Archive for February, 2008
Will Targeted Online Video Replace TV?
“The point here is that when online video takes a bite out of television it will do so because video advertisers see value in targeted advertising, not because online video viewership begins to approach that of television.”
Hmm. This quote was extracted out of context from an article by Tom Hespos. We agree. Sort of. Advertisers will revel in the strong contextual, geographical and behavioural targeting that is and will be offered by online video ad networks. In addition, they’ll get more awareness and lift and probably even performance advertisers will get high click rates and customer acquisition rates because video advertising if done correctly offers a highly immersive and advertising friendly experience. But let’s face it. Advertisers want targeting and they want reach, but they really want targeted reach. Let’s take behavioural targeting, the classic example being the so-called in-market car buyer who went to site A, looked at cars and then went to another site. You throw up a car ad when she’s surfing email right? Well, unless the network is huge, the overlap of such people becomes really small and targeting in-market car buyers ends up targeting 5 people. I exaggerate, but only to make a point. Reach and large numbers is key. So, I think the video ad networks need to amass huge mass in order to be successful in targeting.
- Jayant Kadambi
Refining Niche Sites Down to The Nano-Niche
So I’m sure many of you have read about the recent influx of how-to video sites like 5min.com, wonderhowto.com, expertvillage.com and videojug.com. The concept is simple and there is certainly an audience for this type of content. But these niche sites are being funded by VCs, which means they’ll eventually have to become bonafide money-making businesses. They need a way to monetise these videos so people around the world can fine-tune their do-it-yourself 5-minute skills. What is the most likely way to do that, you ask? Maybe I’m a little biased, but it seems the most obvious way would be – you guessed it – through relevant contextual adverts inserted into, over or around the content.
Targeting has always been important in advertising. But just because the site is niche, micro-niche or even nano-niche (such as targeting people who are interested in learning how to patch a hole in a wall, hold a 6-month-old or even make the coolest origami paper airplane) doesn’t necessarily mean advertisers will flock there. The content must be useful to the targeted audience. The trick, though, is to reach those audiences in aggregate. With hundreds of micro-niche and nano-niche sites popping up, it’s unlikely that any will have YouTube’s reach. Advertisers don’t want to have to search through 500 niche sites looking for the perfect audience – maybe the 30-something homeowner who would be interested in the products on special at Home Depot. These advertisers need aggregation and transparent targeting.
To improve the reach, many of these sites are syndicating their content across different sites, such as blinkx, blip.tv, veoh, youtube, and others. We hope the site operators retain their advertising rights. Here at YuMe, we can hyper-target their content in aggregate and deliver meaningful reach to a very valuable audience. Because we have a large network of sites for which we’ve integrated advertising insertion, we also can help syndicate that content. As the largest dedicated online video ad network, we’re delivering million of ads. That means we’re also delivering millions of videos. For the micro-site, that increases the reach. For the advertiser, it translates to additional value. That’s what I call maximizing the niche.
- Jayant Kadambi
