This week we released our Video Ad Metrics Report for January 2010. This month’s report includes a full year’s worth of data on issues including the relative performance of of 15 and 30 second pre–roll units, and that age old question “who’s clicking on ads?”.  In future reports, we plan to take a deeper look at how a campaign’s goals (branding, direct response, etc.), target demographic, and creative executions influence metrics like video completion and click-through rates.

Online video advertising is a new category, and everyone in the industry is still working to find the best ad formats, success metrics, and creative approaches. We believe that publishing the data we’re seeing will facilitate that process. If you have a question that you would like to see addressed in a future report, let us know at advertise@yume.com.

Thanks to our friends at Stickam, we are giving away 5 free passes to the livestream of this week’s NATPE (National Association of Television Program Executives) Market & Conference.  To enter, just become a friend of YuMe on Facebook here, and leave a comment on our post about the giveaway.  We’ll pick one random winner at 4:30 PM Pacific, three more winners at 9:00 PM Pacific, and a final winner tomorrow morning at 9 AM Pacific.

If you win, be sure to check out Michael Mathieu’s panel tomorrow morning at 10:30 AM!

We are very excited to announce that Scot McLernon has joined our team as Chief Revenue Officer.  Scot has an amazing sales background, with over 15 years in the interactive media and advertising industry.  McLernon built and led three successful web advertising sales teams, including at CBS MarketWatch, which was recognized by Forrester for highest revenue per sales person for four years in a row.  While under his leadership, CBS MarketWatch won “best business and finance site to advertise with” and his sales teams earned the acclaimed ASPY award as Best Overall Sales Team on the web.  Most recently Scot was President of Upstream Group, where he developed Habitat - the industry’s only combined training and networking event for sellers.

“Scot is an undisputed leader in online ad sales,” said YuMe CEO Michael Mathieu.  “Having a person of Scot’s caliber join our team is a validation of YuMe’s strong position in the market and a huge boost to our team overall.  Scot’s experience in driving sales and scaling business will help grow YuMe’s online video monetization efforts, strategy and value proposition.”

McLernon was on the Board of Directors for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) for five years and co-founded the Bay Area Interactive Group (BIG) in 2004, which educates and helps network the Bay Area’s interactive marketing community.  Recognizing Scot’s accomplishments as an innovator and industry pioneer, he received the ad:tech Industry Achievement Award in 2007.

Check out MediaPost’s coverage of the announcement.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

Today we launched a new video ad unit called Triple Play with our advertising partners Horizon Interactive and Livescribe.  Triple Play is a video pre-roll enhanced with an interactive menu that provides additional options for viewers to engage with a brand.  You can check out the first Triple Play ad—for Livescribe’s cool Pulse Smartpen—in our ad gallery.

The Triple Play interactive menu is presented after the pre-roll runs, and features up to three call-to-actions with which the viewer can interact.  For example, the viewer can be presented with the opportunity to watch additional videos, learn more about a product, sign up for promotional offers, or even visit a brand’s Facebook fan page.

Mark Walsh from MediaPost wrote a good article about the news—you can check it out here.

Today the IAB announced that it is setting new, tougher guidelines for online video publishers. We are pleased that the new guidelines mirror YuMe’s existing policies on autoplay video, which you can read in our whitepaper on video impressions.

Online video ads running against professional content are a premium product, and command higher prices than display as a result. For the online video industry to continue to grow, however, advertisers need to be able to include video in media plans confidently. That confidence has been threatened by the proliferation of publishers and networks peddling “online video” and then delivering a product that looks and performs more like rich media display (autoplay, below the fold, often in-banner pre-rolls).

The IAB has taken an important step to preserve advertiser’s confidence and ensure that online video continues to deliver excellent value for advertisers.

Today we released our December Video Ad Metrics Report based on the more than 3 billion ad impressions we have served from January 2009 through November 2009.

In this month’s report we took a close look at the relative performance of 15 and 30 second pre–roll units, and also broke out pre–roll click–through rates by demographic to help answer that age old question “who’s clicking on ads?”

As you can see below, younger viewers (ages 6-14) and older viewers (ages 35 and up) clicked through pre-roll ads most frequently. You can download the full report here.

YuMe was a sponsor of this week’s iMedia Connection Agency Summit, and a few YuMe team members were able to make it to Arizona for the event (photographic evidence below).

As usual, the folks from iMedia put together a fantastic conference. If you weren’t able to make it, you can check out all of the coverage on the iMedia site, including photos, news coverage, and presenter PowerPoints.

Michael Mathieu and Lindsay O'Neill at the iMedia Connection Agency Summit

Michael Mathieu, Jeannie Abraham, Bethany Mach, and Joseph Porcellini at the iMedia Agency Summit

Today we announced a partnership with Hearst Magazines where we will be providing in-stream video advertising technology and sales for Hearst’s portfolio of web sites, including Cosmopolitan.com, GoodHousekeeping.com, RealBeauty.com and HarpersBazaar.com.

“As the popularity and consumption of streaming video content continues to thrive, the digital team at Hearst is focused on helping its loyal advertisers take advantage of this engaging and dynamic communications medium,” said Chuck Cordray, SVP and general manager of Hearst Magazines Digital Media.  “With the help of YuMe’s video ad technology, we’re able to ensure that our visitors are presented with the most relevant advertising messages and that we realize maximum revenue opportunities across all of our online media properties.”

Check out the story that Mark Walsh of MediaPost wrote.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

Bismarck Lepe, Ooyala’s CEO, sat down for an interview with Beet.TV last week and mentioned our partnership to help publishers make money from their live video streams.

You can read the full post at Beet.TV or watch the video interview below:

The YuMe team was in Chicago last week at Starcom’s ACT! fundraiser for Feeding America and Christopher House. Everyone had a wonderful time at Martini Park, and one lucky attendee won a YuMe-donated Nintendo Wii just in time for some Thanksgiving Wii Tennis with the family.

Thanks to Starcom for hosting us and supporting such wonderful causes!

Check out some photos of the festivities: