Tune in this Tuesday, June 22nd from 4 to 6 p.m. EST for our video roundtable with Beet.TV and MSNBC. Hosted by Scot McLernon, YuMe’s CRO, and Mark Marvel, MSNBC.com’s Sr. Director of Video. The topic? Exploring online video monetization and syndication. Moderating the panel is Andy Plesser of Beet.TV and Peter Kafka of All Things Digital’s “MediaMemo.” Joining us on the panel includes the following industry veterans:

Andy Chapman, Leader, The Exchange, MindShare

Allen DeBevoise, Chairman and CEO, Machinima.com

Ran Harnevo, CEO, 5Min

Ping Li, Partner, Accel Partners

Bob Mason, Co-Founder and CTO, Brightcove

John McCarus, VP & Group Director, Digitas/The Third Act

Adam Shlacter, Managing Partner, Digital Investment, MEC Global

Tania Yuki, Director, Product Management, comScore

You can check out the live stream here, on our home page or on Livestream at www.livestream.com/beet_tv.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

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

We are thrilled to announce that Fox News, Glam , IDG Entertainment and Funny or Die have selected YuMe’s ACE video ad platform to manage the monetization of their video inventory. Check out our press release we sent out today announcing this news and highlighting the impressive growth we have achieved with not only the adoption of our video ad platform, but with the growth of our video ad network and advertising sales.

Here’s the quote from Funny or Die, which you will see is in true Funny or Die fashion. “YuMe’s ACE video ad platform is a true end-to-end solution,” said Mitch Galbraith, COO of Funny or Die. “ACE has streamlined our ad operations, improved inventory management, increased revenue, eliminated the common cold from our office, cured my fear of heights, and taught several of our employees to speak Portuguese.”

We also announced today that with the release of comScore’s April Video Metrix Ad Network report, YuMe is now ranked the largest video ad network with over 63 million unique viewers and 560 million video streams per month.

In addition to the great growth we have experienced with publisher adoption of our video ad platform, we have also seen tremendous momentum with video advertising sales. We now have over 100 advertisers running on any given day across our premium video ad network and the number of monthly ad impressions we are serving has increased by over 325% since January!

We are very excited about the advancements we have made in 2009 and congratulations to the YuMe team for all their hard work.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

Not that any of you wanted to know, but wither may be derived from weder or weather, and means to dry up or lose freshness. There was a flap a while back when our dear friends at Comscore reported that paid clicks were declining at Google. Everyone went up in arms, and there was lots of analysis and Comscore felt compelled to publically defend itself. See – Comscore presentation on MediaPost. So I borrowed the title of this post from Giab Fulgoni’s presentation.

Click rates have been declining across the board, and if there is a novelty factor in the fact that video has a higher click rate than display, over time that’ll wear off and we’ll see a decline in video click rates as well. It’ll be interesting to see if, as postulated by the pundits, the overall higher engagement and interest in video and correlated ads will keep video click rates higher than display click rates in the long run.

At any rate, that’s not the reason for this post. It’s because there seems to be a sense amongst all the cognoscenti, insiders, publishers, ad network people, and even a few clients/advertisers that clicks may not be the perfect metric to judge everything. “Branding effects can’t be counted by a click.” “The fact that someone saw a display or video ad 10 times and didn’t click it doesn’t mean it didn’t engage him.” Go figure.

Most of us in the ad network and publisher business are sometimes frustrated by the singular focus by many an advertiser on CTR as the sole, defining metric. The point made by this article Why the Click Is the Wrong Metric for Online Ads and others is valid, which is that a CTR measurement isn’t the end-all and be-all for all campaigns.

But the problem with stating the obvious is not so much stating it, but what does one do about it. If we don’t understand the campaign’s goals enough to figure out what the correct set of metrics are for a campaign, we’ll all end up using the metrics that we’re used to, which are essentially CPM coupled with a CTR or CPA, which truth be told, ends up backing into an effective CPM anyway.

Rather than bash CTRs, we should stop generalising, and bemoaning the death of a particular metric and realize that this business is complicated and each advertising campaign may have a set of metrics, that taken together, in total will provide a measure of the campaign’s performance. I hesitate to say this, but some clients and advertisers should also be open to taking a look at engagement, view-through, mouse-over or other metrics as well, rather than the singular focus on CTR.

Jayant Kadambi

I am happy to report that comScore released its Top 50 U.S. Web Properties for July 2008 and YuMe remains within Media Metrix’s AdFocus ranking at #8 with 136 million unique visitors.  Over the past couple weeks we have addressed comScore’s concerns and are happy with this resolution and with their decision to enhance how they report ad networks by providing two sets of numbers – “potential reach” and “actual reach.”  Video ad networks are very different than traditional banner networks, so we are continuing to work with comScore to determine the best way to account for video ad network traffic and the various unique ad formats supported – interactive overlays, watermarks, etc...  At the end of the day we just want to make things as transparent as possible for media buyers and planners and to help facilitate an apples-to-apples comparison between YuMe and other video ad networks.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

There has been a lot of confusion over the past week regarding our ranking in comScore, so hopefully the following will provide some clarity. comScore released their June Media Metrix data, which includes the AdFocus rankings, on July 16^th. This release incorporated all of our recently signed publishers, including Microsoft, showing us at #8 with 134 million unique visitors. We drafted a press release, that comScore approved after a week of back-and-forth edits, highlighting our new ranking, which we sent out after comScore’s release went out with these same data points on July 21^st. Subsequent to comScore issuing their release, they decided to revise YuMe’s ranking to #32 with 59 million unique visitors. Still a great number and ranking, but unfortunately they did not notify us prior to doing so and we were not provided the opportunity to both understand and address their concerns.

While I agree that a unique visitor number is not the most ideal metric for a video ad network, this is still the metric that 95% of the ad agencies wish to have. And, although our primary focus is serving ads within a video player, we also serve video into banners as well. And remember – like for every property in the AdFocus report – this is a measure of YuMe’s potential reach given all the sites that have signed-up and joined our network, not our actual reach on a given month. There are two metrics that currently indicate the strength of an ad network: total potential reach (how many unique users you reach) and ads served. AdFocus concentrates on the first one.

We understand that a unique viewer would be a more ideal metric, but no reporting firm that I am aware of currently has a means to accurately and fully measure a video ad network. We have been working with comScore over the past year to determine how best to reflect YuMe within VideoMetrix, but unfortunately we are not quite there yet. For example, we support multiple types of ad formats, like interactive overlays, which VideoMetrix currently doesn’t track.

So, where does this leave us? After speaking with comScore and understanding their concerns, we have provided them with additional documentation that will hopefully alleviate these concerns. We are working closely with comScore to resolve how we are reported in MediaMetrix and I am hopeful that we will come to a resolution that works for the both of us. I just want to make sure that comScore applies the same standards and measurement rules to YuMe as they do to all entities reported in MediaMetrix.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

comScore released its MediaMetrix rankings of the top online properties for the month of June and I am excited to announce that we have broken into the Top 10 of their Top 50 Ad Focus Ranking. Thanks to our stellar business development team and an influx in publishers joining YuMe’s ad network, including blip.tv, Demand Media and Microsoft, we now reach over 134 million unique visitors per month, which is 71% of the US online population. With over 500 million video streams per month, YuMe is definitively the largest video ad network.

Source: comScore MediaMetrix, June 2008

There have been a lot of stories in the press alluding to the fact that there is not enough “quality” video content out there for advertisers – not any more! Not only have we amassed significant reach, but we are focused on premium and brand safe content, so advertisers can now achieve both audience scale and peace of mind in knowing that their brand won’t be associated with inappropriate content.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

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

So I’ve been at YuMe for about 4 months now and being the start-up that we are, our Marketing group consists of two people focused on research – me and my manager, Molly.  We’ve been working diligently with comScore since November to get our video network tracked in comScore.  For those of you that aren’t familiar with comScore, it’s an Internet audience measurement service – reporting on online media usage, visitor demographics and online buying power.

On Tuesday comScore released their Top 50 U.S. Web Rankings for December 2007. And, guess what?!?!  Yes, I’m going to tout and represent (come on now, I’m a proud YuMe cheerleader)!  The YuMe Video Network entered at number 37 in their Top 50 Ad Focus Ranking with 47 million unique visitors per month. Citing straight from the release:

“Advertising.com continued to lead the Ad Focus ranking of ad networks and sites accepting advertising, reaching 86 percent of the more than 183 million Americans online in December. Specific Media gained four spots to capture the fourth position reaching 77 percent of the online population. Collective Media gained seven spots to position 14, while Amazon.com climbed three spots to 34. YuMe Video Network, About, and Disney Online all entered the ranking this month capturing positions 37, 44, and 48, respectively.”

YuMe making its mark at position 37 is pretty impressive, if I may say so myself.  The YuMe gang is often called “irreverent,” but when we saw the news, we were pretty stoked.

Lynn Cayabyab

When advertisers launch campaigns, they tend to target particular demographics. To identify that demographic, they usually refer to the reach numbers of a particular Web site or ad network but also turn to research firms that track and measure such data, such as Comscore. In other words, Web sites – or specific pages within a Web site – are targeted for the campaign. And this passes as an acceptable proxy method to reach a demographic audience.

Well, I think for video, TV’s got it right. In addition to site demographics, TV advertisers use the content or content category as a proxy for the demographic audience. Based on years and years of experience, we pretty much know who watches the Super Bowl (everyone), Dora the Explorer (kids), and American Idol (18-34). Advertisers should insist on being able to target channels, or specific categories of content, on the Web much as they do today on TV.

When an advertiser says he is showing up on Discovery Channel or the Oxygen network or HBO, we have an instinctive understanding of both the content and demographics. We need to add this way of thinking to the online video advertising landscape. In addition to the Web sites or domains on which the ad will run, advertisers also should be asking the ad networks or Web sites to name specific content or content channels on which the pre-roll is running and use this as a proxy for the demographics.

It’s a bit easier with TV and it needs to get that way online. It’s easy to show the client that their ad is running on the third slot at 4 p.m. on Sunday on the Lifetime network. In the online world, it’s a bit more difficult and it shouldn’t be. It just doesn’t seem right to tell an advertiser, “Please click on www.domain.com until you see the ad… it’ll show up, just keep clicking.”

Jayant Kadambi