Today we released our Video Ad Metrics Report for February 2010. This month’s report contains data on the ads we served from January 1st to February 21st of this year. Video ad performance is looking great in 2010.

We’ve been a little busy recently, so we did not include any new analysis in this month’s report. If there are any numbers that you’d like to see in our upcoming Q1 wrap up report, let us know at advertise@yume.com.

The following video is an exerpt from an interview Daisy Whitney of Beet.TV did with Jayant Kadambi at our roundtable last week, addressing the increasing shift of TV content to alternative distribution channels and the challenges advertisers are facing.

Below is a recap of the “top 3″ challenges advertisers are facing:

1. Scale - TV advertisers are use to buying audiences at scale, but currently it’s hard for an advertiser to spend a lot online because there is not just one place advertisers can go. YuMe is building enough of an audience to help advertisers shift more TV dollars to online video.
2. Data - Everyone says they want data, but there is so much data that can be provided that it can be overwhelming. We can tell the advertiser anything they want to know, but its better if we know what their goals are, so we can provide the data that is important to them - engagement, clicks, video completion rate, etc.. Measurement of a campaign and its effectiveness can be very different per advertiser.
3. Format - Daisy asked “Is there a consensus on the best format?” As Jayant points out, video has a time component, which lends itself to multiple format types. What YuMe likes to do is let the advertiser run the campaign the way they want, encouraging creativity and getting them to try different executions. YuMe can then adjust in real-time based on performance.

A lot great content from last weeks event, you can watch the entire re-broadcast here.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

We’re sponsoring a roundtable discussion today about how publishers can make the most money from their video content. You can watch the live stream in the Ooyala player embedded in this post, or watch on Beet.TV’s special player page.

Kara Swisher from AllThingsD and Andy Plesser from Beet.TV will be moderating, and we have a fantastic group of speakers lined up:

• Brian Buchwald, EVP, NBC Integrated Local Media
• Gregg Colvin, VP of Business Development, Fox Interactive
• John Evershed, Co-founder and CEO, Mondo Media
• Karin Gilford, SVP, Online Media, Comcast Interactive Media
• Jeff Jordan, Product Manager, Video Analytics, Omniture
• Jayant Kadambi, Co-founder and President, YuMe
• Bismarck Lepe, President of Product Strategy, Ooyala
• Jim Louderback, CEO, Revision3
• Keith Richman, CEO, Break Media
• Grant Ries, Chief Revenue Officer, BlueKai
• Marc Ruxin, EVP, Chief Innovation Officer, Universal McCann
• Anthony Soohoo, SVP, Entertainment & Lifestyle, CBS Interactive
• Jennifer Taylor, Director, Flash Content Creation + Distribution, Adobe

We are excited to announce that Michael Hudes—the former COO and President of Organic and President of Innovation Strategy and Growth at IPG’s Media Brands—has joined YuMe as our new Executive Vice President. At YuMe Michael will focus on corporate development, increasing the adoption of our video ad platform ACE.

Michael is no stranger to the video advertising space—he most recently served as CEO at Keystream, a technology company that focused on dynamic overlays.

Welcome Michael!

Ever wonder what some of the biggest names in media, technology and marketing are thinking about the online video market? If so, next Wednesday, February 24th is your lucky day. We’re partnering with Ooyala, CBS Interactive and Beet.TV to produce a roundtable where senior executives from some of the biggest companies in our space will answer all of your questions.

Kara Swisher from AllThingsD and Andy Plesser from Beet.TV will moderate a wide-ranging discussion featuring executives from companies including Adobe, Comcast, NBC Integrated Local Media, and Fox Interactive Media (you can see the full speaker list here). The roundtable will run from 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM Pacific on Wednesday, February 24th. You can can watch the free Ooyala-powered livestream here.

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.