Archive for October, 2009
Some Video Impressions Are More Equal Than Others
At its best, advertising in online video lets marketers present their most engaging creative to attentive consumers. That’s why pre-roll and other in-stream video advertising sells for substantially higher CPMs than banner ads (which a user may not even notice, let alone click on). In the past few weeks, though, there has been quite a bit of discussion about the risks that advertisers face when buying online video inventory, particularly about the danger of ads that run in videos located “below the fold” on webpages or ads associated with content that starts playback without requiring any user initiation. These days consumers can find video running on TV network websites, embedded on blogs and social network profiles, and even on mobile phones. This explosion of content syndication has been wonderful for consumers, letting them watch their favorite movies and shows wherever and whenever they want to. Unfortunately limitless choice for consumers has led to confusion and uncertainty for marketers. Now that even the major broadcast networks are syndicating their prime time shows across multiple websites and allowing users to embed them anywhere they choose, everyone working in online video needs to have a firm grasp of the different contexts that video can appear in, and the relative value of any resulting advertising impressions. To that end, we’ve put together a whitepaper that provides concrete definitions for many of the terms that people use to describe video syndication and lays out some of the steps we’re taking to ensure that advertisers only pay for video impressions when a real person actually watches a video on purpose. We’d love your feedback.
YuMe – Live from MSNBC at 30 Rock
Check out our roundtable, currently live from MSNBC at 30 Rock! Our roundtable is over, but you can check out the two-part rebroadcast below. Thanks to everyone who participated!
YuMe, Beet.TV & MSNBC Roundtable – Tune in 10/20
Live from 30 Rock – It’s the YuMe Roundtable!
Tune in and watch our roundtable live at yume.com or beet.tv on Tuesday, October 20th from 3-6 p.m. ET. Hosted by Charles Tillinghast, President & Publisher of msnbc.com and featuring panelists from Adobe, Time Inc., CBSNews, GroupM, the Wall Street Journal, Ogilvy, Transpera and more.
Moderating the sessions will be Rafat Ali, editor and publisher of paidContent, Kevin Delaney, Sr. Deputy Managing Editor of the WSJ.com, and Advertising Age’s Michael Learmonth.
A big thanks to Andy Plesser of Beet.tv and the gang at MSNBC.com for helping me pull together such a great event. Check out the agenda and don’t forget to tune-in!
- Molly Glover Gallatin
Click-Through Rates: A Viable Metric for Video?
comScore and Starcom just released a survey (yes, another study, see eMarketer), stating that click through rates may not be the best. Both comScore and Starcom brass are on the record saying clicks are worthless. Hmmm.
We just checked, we’re running dozens of campaigns and have run hundreds over the year. We’ve served several billion impressions just this year. There as been one (CPG, if you must know) campaign that has run without the agency or the client asking for CTR. Interestingly enough, that still seems to be the most asked after metric. One that has very little correlation, if any, to a branding campaign.
- Jayant Kadambi
Stating the Obvious – Less Is More
I don’t know the marketer that began using “less is more,” but it seems to be attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a German born architect from the mid-19th century. Yet another survey has hit the newsstands or blogs or whatever we are calling it today stating that the less adverts people put on video the better. Can I be paid to run that survey? I need the free money.
But the article does go on to postulate that all people aren’t the same and some people would prefer to pay for content rather than watch an advert and publishers/content owners should think about a hybrid model. Then they make a mistake and compare it to cable TV. Cable TV isn’t much of a hybrid. you pay an enormous sum monthly and see ads. But still, the statment does have merit. The business of video online is unsustainable without renumeration to the content owners, distributors, etc., so one way or the other, money will have to flow back to the people making content.
Behavioral Targeting Misses Mark – ???
Well, eMarketer (OK, maybe it was just the Annenberg Public Policy Center and UC Berkeley School of Law) threw behavioral targeting under the bus today to make a tangential, if not completely unrelated point. In the article, they write that some survey or the other found that people don’t want tailored, personlised adverts. Hmm, I’m sure I could get a survey completed that says 18-49 unmarried males don’t want to see cosmetic or diaper adverts either.
But rather than worry about the statistics, I wonder what that has to do with behavioral targeting. If, by behavioral, they mean “try to figure out the persons interests and then target an advert based on those interests,” I think we need to redefine behavioral.
Most of the behavioral targeted campaigns we run in the video space are intent based, i.e., we see someone shopping for cars and throw up a car advertisement. Or, we know that people have looked for Hawaii travel holidays and then throw up a travel ad. Dunno how that can be bad. I think I’ll pay for a survey to find out.
- Jayant Kadambi
