New Services Seek to Expand Online Video Advertising
The Acudeo service is aimed at mid-level and up video publishers, according to Scherer. They can apply for the service by sending an email to publisher@tremormedia.com or going to the company’s website at www.tremormedia.com.
Facing Down Industry Challenges
Both services are aimed at addressing several challenges currently facing online video advertising. According to Davis, the main problem is ad inventory, or the amount of ad slots currently available on online video sites. He said advertisers are wary of user-generated content because it can be difficult to tell whether it violates copyright law or contains offensive content. They need to be given more control over what kinds of video their ads will be associated with, he said.
"The companies that want to do advertising, I’m not sure how comfortable they are, if they know they have enough control over where and when their ads are running," he said. "I think just control over placement and having a sense of control over branding is one issue."
Davis said the best way to solve the problem would be to move away from user-generated content and toward repurposing professionally generated content, such as network television programs, for the internet. However, he added that publishers could use watermarking technology and other similar safeguards to make user-generated video more palatable.
Ashkenazi agreed that the unpredictability of online content has caused a shortage of video ad inventory. However, he said the main reason inventory is low is because many ad networks have not made the switch to video yet. To try to solve the problem, Adap.tv programmed OneSource to link publishers to many different types of ad networks.
"In the over 50 ad networks that we’ll integrate, you’ll find display ad networks and text ad networks and product ad networks and definitely video ad networks as well," Ashkenazi said. "We bring them all to video, allowing them to tap into the potential of video and allowing publishers to bridge the gap and increase coverage."
Davis also said that publishers should be wary of alienating users with intrusive advertising. He said the best way to get online viewers interested about advertising is to provide content that makes them want to keep watching. He held up BMW’s online delivery of movies that feature the company’s cars as an example and said a company such as Nike could run a similar campaign.
"There’s no reason that, for instance, Nike, with all of its relationships with sports stars, couldn’t create original programming that people are content to watch even though they know it’s advertising Nike products," he said.
Scherer said Acudeo aims to solve the intrusiveness problem in a different way. He said many video applications have only limited ad scheduling capabilities, which can cause advertising to become repetitious.
"We spent a lot of time in Acudeo working through a capability that will enable a publisher to really target the right forms of advertising against content at a site level or at a channel level or even down to a content level," Scherer said. "So, ad scheduling, when mixed together with the ad server insertion and the management of multiple types of third-party dynamic client-side ad insertion, creates an opportunity to give publishers an amazing level of control of what advertising is going to be delivered into what user experience."
Davis, Ashkenazi, and Scherer all said they did not expect online video advertising to kill off traditional broadcast ads, though they did say the online market is making gains on television. Rather, they all said they expect digital advertising and broadcast advertising to coexist for some time, each adopting certain characteristics of the other.
"Television advertising affords a much higher level of emotional attachment because the viewing experience is that much more panoramic, but at the same time, it’s certainly proven that people are tuning out from television commercials and that there’s more and more online video viewership," Scherer said. "So advertisers just need to be aware that for segments of their audience and for certain types of campaign goals, it makes wonderful sense to go and reach your audiences online, where you can do all kinds of other things."
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