapping the exchange, according to Mary Ann Benack, director of scale enablement at Microsoft Advertising.

The alliance is intended to give Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo a fighting chance to compete against rival Google in the display ad space. eMarketer estimates that Microsoft’s share of the overall U.S. display market would fall to 4.9% this year, down from 5.1% in 2010.

AOL’s share will fall to 4.2% — down from 4.8% — and Yahoo’s share would slide to 13.1%, down from 14.4%, respectively. Conversely, Google’s share of display revenue will grow to 9.3% this year, eMarketer estimates, up from an 8.6% share in 2010. Facebook has also become a rival. By 2012, eMarketer expects Facebook will hold 19.5% of the display ad share market, up from 12.2% in 2010.

Perhaps that is one reason for the accelerated rollout. It will provide Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo with the ability to compete with Facebook too. “We only expected to roll out in six markete this calendar year,” Benack said, but the alliance now supports buying and selling in 15 markets, from the Americas to Europe to Asia-Pacific.

Read More: MediaPost

Editor’s note: The following guest post was written by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, founder and CEO of WatchMojo, a video publisher.

Venture capital is flowing into video ad networks: Brightroll recently raised $30 million, Yume raised $12 million.  Tremor Video’s raised over $100 million.

But not everyone’s buying the hype: “it’s just not a big enough market for all the money invested, there can’t be six or seven category leaders”, argues Will Margiloff, chief executive officer of Ignition One, a unit of Japan’s Dentsu.  Some have raised more money than their revenue potential.

Not all of the top 100 marketers even buy video advertising, but those that do frequently repurpose a 30-second TV ad spot and run it as a pre-roll, seeking massive scale.  Investors are betting that ad networks can provide that scale.  Meanwhile, while marketers continue to shun user-generated content and traditional media companies (TMCs) scale back free, ad-supported distribution, VCs don’t seem willing to start investing content plays.  I asked a panel of VCs at Vator TV’s VentureShift if they planned on backing content startups; I might as well have asked the question in Swahili.

This would be fine if VCs were returning abnormally high returns to their limited partners, but they’re not.

Read More: TechCrunch

Targeting Travelers: CEO Rabe Discusses New Sojern Media Platform And Airline Partnerships

Mark Rabe is CEO of Sojern, a travel data and media company with exclusive partnerships with several major airlines.

Adexchanger.com: So, in some ways, are you building an Orbitz competitor with Sojern?

MR: The answer is no. We are partnered with our airline partners – and it’s the majority of the large domestic airlines, who are also equity holders in Sojern.

We essentially render media and advertising to their travelers as they’re passing through the check-in process.

The company came into being when our founder, Gordon Whitton, who was based in Omaha, Nebraska, sold his last company to Intuit and was essentially doing the weekly commute from Omaha to San Diego. He was an organized guy and would wake up in the morning, print out his boarding pass, get to the Omaha airport and find himself staring at essentially a blank 8.5×11 sheet of paper.

He hit on the idea of, “I can program relevant content for travelers on that printed page as well as find advertisers that want to monetize it.” That was the germ of the idea. The printed boarding pass still represents a sizable chunk of our total annual revenue, and phase one of “the business.” Phase two was in the works when I arrived six months ago, and we launched it about three months ago -  it was about taking a step back in the check-in process and creating a rich, personalized experience for travelers as they navigate the check-in experience. Imagine weather in the destination city, the top five restaurants as provided by one of our content providers, events that are happening in the city, and increasingly make the experience more customized or personalized to a user.

Read More: AdExchanger

Powerful Solution Enables Marketers to Turn Big Data Into Profit

BOSTON, MA–(Marketwire – Nov 7, 2011) – DataXu (www.dataxu.com) today announced the launch of DX3. DX3 is the only fully-integrated digital marketing management platform. DX3 enables marketers to acquire and retain more customers by optimizing across the most profitable audience segments, media channels, and creative messages. Using DX3, marketers can improve campaign performance by up to 2X and save millions of dollars on media, technology and service fees.

The deluge of consumer behavioral data created by ubiquitous computing presents a historic opportunity and challenge for the CMO. The rapid evolution of digital media, and the accompanying proliferation of hard-to-implement point solutions, has made it difficult to formulate and act on enterprise-wide decisions driven by the effective use of real-time customer intelligence.

Industry experts are taking notice. In the September 2011 Forrester Research Inc. report, “The Future of Digital Media Buying,” report author and senior analyst Joanna O’Connell observed that the demand-side platform (DSP) model would evolve, alongside data management and analytics capabilities, into an integrated enterprise solution. “DMP/analytics platforms and centralized media buying platforms will increasingly merge into a unified stack.” That vision is now a reality with the launch of DX3.

Read More: Marketwire

Yahoo Adds Ad Targeting Options 

Aiming to better monetize its vast inventory, Yahoo Tuesday announced a pair of new or upgraded ad targeting services designed to deliver more relevant messages and higher interaction rates. The new services, focused on location and purchase-based targeting, come on the heels of Yahoo’s  $270 million acquisition of behavioral targeting firm interclick last week. But the Web portal said the new initiative was in the works prior to the deal.

The location-focused service rolled out today, called Proximity Match, allows advertisers to target consumers through Yahoo according to the distance between their home address and a retail or business location. The goal is to help marketers improve campaign results by localizing target audiences, driving in-store traffic and boosting the ability to track cross-channel sales.

Yahoo’s upgraded Consumer Direct targeting tool has added features allowing marketers to target specific consumer segments at scale as well as measure the offline impact of online campaigns. It combines in-store purchase data for a range of CPG categories from Nielsen Catalina Solutions (NCS) with Yahoo’s online user data to power audience targeting across its network.

Read More: MediaPost

RESTON, VA, October 20, 2011 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released its monthly analysis of U.S. web activity at the top online properties for September 2011 based on data from the comScore Media Metrix service. Online Gambling sites witnessed the strongest lift in traffic in September with sports betting front-and-center as the NFL season kicked off. The new school year also swung into gear in September, which encouraged students and teachers to visit Education Information and Resource sites.

“In September, Americans browsed a variety of web content, with Online Gambling, Education and Political News sites ranking at the top of our fastest-growing categories list,” said Jeff Hackett, executive vice president of comScore. “Fall television lineups also premiered in September, earning ABC Television and TV Guide Online Network spots on the list of top-gaining properties, along with NFL Internet Group and ESPN as the long-awaited NFL season began.”
Americans All-In For Online Gambling

Online Gambling sites represented the fastest growing category in September, up 13 percent to 9.7 million visitors. PokerStars ranked first in the category with 1.1 million visitors (up 11 percent), followed by UPickEm.net with 993,000 (up 36 percent), FullTiltPoker with 753,000, SimSlots, Inc. with 655,000 (up 5 percent) and Wooga.com with 520,000 (up 85 percent).

Read More: comScore

Eric Roza, Digital Media Industry Veteran, Promoted to CEO of Datalogix

WESTMINSTER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Datalogix, the leader at integrating database marketing and digital media, today announced it has promoted Eric Roza to Chief Executive Officer.

Roza joined Datalogix in 2007 as its President. Since that time the company has experienced rapid change and expansion including the hiring of over eighty new employees and a doubling of revenues in the past twenty-four months.

“Eric has done a wonderful job of assembling a very experienced and motivated senior management team which has transformed our business from a direct marketing company to become the leader in digital advertising via our use of real-world purchase data,” said Rob Gierkink, former CEO of Datalogix who will continue to serve as its Chairman. “At a time when the economy is struggling we’re very pleased with the double-digit annual growth we’ve seen in our direct mail business and the confidence our clients have shown in our team and our capabilities.”

“Our growth has been driven by our client’s desire to deliver meaningful messages to customers, both online and offline, based on their demonstrated purchase behavior,” said Roza. “Datalogix is at the forefront of the data-centric marketing approach that is changing the way marketing messages are delivered to consumers. Our team is single-minded in its focus to provide these capabilities to our clients so they can realize exceptional and measurable returns on their marketing investments.”

Read More: Businesswire

Ads aren’t as effective as they could be. It takes data — lots of it — and many different kinds. Integrating survey data to improve real-time ad targeting, Rocket Fuel on Monday will unveil an update to Brand Booster that integrates survey results in any digital channel across all campaigns. The tool — built on the company’s Real-Time Targeting Platform — optimizes multichannel campaigns in real-time, tying metrics from display, video, mobile, and social advertising campaigns.

Brand Booster 2.0 aims to improve media buys based on awareness, preference and purchase intent, rather than proxy metrics like clicks that do not represent actual consumers going into a store to buy a product. The platform relies on brand data to make media-buying decisions in real-time.

George John, CEO of Rocket Fuel, said marketers typically don’t have access to brand survey results until after campaigns run or through manual reports that don’t easily integrate into media-planning tools as quickly as they should. It requires a quick response to make a difference.

The evolution of real-time ad serving and predictions based on the method creates new challenges for marketers. For Rocket Fuel clients, learning how to spend money wisely on campaigns means optimizing campaigns in real-time through answers to survey questions. The platform adjusts ads that serve up as questions are answered. A consumer products goods (CPG) company launching a new shampoo might need to know if consumers in Los Angeles would prefer a rose scent rather than carnation.

Read More: MediaPost

Standing Up for Audience Targeting

Last week, John Mracek, the CEO of NetSeer, commented that audience targeting is overrated and touted the benefits of contextual targeting. While I can appreciate that early-generation audience targeting lacked scale and performance causing industry-wide frustration, that was three years ago. At that point, audience targeting amounted to contextual-consumption data and the data markets of today were non-existent.

Fast forward to today. Much has changed although many solutions are still incomplete. Successful audience targeting requires an entirely new solution, as well as a fundamental shift in the way we think about audience and data. Opposed to contextual platforms, which have existed for nearly twelve years, true audience targeting is still in its infancy. Right now successful execution requires access to diverse sets of data that haven’t been widely available until recently, so it’s easy to understand why most people still believe that scalable audience targeting beyond context is unachievable.

However, to say that data is the new black is to say that having the opportunity to make informed decisions is in style and will come to pass. Utilizing data effectively helps contribute to better business decisions overall. That’s unlikely to change as time goes by and data becomes more integral to our businesses. While the term “data” is used quite loosely, user data can be used for much more than just targeting.

Read More: DigiDay

In the 1990s tech bubble, one entrepreneur was famous for making incredible statements such as, “literally, people will die this year because they didn’t buy my software.” His name was Michael Saylor and he was CEO of MicroStrategy, a company that sold – let’s be honest – boring enterprise software.

I always thought that was a nutty thing to say, but recently in an animated discussion with some colleagues about the sorry state of online advertising, I found myself arguing that if half of the annual $500 billion in advertising spend is wasted, then something is massively wrong. Then I heard myself say “literally, people have died because of bad advertising.”

Why is online advertising failing to live up to its potential in the hands of brands and their agencies? Because they have not kept pace with the evolution of technology and consumer behavior. Here are three things main problems holding back the online advertising industry:

Online ad spend lags consumer behavior by five years.

You can’t swing a stick at an ad:tech conference without hitting someone familiar with the Mary Meeker chart showing that online ad spending is way below where it should be given the time people spend online. Considering people are shifting their entire lives online, advertisers are overspending on TV and print, and drastically underspending on Internet ads. Brands need to up their spend on online now, but do so with measureable metrics in mind. (In other words, just throwing more money at badly targeted and underperforming online ads won’t fix the problem.)

Read More: Forbes

Jumptap Delivers a Mobile First, Deploying Off-line Data at Scale to Create Audience Insights and Targeting for Mobile Advertisers

Partnerships with Acxiom, Datalogix, Polk, and TARGUSinfo’s AdAdvisor Deliver Improved Campaign Results for Advertisers

 CAMBRIDGE, MA. August 17, 2011 – Jumptap, the leader in targeted mobile advertising, today announced partnerships with four leading providers of primary off-line data, helping mobile advertisers deliver highly-targeted and effective campaigns. These partnerships are the first in the industry to combine off-line audience insights and true network scale.

 Jumptap’s advertisers have already seen great results from this deeper level of data. Jumptap recently helped a major auto advertiser target ads to ZIP codes including customers that show a high inclination toward its brand. Ads targeted to these ZIP codes showed lift over broadly targeted ads in virtually every campaign. One campaign showed an 85 percent lift over the control campaigns not using data targeting. For more information on this campaign and other data, download Jumptap’s June 2011 MobileSTAT report.

 As part of these strategic partnerships, Acxiom, a leader in marketing services and technology that provides consumer segmentation and targeted direct mail solutions, supplies Jumptap with anonymous information to assist advertisers in reaching audiences in a specific demographic or life stage.

Datalogix, the leader at integrating database marketing and digital media, provides Jumptap with the ability to use anonymous purchase-based data in key verticals such as retail, consumer packaged goods, loyalty and more. Past purchases are the strongest predictor of future purchase behavior and the Datalogix database includes almost every U.S. household and contains over $1 trillion in consumer purchase behavior.

Read More: Jumptap

Display Advertising Leaders Combine to Create a Branding and Performance Powerhouse

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– ValueClick (Nasdaq: VCLK) and Dotomi announced today that they have signed a definitive merger agreement whereby Dotomi will become a wholly owned subsidiary of ValueClick. Privately held Dotomi is the leading provider of data-driven, intelligent display media for major retailers.

Dotomi creates and delivers display advertising where the ad creatives and media placements are dynamically adapted in real time at the user and impression level. The Company works directly with clients to integrate anonymous data and then surrounds each client with technology enabled marketing services. Dotomi manages everything from brand strategy and dynamic creative development to message delivery and decisioning. This data-driven, end-to-end approach results in display advertising that improves consumer brand engagement and generates measurable sales lift both online and offline for its clients.

Through its unique set of capabilities, Dotomi has developed strategic, direct relationships with over 100 retail brands, including over forty brands from the Internet Retailer Top 100. Led by Chief Executive Officer John Giuliani, Dotomi is based in Chicago and has 160 employees.

“Dotomi’s end-to-end offering attracts large brands because of its ‘simple sophistication.’ John and his team have built a great business integrating the technical and consultative points in the display value chain,” said Jim Zarley, chief executive officer of ValueClick. “Together with ValueClick’s portfolio of products, we will be in a position to meet the needs of marketers with a single relationship that will create marketing and analytic consistency. Our combined scale and expertise should accelerate their adoption of digital media. Together we believe we will create a new powerhouse in branding and performance-based advertising.”

Read More: AdExchanger

Making Rich Media Scale

In my recent Ad Age piece on the disruptive nature of RTB technologies I took some shots at the rich media business. Specifically, I called it a “tech hairball”. Of all the points in the article, the rich media comments got the most feedback so I want a chance to explain exactly my criticism.

First, some brief background. The term “rich media” refers to display advertising creatives that utilize an ever-expanding collection of features like video, larger file size, social interactions, expansion beyond the banner slot, etc. Within the industry the term generally is associated with a set of vendors including PointRoll, MediaMind and DoubleClick (where I built and managed the rich media products). The fact that the whole business cannot be easily defined except in relation to the vendor offerings should raise eyebrows. Imagine if you couldn’t fully describe what a database was without reference to Oracle or Microsoft — that situation doesn’t exist in mature tech sectors, yet it is the case for the technology behind the most valuable digital ads running in display today.

At heart, the key issue that holds the rich media sector back is that the technical foundation of these ads remains immature and fragmented causing inefficiencies and complexities throughout the value chain. Rich media was invented by EyeBlaster and Unicast over ten years ago, yet virtually no standards have emerged to govern the delivery, reporting, or effectiveness of these creatives. In contrast, the in-stream video world has gone from inception to widespread adoption of the VAST and VPAID standards in less than five years. Mobile rich media is rapidly developing the ORMMA standard, potentially leaving us in a situation where it’s easier to develop cutting-edge mobile ads than browser display ads. Let’s examine the current state of rich media technology along the path of planning->creation->delivery->reporting->effectiveness and see how fragmentation continually limits the growth of the entire display business.

Read More: The AppNexus Impressionist