Archive for April, 2008
Video is Different
There was an article in the NY Times on the 21st of April “A Web Shift in the Way Advertisers Seek Clicks” on advertisers increasingly looking to display ad networks due not only to their reach and cost-effectiveness, but also due to their technology and targeting capabilities. Display ad networks seem to be growing at a faster clip than the general graphical ad market as a whole.
Obviously, this is good news for us at YuMe. However, in order for video ad networks to continue this trend, they need to provide a strong value proposition to video advertisers. This includes acknowledging that video is different, and that video advertisers need content-level transparency, strong targeting, cross-campaign reporting and flexibility in ad formats and creative design.
In the coming weeks you’ll see news from us that will provide advertisers and ad agencies unprecedented visibility and metrics for their video campaigns, delivered run-time that will essentially provide a window into a campaign’s performance. These metrics include not only the usual items such as impressions, clicks and views, but also offer items such as unduplicated reach, frequency, video completion rates and other measures of user behaviour that will help determine the effectiveness of a campaign.
Stay Tuned.
- Jayant Kadambi
Just In – Digital Content Is Being Pirated!
This just in: digital content is being pirated on the Internet. Talk about an old headline. And yet, it’s a problem that’s being recognized in the video space, despite the efforts by media companies to get their content on to legitimate online sites.
Just this week, Akamai Technologies and Vobile – which are both in the video space – commissioned a survey to look at how long it takes for broadcast prime-time television shows to be pirated. It turns out that shows are available on the Internet within minutes of the broadcast and that the unauthorized downloads begin immediately. (As a side note, how cool is it that viewers are so engaged in the show that they immediately turn to the Internet to download and watch it?)
I raise this point for a couple reasons. The first, of course, is that there are thousands upon thousands of potential viewers who, for whatever reason, can’t work with the network’s schedule and turn to the Internet to watch. The second is that many of those same viewers are not willing to pay to watch a show – or maybe are unsure of how to do that.
Sure, there are those who will always be digital pirates. But I have to believe that there are consumers who, if given a way to watch their favorite shows in a timely manner (within minutes of the original broadcast) at a price they like (free), would not resort to piracy for their fix of The Office.
At YuMe, we think that ad-supported content on the Web is a way to help fight piracy. It’s the way television started, after all. The big networks were broadcast for free and their revenues came in via advertising. Yeah, I know there are new video broadcast models all over the place and different formats for video viewing and so on. But there are also some models that still aren’t broken. And the idea of offering a free broadcast in exchange for some time in front of an ad is one that is still alive and well – and could probably transition nicely to the Web, if done right.
We can help with that.
- Molly Glover Gallatin
TV advertising versus online – some thoughts
At last week’s ARF conference, comScore’s Gian Fulgone and a panel of advertising and marketing executives had a lively panel discussion on the state of online advertising, including the now almost inevitable discussion on such panels of why more dollars haven’t proportionally followed the increased consumer time spent online, most notably from TV. After all, online advertising is more targetable, interactive, has the user at the point of sale in many instances, now delivers more GRPs in aggregate then television, and perhaps what online salespeople like to tout the most, provides more detailed metrics at a census level versus the arguably antiquated panel metrics employed by Nielsen for measuring TV.
The answer, it seems, is that for mass marketing advertisers, they know that TV drives offline sales, and for CPG’s who’ve been studying the impact of TV on sales for years, does so with a high level of predictability. If a marketer runs X number of GRPs in a market, they know they can reasonably expect Y lift in offline sales. Media Mix Model studies and use of consumer panels ala A.C. Nielsen or IRI have provided this assurance to marketers for their TV spends. While there is a small but growing body of evidence to suggest that online video advertising is as effective if not more effective in lifting brand awareness metrics than TV, there is an even smaller body of evidence that online efforts lift offline sales. Spending levels online haven’t reached a point where they are reliably measurable in MMM or other offline sales studies for many advertisers. Additionally, the level of predictability with respect to the lift in sales online delivers doesn’t yet match TV.
So for me, there are two key take aways from this current state of the media landscape: (1) Bashing TV as an advertising medium is not in anyone’s interest when making the case for online. Rather, it can be a potent compliment to TV. And (2) advertisers should consider spending in online in a way that will insure they are getting enough reach there to have those online efforts show up and be measurable in whatever offline sales research they are conducting. Anecdotally, I believe the advantages of online media will continue to improve it’s efficacy over time and increasingly give TV a real run for its money. Let’s not slow that progress by being negative on other media or too timid in the investments made in online to be able to prove its efficacy and make that efficacy predictable.
- Gian Lombardi
