CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – With Facebook’s initial public offering last week, the social networking giant can look ahead to a potentially huge new source of revenue from “social advertising,” according to new research by MIT Sloan School of Management Associate Professor of Marketing Catherine Tucker. Tucker says that Facebook itself is only beginning to recognize the “untapped potential” of this kind of advertising fueled by its own technology.

Tucker’s research counters the prevailing view of recent years that social network websites are unfruitful venues for paid advertising. Instead, she finds that social advertising has been under-valued and underrated as a revenue stream and as an effective way to deliver messages, though only if those messages are delivered the right way.

“Facebook has only recently figured out what is unique about all the data they collect,” says Tucker. “Facebook knows who peoples’ friends are, which can be hugely valuable to marketers. Feeding that social network into the Facebook algorithm creates huge and under-exploited profit potential.”

In social advertising, marketers use online social relationships to target and improve their ads. For her new research paper, Tucker examined data from an experiment in which a nonprofit charity used both traditional and social advertising on Facebook. Tucker found that the social ads, which were targeted to friends of `fans’ of the nonprofit on Facebook, attracted far more clicks than those that were not. “When you target ads based on who is friends with whom, you can double the number of click,” she says. “This is because advertisers can uncover consumers who could also get excited about their product.”

“Social advertising is not necessarily replacing display advertising,” adds Tucker. “Rather, it is a different and more effective form of targeted advertising that still remains unrefined, even on Facebook.” So far, Facebook’s algorithm appears to treat all Facebook friends equally, Tucker explains. “But among your friends, certain people have more influence; they are the `gatekeepers’ whom you tend to follow more closely. When Facebook refines its algorithm to incorporate such gatekeepers as part of social advertising, we will see ever greater improvements in advertising response.”

But Facebook must be careful about how it uses such powerful information, Tucker cautions. “There is a level of intrusiveness that no advertiser should cross. Advertisers must avoid being overt in their attempts to exploit social networks in their advertising. If Facebook too explicitly takes advantage of your friend, it could cross that line.” For example, in her study she finds that an ad that states explicitly, “Be like your friend” deters users, who could resent that Facebook or any other company is openly commercializing friendship. But if the consumer is simply informed that “Susan likes this,” it is not seen as a personal intrusion. “Speculatively, the results suggest that intrusive or highly personal advertising is more acceptable if done algorithmically by a faceless entity such as a computer than when it is the result of evident human agency,” Tucker writes.

These are the kinds of issues with which Facebook itself is grappling as it gets more deeply into social advertising. “Facebook is not giving much guidance to advertisers about how to use this new technology, partly because it is so new. But the results of my research suggest that social networks will be able to exploit their unique data on who is friends with whom to enlarge their share of advertising dollars.”

Typically the first to adopt new advertising technologies, online publishers demand innovative solutions along with white-glove service supported by teams that understand their business. The Global Publisher Unit helps publishers expand beyond the basic ad unit experience and scale their rich media product offering with advanced, innovative technologies such as dynamic creative optimization, mobile and in-stream video.

The MediaMind Global Publisher Unit has collaborated with the IAB to develop four of the six IAB Rising Star Formats recently launched for North America. In response to MediaMind’s announcement of this new Unit, Peter Minnium, Head of Digital Brand Initiatives at the IAB stated, “The IAB views the MediaMind Global Publisher Unit as a key partner in setting industry standards and developing innovative formats that will enable consumers to connect with brands more effectively.”

Many of the leading global publishers already benefit from partnering with this unit. “As a unified team, we are even better positioned to support key global publishers such as MSN, Yahoo!, the budding social media marketplace, as well as news and entertainment broadcast channels such as NBC, CBS, etc.,” said James Dillon, Senior Vice President of the MediaMind Global Publisher Unit.

For more information on MediaMind, visit http://www.mediamind.com .

About MediaMind
MediaMind, a division of DG (NASDAQ:DGIT), is a leading global provider of digital advertising campaign management solutions to advertising agencies and advertisers. MediaMind provides media and creative agencies, advertisers and publishers with an integrated platform to manage campaigns across digital media channels and a variety of formats, including rich media, in-stream video, display and search. During 2010, MediaMind delivered campaigns for approximately 9,000 brand advertisers, servicing approximately 3,800 media and creative agencies across approximately 8,200 global web publishers in 64 countries.

SAN FRANCISCO – LiveRail for Advertisers Gives Agencies One Platform to Target, Deliver and Track Video Advertising

LiveRail, provider of the world’s largest real-time online video ad platform, today announced the launch of LiveRail For Advertisers, a new ad serving product that makes video campaigns easier to execute, more effective, and more measurable.

LiveRail For Advertisers (LFA) is a brand new platform designed from the ground up for online video and eliminates many of the complexities associated with traditional, legacy technology. LFA streamlines workflows with its video-native tools and interface, dramatically reducing the workload and time associated in trafficking, launching and managing large, multi-publisher video campaigns. Agencies can now leverage LiveRail technology for consistent campaign delivery at scale across their entire media plan; including major broadcasters, portals, ad networks and exchanges.

Advertisers and agencies can also take advantage of LiveRail’s native data integrations (with partners like Affine) to target their video ads to the appropriate audience, content or domain within the publishers they buy from. LFA’s “zero wasted impressions” technology enables agencies to control and pace their campaign’s delivery, reducing wasted spend and ensuring that publishers only deliver within the plan. For the first time, agencies can now dynamically analyze media environments for every impression request, ensuring brand safety and appropriateness of the content/media, and restricting delivery in real-time where needed.

LiveRail for Advertiser’s MRC-accredited reporting and analytics give video ad buyers insight into how their ads are performing through a multitude of filters, dimensions, and video-specific performance metrics. LFA empowers marketers with the data to truly understand the impact and ROI of their video ads, across all the placements, on all publishers, networks and platforms they buy from, helping demonstrate the value of media spend and inform future media purchasing decisions.

“Because we sit at the hub of the online video ad ecosystem, we understand the needs of all parties involved,” said Mark Trefgarne, LiveRail CEO. “Our full- and self-service options let advertisers and agencies select the level of support they need so they can leverage our video expertise. By combining the world’s best video ad technology with the consultative support of industry experts, we believe that LFA will become an indispensible tool for all agencies serious about video.”

LiveRail For Advertisers is a third-party ad server for video. Advertisers and agencies utilizing LFA must maintain their own direct media relationships, as LFA cannot be natively used to access or purchase inventory. For more information about LiveRail For Advertisers, visit http://www.liverail.com/LFAPR.php

About LiveRail

LiveRail is the core technology at the heart of the online video advertising ecosystem. LiveRail solutions enable and enhance the monetization of internet-distributed video and handle over 2 billion video ad impressions per month for many of the world’s largest media and advertising clients. Founded in 2007, LiveRail’s senior team is led by its founders, Mark Trefgarne (CEO) and Andrei Dunca (CTO). LiveRail Inc is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, NY and Cluj-Napoca, Romania. LiveRail is backed by Pond Ventures.

“Earned media” is inconsistent and famously difficult to value. Jun Group (www.jungroup.com), the premier social video platform, has recently announced a study that provides simple metrics for valuing earned media – and clear evidence that social video programs consistently deliver earned media results. We have spoken to Mitchell Reichgut, Founder and CEO of Jun Group, who kindly shared some of his experience and thoughts on earned media measurement.

Otilia Otlacan: Earned media is notoriously difficult to quantify and value, even when digital. Why is that?

Mitchell Reichgut: Earned media is an outgrowth of “viral video,” which has always been a hit-driven phenomenon, not a consistent distribution strategy. Brands would be delighted when their video “went viral,” but little effort went into exploring the reasons why a video took off or the value of the results. Social video picks up where the viral dream left off. Essentially, it’s brand advertising that is targeted and shareable. Social video is paid media that drives consistent and significant earned media activity, all of which is measured and reported in real time.

Otilia Otlacan: Jun Group has recently announced a set of metrics to assist marketers in valuing earned media. Can you share with us what made you look so closely into this topic?

Mitchell Reichgut: As our targeting and sharing technology advanced, the earned media portion of our campaigns rose dramatically. Eventually it go to a level where we were consistently delivering things like recipe and coupon downloads, Facebook visits, clicks to brands’ Web sites, tweets, sharing, etc. We never charge for this activity, but our clients were increasingly asking us about its value. That was the genesis of the study.

Otilia Otlacan: Would you say that video content is more or less likely to generate earned media, by comparison to other content formats? Why?

Mitchell Reichgut: Video is far and away the most effective way to generate earned media – it’s visceral, emotional, and it’s easy to share. The biggest and most popular social advertising programs have all been video-centric.

Otilia Otlacan: In your experience, what makes a piece of video content a likely candidate to go viral?

Mitchell Reichgut: The most important thing to understand about “viral video” is that it is not an organic phenomenon. Videos that reach over 1 million users require a mass media component (i.e., AOL, Boing Boing, MSN, etc.). Even homemade videos that rise to prominence don’t do so on a peer-to-peer basis. They come to the broader public’s attention through a feature on one or more mass media outlets. The brand-sponsored videos that reach millions of people are the products of sophisticated and well-funded online media strategies. They may involve PR companies, media partnerships, or distribution firms like Jun Group. Outstanding creative is a critical component, but 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every 60 seconds, and being creative is by no means a guarantee of success.

Otilia Otlacan: Is there anything else you would like to share with us?

Mitchell Reichgut: Advertisers covet earned media for good reason – it’s perhaps the most powerful form of marketing available. We have deconstructed the myths around “viral video” and provided advertisers with reliable and consistent tools for driving these results. To us, it’s one of the most promising trends in online media.

About Mitchell Reichgut

Mitchell Reichgut is founder and CEO of Jun Group (www.jungroup.com), the premier social video platform. The company’s distribution technology delivers millions of monthly opt-in video views across social networks, mobile devices, premium content sites and YouTube. Jun Group distributes videos from 15 seconds to 3 minutes-long with exceptionally high completion rates and significant post-view activity, such as web site visits, coupon downloads, and store locator usage. The company’s analytics dashboard, Voyeur, provides real time data about views, shares, likes, tweets, ratings, comments, and geographic dispersal down to the state and town. Founded in 2005, Jun Group’s clients include Fortune 500 brands, major entertainment companies, and media and creative agencies

Prior to founding Jun Group, Mitchell headed up the New York interactive division of Bates Worldwide Advertising. As General Manager/Creative Director, he helped grow Bates Interactive into a 70-person integrated unit, with clients such as Perrier, Moet & Chandon, and Warner-Lambert.

Earlier, as Creative Director of the New York office of Think New Ideas, Mitchell supervised Web development for clients such as Budweiser, Chrysler, Sony, and Continental Airlines.

A graduate of Boston University’s College of Communications, Mitchell began his career as an Art Director at Grey Advertising where he created print and television advertisements for clients such as Procter & Gamble, Parker Brothers, and Stride Rite.

Mitchell wrote and directed The Scene, a 20-episode online drama that was viewed over 8 million times in 90 countries. He has published two national comic book series, and he recently wrote and produced an online drama entitled Stream, starring Whoopi Goldberg.

Jun Group defines earned media as a series of actions that users initiate after watching a social video. These post-view actions include Facebook page visits, brand page visits, store locator usage, coupon and recipe downloads, Tweets, e-mail shares, replays, and clicks to watch more videos – all of which are measured by Jun Group’s Voyeur analytics dashboard.

Jun Group’s study placed a monetary value on each action based on conservative industry data. A visit to a brand’s Facebook page, for instance, is valued at $1.00 in the study, which is on the low end of pricing for cost-per-click advertising.

Once the values were assigned, Jun Group analyzed 7.9 million social video views for brands across a number of vertical categories, such as CPG, health and beauty, sports, technology and luxury goods. Videos ranged from 15 seconds to 3 minutes-long and users opted-in to see them in exchange for virtual goods or currency.

Importantly, all of the earned media activity measured by the study was generated after users received their virtual rewards. “When you respect people, don’t interrupt them, and put them in control, they respond in a positive way,” Reichgut said. “It’s that simple.”

According to the study, Jun Group’s average social video campaign delivered 30.1 percent of additional media value above-and-beyond the media spend. In other words, clients that spent $100,000 with Jun Group in 2011 received over $130,000 of value on average.

Facebook page visits were by far the most popular earned media action, representing 62 percent of all post-view activity in the Jun Group study. Brand-specific actions, such as store locator usage, brand page visits, etc., were the next-most popular actions, accounting for 15 percent of the post-view activity. Surprisingly, Tweets were the least popular action, representing approximately one percent of the post-view activity.

About Jun Group
Jun Group is the premier social video platform. The company’s distribution technology delivers millions of monthly opt-in video views across social networks, mobile devices, premium content sites, and YouTube. Jun Group distributes videos from 15 seconds to 3 minutes-long with exceptionally high completion rates and significant post-view activity,
such as web site visits, coupon downloads, and store locator usage. The company’s analytics dashboard, Voyeur, provides real time data about views, shares, likes, tweets, ratings, comments, and geographic dispersal down to the state and town. Founded in 2005, Jun Group’s clients include Fortune 500 brands, major entertainment companies, and media and creative agencies. For more information, visit www.jungroup.com.

A week ago I attended an event in New York City at which Comscore unveiled its new Validated GRP(TM) tool that rates the effectiveness of digital ads. Validated GRP takes the rating standards advertisers apply to TV advertising (Gross Rating Points) and establishes a similar metric that will apply to digital advertising. For advertisers, this is a metric to judge online campaign effectiveness–to make an apples to apples comparison between the effectiveness of TV and the effectiveness of online display and video ads.

In the development of its Validated GRP tool, Comscore conducted a  major study on the quality of campaign delivery  that allowed it to investigate discrepancies between expectations and reality when it comes to ad delivery. The full study, the results of which will be released in March, included twelve major brands with household names like Ford, Sprint, Kimberly Clark, and Kellogg’s.

To conduct the study, Comscore used the AdXPose technology it acquired earlier last year. The AdXPose team tipped us off in advance because we were already partnered with them. We got a sneak preview of the study’s highlights, which we are now free to share here.

In December 2011, Comscore measured 2,975 placements on 380,898 site domains — totaling over 1.7 million impressions, all delivered in iframes.

The conclusion? Something we, as an ad server and a advertising technology partner for publishers, have already observed: many ads are served, but not seen. That’s because web pages are no longer mostly short pages with static user experiences; they’re long pages with dynamic usage. Many use the increasingly popular “infinite scroll”. By the time an ad at the top of the page is served, the reader may have already scrolled by. Yet many ads further down may be very visible to the user. In Comscore’s own words:

“It’s not just an ‘above the fold versus below the fold’ issue. Sometimes people scroll down quickly to get to the content they want, and miss home page ads. In those cases, the action might be below the fold. Compelling ads can work in both places – but only if they’re visible.” Comscore found that 24% of ads above the fold were not visible.

While this is not great news for the advertisers who paid for those campaigns, It is great to see Comscore measure this for advertisers. And it’s why we developed the InView slider formats. Web pages, like the Huffington Post and Daily Mail are getting longer. And they are increasingly optimized for tablets where users are quick to scroll and therefore quick to skip past the top of the page to get to the content they want to read.

Comscore’s findings become very important, especially as online advertising moves from simple banner display ads to on-page video. And I believe it will move to great video ads for cars, cosmetics and movies etc right on the page. Right now, we’re selling the InView Slider ad unit with great confidence that it works for advertisers wherever you place it. It only appears if the reader is going to see it. The InView slider gives publishers a way to boost revenue, and gives advertisers a great way to guarantee to catch scrolling readers.

We’re also launching an in page video ad that will appear when the viewer is guaranteed to see it.

The InView slider has been quickly adopted by publishers since the summer because all the revenue for the publisher is additional and yet there’s no additional work involved.

We look forward to Comscore publicly presenting the full results of its study in March, and of course we are proud to be their partner in making advertising on the web as good as the best advertising on national TV.

About ZEDO

ZEDO, Inc. is a digital ad solutions company that offers products and services for a publisher’s premium, self service, and remnant inventory. Products include ad network optimization, innovative rich media formats for publishers’ direct sales teams, full featured ad serving, behavioral targeting data built into the ad server, an exchange-like platform for publishers to sell behavioral and DMA targeted inventory at high CPMs (see: www.zedoadnetwork.com), a self service platform to allow advertisers to buy directly from a publisher, outsourced ad ops and more. These products are integrated into one technology platform for publishers to choose from, or use seamlessly together. ZEDO has been in the internet advertising industry for over 10 years, and is the most successful independent ad server in the US. The company provides innovative solutions that boost revenues for Internet publishers. ZEDO is headquartered in San Francisco and has four development centers in Russia and India.

Reach out to ZEDO at http://www.zedo.com, or follow the company on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ZEDOadsolutions) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/zedoinc).

NEW YORK – Tremor Video, the largest independent online video advertising technology company, and TubeMogul, the fastest-growing media buying platform for video advertising, announced that Tremor Video has purchased InPlay, TubeMogul’s industry-leading video analytics for publishers. Tremor Video will integrate InPlay directly into VideoHub, its enterprise video platform, enabling a complete end-to-end video analytics solution for publishers.

InPlay helps publishers understand real-time engagement, viewership and performance data, and is relied on daily by hundreds of top media companies, video platforms and content creators. The transfer of ownership gives Tremor Video an industry-best set of publisher video analytics, allowing the company to give publishers and their partners the ability to measure, track, report and deliver on the signals driving the performance of video content.

TubeMogul, which started as a video measurement company for publishers, shifted its focus in the past year after launching the industry’s first demand side platform for video advertising. Although TubeMogul is divesting its publisher analytics, the real-time reporting tools developed for TubeMogul’s video advertising platform will be unaffected, giving clients uninterrupted access to audience, engagement and brand impact data by site and by ad.

The deal continues to enhance Tremor Video’s VideoHub suite of products, making insights gathered from more than 1 billion video streams available to help publishers understand how their videos are discovered, what drives engagement and much more. InPlay will be available to all publishers as part of VideoHub for Publishers, launching in Q1 2012.

“Publishers are demanding an analytics suite that provides a clear picture of how viewers are interacting with content in order to determine what creates the most value for advertisers,” said Bill Day, CEO of Tremor Video. “InPlay gives us industry-leading technology and a sound product that meets this market demand. By integrating with our existing VideoHub technology, Tremor Video can now offer our partners a view across the entire video landscape.”

“TubeMogul InPlay was built to help publishers better understand their viewers to drive deeper engagement, and it has largely delivered on that promise,” said Brett Wilson, Co-founder and CEO of TubeMogul. “As we shift our focus from publishers to brand advertisers, this deal helps us align our capabilities with the needs of marketers, while ensuring they get the transparency and reporting they have come to expect.”

The InPlay acquisition is the latest in a series of deals for Tremor Video. The company’s other recent purchases include ScanScout in November, 2010 and mobile ad platform Transpera in February of this year. Tremor Video plans to continue to be acquisitive, fueled by $37 million in funding raised earlier this year.

TubeMogul is also seeing tremendous growth, with recent partnerships in the connected TV, mobile and social space as well as new contracts with major agency trading desks worldwide. The company was recently named the seventh-fastest growing independent company in the San Francisco Bay Area, spanning Silicon Valley and beyond.

About Tremor Video

Tremor Video (www.tremorvideo.com) provides in-stream video advertising solutions to Fortune 1000 brand advertisers and top tier publishers. Widely regarded as the leader in online video advertising technology, the company leverages its award-winning decisioning engine, innovative video ad formats and publisher technology to deliver the campaign results and scale advertisers should expect from digital video. Tremor Video is the only video ad platform that can provide 100% brand safety by scanning and categorizing every single video stream before an ad is ever served. In addition, Tremor Video’s award-winning SE2 technology gets smarter at finding and engaging viewers with every ad served, enabling the company to welcome and encourage pay-per-engagement pricing. Founded in 2005, Tremor Video is backed by top-tier investors, including Canaan Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth, General Catalyst, Keating Capital, Meritech Capital Partners, Time Warner Investments, and W Capital Partners.

VideoHub, a division of Tremor Video, is a first of its kind analytics console that helps marketers and agencies monitor the complex video ecosystem to dynamically match ads with content and viewers, deliver upon marketing goals, and maximize brand impact. Unlike traditional video management platforms, VideoHub focuses on effectiveness and delivers real-time analytics for deep transparency across ads, content, viewers, and performance. To request a demo, visit videohub.tv.

About TubeMogul

TubeMogul is the only video marketing company built for branding. As a demand side platform for video, TubeMogul integrates real-time media buying, ad serving, targeting optimization and brand measurement into its PlayTime platform. Over half of the Fortune 500 use TubeMogul to simplify the delivery of video ads in any format, optimize the impact of their brand message and maximize the effect of every dollar they spend.

Founded in 2006, TubeMogul is based in Emeryville, CA with offices in New York, London, Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto and Sydney.

Emeryville, CA – Tribal Fusion, the global online advertising provider owned by Exponential, is the world’s second largest source of display advertising, according to comScore’s December 2011 rankings of the leading global display networks. The measurement service reported that Tribal Fusion’s premium publisher network reached more than 490 million unique users globally, behind only Google (1.2 billion) and just head of AOL Advertising (477 million), which includes its Advertising.com ad network subsidiary.

Tribal Fusion says the new ranking reflects its growing global presence and increased demand from brand advertisers for campaigns that take advantage of its rich-media capabilities to offer more engaging creative executions at scale

“Brand advertisers across the globe are increasingly looking for new ways to leverage digital media to connect with their prospective customers and are looking for the same kind of high-impact and emotionally engaging creative messaging that they get from traditional TV advertising,” says Dilip DaSilva, founder and CEO of Tribal Fusion and parent company Exponential.

“Online advertising has primarily been focused on bottom-of-the-funnel acquisition and conversion of customers. But as brands are realizing that their potential customers are spending an increasing amount of time on digital media relative to traditional channels such as television, they are looking for opportunities to drive brand awareness and perception via digital media.

“Our premium publisher network is an essential part of our Advertising Intelligence Platform, and is critical for driving audience insight and large-scale reach that helps brand advertisers learn about and reach their prospective customers. And beyond just reaching their prospective customers, our tight integration with our publishing partners, allows brands to connect at scale with prospective customers using high-impact, engaging messaging,” adds Mr. DaSilva.

Founded in 2001, Tribal Fusion has expanded across the globe and now operates offices in 37 locations worldwide including the United States, Canada,  Mexico, Brazil, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, South Africa, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

“Digital media can be accessed by visitors in any country, as a result most premium publishers attract a global audience,” concludes Mr. DaSilva. “Through our ability to monetize publisher inventory in so many countries, we have now become the partner of choice for premium publishers in every country.”

Tribal Fusion (www.tribalfusion.com) is a global online advertising provider that drives sales for the world’s top brands by helping them learn about, reach and engage their online audiences more effectively.

We combine our premium publisher network, advanced online ad technology and integrated audience data on a single platform to deliver audience insights, targeting and creative solutions that transform the way brands connect with their prospective customers.

Tribal Fusion reaches almost 500 million monthly unique users, was founded in 2001 and is part of the Exponential Group of online businesses – a technology-enabled media services company headquartered in Emeryville, California with operations in 37 locations worldwide.

NEW YORK – VINDICO, the leading online video ad management platform, announced the renewal of their Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation, which was initially granted in June 2010. Through this MRC accreditation renewal, VINDICO continues to demonstrate its commitment to building trust in online video advertising.  The accreditation will continue to benefit the global brands that work with VINDICO, as well as institute a benchmark for success in the industry.

Established to ensure audience measurement research is valid, reliable and effective, the MRC accreditation process requires companies to undergo rigorous third-party audits to guarantee compliance with industry standards. VINDICO’s accreditation indicates its video advertising platform is compliant with the MRC’s standards for Media Rating Research and the applicable guidelines published by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. MRC members include leading media and technology companies, such as AOL, Microsoft, CBS and FOX, among others.

“VINDICO has taken strides to make online video as trusted and easy to work with as any other measured media,” said George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director of the Media Rating Council. “Renewal of its MRC accreditation further solidifies VINDICO as a quality leader in the industry.”

VINDICO has deep market penetration, serving almost forty percent of all online video ads in the United States. The company provides video advertising management solutions to over 200 brands through their leading agency groups such as GroupM, Havas, IPG, Publicis and Omnicom. The VINDICO solution reduces complexity for advertisers by providing an efficient and reliable way to serve video ads across multiple networks.

“Video advertising is one of the advertising industry’s fastest growing categories, with eMarketer estimating that online video ad spending in the U.S. will reach more than $7 billion in 2015,” said Matt Timothy, president of VINDICO. “Renewal of MRC accreditation reinforces our commitment of giving advertisers the confidence they need to make larger investments in online video and demonstrates our data remains up to the MRC’s rigorous standards.”

About VINDICO
As the first ad management platform dedicated exclusively to video, VINDICO allows advertisers to serve, track and measure all of their online video ad activity. Since 2006, VINDICO has been the gold standard in online video platforms, providing standardized reporting and analytics for the online video industry. The power of online video isn’t just the audiences it reaches and how it reaches them. Its strength also derives from its ability to track an ad campaign and precisely measure the campaign’s effectiveness. For more information, please visit http://www.vindicogroup.com or follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/VINDICO_Group.

About MRC
The MRC is a non-profit Industry association established in 1964 composed of leading television, radio, print and internet companies, as well as advertisers, advertising agencies and trade associations whose goal is to ensure measurement services that are valid, reliable and effective. Measurement services desiring MRC accreditation are required to disclose to their customers all methodological aspects of their service; comply with the MRC Minimum Standards for Media Rating Research; and submit to MRC-designed audits to authenticate and illuminate their procedures. In addition, the MRC membership actively pursues research issues they consider priorities in an effort to improve the quality of research in the marketplace. Currently approximately 70 research products are audited by the MRC. Additional information about MRC can be found at www.mediaratingcouncil.org.

REDWOOD CITY, CA – YuMe, the operating system for TV 2.0, today announced the results of a joint study with Nielsen, which quantifies the true impact of online video when combined with a major CPG TV advertising campaign:  reach, frequency, and recall increase substantially even as the CPM rate decreases. The results offer a compelling look at how brands can effectively and easily reach more viewers with a complementary, TV 2.0 media mix of TV and online video. Planning across both media as part of a single holistic campaign delivers an impact and return on investment which dramatically exceeds that of TV alone.

For this study, YuMe utilized Nielsen TV/Internet Fusion to assess the impact of a $500,000 online video ad buy for a PHD client’s $2.6 million TV flight. The flights ran concurrently throughout September 2011. Results show that a $500,000 spend on the Connected Audience Network, YuMe’s premium, in-stream video ad network, increased reach against the targeted 35–54 age demographic by 7 percentage points. In addition, more than 6 million people in the target demographic were not reached by the TV schedule alone, and were picked up only when online video was added to the schedule.

A high level summary of key findings from the YuMe-Nielsen study highlights the many benefits of a TV 2.0 campaign strategy:

•    Content present on multiple media extends reach:  YuMe online video increased reach for the targeted 35–54 age demographic by 7 percentage points when complemented by a TV flight. In addition, nearly 9 million people were exposed to the campaign on multiple screens.

•    Average frequency across screens increases:  The number of respondents exposed to the PHD campaign three or more times increased by 31 percent, while those exposed to the campaign six or more times rose by 52 percent.

•    Low eCPMs for online video drive substantial cost efficiencies:  Although less than one-sixth the cost of the TV schedule, the $500,000 spend invested in the YuMe Network drove an increase of 34 percent in gross rating points (GRPs) from the original TV schedule. The efficiency of the online video spend was nearly double that of the concurrent TV spend and the cost per point (CPP) was reduced by 11 percent.

•    Brand and message recall improves with YuMe:  Impression-per-impression, YuMe online video outperformed TV in terms of both brand and message recall compared to the campaign TV norm. Results of a Nielsen TV Brand Effect analysis showed an increase of 22 percent for brand recall and 31 percent for message recall one day post-exposure.

•    YuMe outperforms online video ad network norms:  YuMe’s Connected Audience Network outperformed its peers in both brand and message recall, demonstrating an increase of 33 and 50 percent respectively seven days post -exposure.

“We know our consumers are watching multiple screens throughout the day and sometimes watching more than one screen at a time,” said Kelley Train, PHD. “Because of this fact, we are constantly pushing our media to be more about reaching the right audience versus the platform in which the ad is being delivered. Utilizing both TV and YuMe’s video network as complimentary partners, we were able to achieve valuable additional reach, efficiency and effectiveness for our client.”

As consumers diversify their entertainment activities across an array of connected devices, it becomes more difficult for advertisers to maximize reach on a single platform. By complementing a schedule of TV ads with a concurrent online video flight, advertisers can reach consumers whether they are watching TV or online video to increase scale and reinforce the brand’s message.

“TV and digital ad planners can no longer operate in a vacuum in which online video advertising remains a silo apart from TV spend, because it fails to account for the fact that audiences are no longer stationary,” said Ed Haslam, Vice President of Marketing for YuMe. “Dual-platform campaigns offer demonstrable value and greatly outperform a TV-only campaign while improving overall cost efficiency.”

For more information, and to download the full report on the YuMe-Nielsen study, please visit www.yume.com/content/whitepapers.

About YuMe
YuMe is the software infrastructure provider powering digital video and the next generation of television with its operating system for TV 2.0. Its video advertising technology and services seamlessly connect advertisers, app developers, content distributors, consumer electronics manufacturers, and publishers across the globe. YuMe’s patent-pending Relevance Engine powers its premium in-stream video ad network, the YuMe Connected Audience Network, and its industry-leading advertising management solutions, ACE for Publishers and ACE for Advertisers. The YuMe Relevance Engine matches the right ad to the right audience on whatever screen they are viewing—PC, mobile, or connected TV. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with its European headquarters in London. The company is backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and Translink Capital. For more information, visit www.YuMe.com, follow @YuMevideo on Twitter (www.twitter.com/YuMevideo), or like YuMe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/YuMevideo.

LOS ANGELES – Break Media, a leading creator and publisher of digital video content for men, today announced its Social Video Accelerator, an innovative new advertising technology which combines guaranteed video distribution with a suite of social analytics that maximize viral pass-along of advertiser content. The new unit is designed around the growing trend of Cost per View (CPV) advertising.

While demand for the CPV model increased among advertisers in 2011, thus far, publishers and networks have struggled to match it. YouTube has previously predicted that by 2015, more than 50 percent of online video campaigns will include inventory sold on a CPV. A recent study performed by Break Media and Advertiser Perceptions found that although 40 percent of advertising campaigns now use CPV in some fashion—a two-fold increase over the previous year—17 percent of advertisers stated they would select it as their preferred pricing model for video if more publishers and networks offered it.

The Social Video Accelerator will debut across the Break family of sites, which includes Break.com, the web’s largest comedy video site, and the Break Media network, which now reaches more than 120 million unique viewers each month. The technology is designed to distribute both advertiser assets such as trailers and videos as well as branded entertainment created in partnership with Break Media’s award winning in-house Creative Lab.

“The Cost per View video pricing model made huge strides within the industry this past year, with a number of advertisers citing it as their preferred model,” said Andrew Budkofsky, EVP of sales and partnerships for Break Media. “While this emergence has opened up an entirely new battleground for advertising dollars, advertisers must demand a solution that delivers a guarantee of quality, relevant context and targeting above and beyond simply counting numbers of views in order for their campaigns to be effective.”

“With the amount of competition for attention and eyeballs, we’ve looked for partners who can help us build a quality audience and guarantee our video content will reach it,” said Simone Deocares-Lengyel, media director at KD&E, the agency for Take-Two Interactive which runs multiple trailer release campaigns a year. “Being able to purchase against a guaranteed CPV and track both paid media as well as earned media presents a huge opportunity for us to distribute our content in the most meaningful way possible.”

The Social Video Accelerator is available now. For more information on all Break Media advertising units, visit us online or contact sales@breakmedia.com.

About Break Media:

Break Media is a leading creator, publisher, and distributor of digital entertainment content including video, editorial, and games. The company’s properties include the largest humor site online—Break.com—as well as Made Man, Game Front, Holy Taco, Screen Junkies, Cage Potato, All Left Turns, Chickipedia, and Tu Vez. The Break Media Creative Lab is an in-house production studio creating original videos that range from award-winning branded entertainment to celebrity-driven web shorts to viral one-offs. The Break Media Network represents hundreds of publishers as one of the largest video advertising networks online, reaching more than 120 million visitors each month. For more information, visit www.breakmedia.com.

We’re on it. Last year, we partnered with AdXPose, which was acquired by comScore. Now we can document for our partners when we serve an ad and it is seen. comScore has shared with us numbers that validate our intuition that above and below the fold have become meaningless because of reader habits, and that new ad units can help generate new revenue for publishers.

For example, last year  one in four ads above the fold was never seen, and 32% of  all ads were delivered but never seen. This means ads below the fold, while traditionally less costly, were almost as effective as those in the traditional “best” spots above the fold.

Because we have been serving ads for over a decade, we were in a position to spot this early, and to do something about it.

We’ve come up with some new, best-in-class products that can be used by any publisher, whether they use our ad server or any other. They’re aimed at creating additional revenue for publishers, while assuring brands and advertisers their ads will be seen (we can prove it) in a brand-safe environment. As far as we know, we’re the first to do this.

We started as the infrastructure for our publisher partners when we served the ad. As we evolved, we became more of a full service outsourced ad operations company. This enabled us to learn more about how online advertising technology really works to help marketers, and therefore to help publishers.

This year, we have begun to launch new best-in-class products for all publishers whether they use our ad server or not. The best-in-class InView format, for example, will appear only if we know the user will see it – and that can be measured. This InView product is designed to meet the new ways readers consume publications.

We will also offer other best-in-class products for all publishers (regardless of which ad server they use). “TVAds OnPage” is a best-in-class video ad format. Ad Ops services from ZEDO are also best-in-class because we are a US company with high standards and because as the only ad ops company that builds an ad server we are a true technology expert that can run any ad server perfectly.

During the course of this year, we will roll out three more products for all publishers that are best-in-class.

We continue to move forward in product development, knowing we operate in a very fast-moving environment and we must continue to prove our value.

About ZEDO

ZEDO, Inc. is a digital ad solutions company that offers products and services for a publisher’s premium, self service, and remnant inventory. Products include ad network optimization, innovative rich media formats for publishers’ direct sales teams, full featured ad serving, behavioral targeting data built into the ad server, an exchange-like platform for publishers to sell behavioral and DMA targeted inventory at high CPMs (see: www.zedoadnetwork.com), a self service platform to allow advertisers to buy directly from a publisher, outsourced ad ops and more. These products are integrated into one technology platform for publishers to choose from, or use seamlessly together. ZEDO has been in the internet advertising industry for over 10 years, and is the most successful independent ad server in the US. The company provides innovative solutions that boost revenues for Internet publishers. ZEDO is headquartered in San Francisco and has four development centers in Russia and India.

Reach out to ZEDO at http://www.zedo.com, or follow the company on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ZEDOadsolutions) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/zedoinc).

NEW YORK – VINDICO, the leading online video ad management platform, has commenced operations in London, Paris and Madrid. VINDICO now offers European advertisers a video ad platform to seamlessly serve, track and measure all of their online video advertising. VINDICO announced the company’s launch into the UK in September and also announced that it had appointed Sonia Fernandez as general manager of European operations at that time.  Since then, VINDICO has launched operations in France and Spain to address the rapidly growing needs of the broader region.

VINDICO’s European expansion comes as IAB Europe’s AdEx reports that digital display, which is inclusive of online video, has recently overtaken search as the fastest growing online ad format in all of Europe, with an average growth rate of 21.3 percent. In the UK specifically, eMarketer predicts video will see the most growth in online advertising, with ad spend forecasted to reach $850 million by 2015, compared with $150 million in 2011. In Spain, the online video market will reach 33 million euros in 2012, accounting for 3.7 percent of total online display ad spending, according to the IAB Europe.

“Demand for online video advertising is surging in many European markets, and we expect this explosive growth to continue in 2012,” says Matt Timothy, president of VINDICO. “The growth that VINDICO is experiencing in both the US and abroad is representative of marketers’ increasing investment in digital video. With operations in the UK, France and Spain, VINDICO is well positioned to meet the needs of advertisers to reach European consumers through the powerful medium of online video.”

VINDICO has deep market penetration, serving almost forty percent of all online video ads in the United States. The company provides video advertising management solutions to over 200 brands through their leading agency groups such as GroupM, Havas, IPG, Publicis and Omnicom.

About VINDICO:
As the first ad management platform dedicated exclusively to video, VINDICO allows advertisers to serve, track and measure all of their online video ad activity. Since 2006, VINDICO has been the gold standard in online video platforms, providing standardized reporting and analytics for the online video industry. The power of online video isn’t just the audiences it reaches and how it reaches them. Its strength also derives from its ability to track an ad campaign and precisely measure the campaign’s effectiveness. For more information, please visit http://www.vindicogroup.com or follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/VINDICO_Group.

RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 182 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in December for an average of 23.2 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience viewed 43.5 billion videos.

Top 10 Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers

Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in December with 157.2 million unique viewers, while VEVO ranked second with 53.7 million. Yahoo! Sites ranked third with 53.3 million viewers, followed by Viacom Digital with 45.8 million and Facebook.com with 42 million. More than 43 billion videos views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 21.9 billion. The average viewer watched 23.2 hours of online video content, with Google Sites (7.9 hours) and Hulu (3 hours) demonstrating the highest average engagement among the top ten properties.

*A video is defined as any streamed segment of audiovisual content, including both progressive downloads and live streams. For long-form, segmented content, (e.g. television episodes with ad pods in the middle) each segment of the content is counted as a distinct video stream.

Top 10 Video Ad Properties by Video Ads Viewed

Americans viewed 7.1 billion video ads in December, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at nearly 1.5 billion, followed by Adap.tv in second with 1.1 billion. Tremor Video ranked third with 942 million, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 872 million and Specific Media with 496 million. Time spent watching video ads totaled more than 3 billion minutes during the month, with Adap.tv delivering the highest duration of video ads at 636 million minutes. Video ads reached 51 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 46 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 46.

*Video ads include streaming-video advertising only and do not include other types of video monetization, such as overlays, branded players, matching banner ads, homepage ads, etc.
**Indicates video ad network
†Indicates video ad exchange

Top 10 YouTube Partner Channels by Unique Viewers

The December 2011 YouTube partner data revealed that video music channels VEVO (53.5 million viewers) and Warner Music (31.7 million viewers) maintained the top two positions. Gaming channel Machinima ranked third with 22.7 million viewers, followed by Maker Studios with 10.4 million, FullScreen with 9.7 million and Big Frame with 8.3 million. Among the top 10 YouTube partners, VEVO demonstrated the highest engagement (67 minutes per viewer) and highest number of videos viewed (782 million), while Machinima exhibited the second highest engagement (64 minutes per viewer) and number of videos viewed (340 million).

*YouTube Partner Reporting based on online video content viewing and does not include claimed user-generated content

Other notable findings from December 2011 include:

- 85.3 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
- The duration of the average online content video was 5.8 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
- Video ads accounted for 14.1 percent of all videos viewed and 1.2 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

Combining Adap.tv’s RTB technology with Collective’s audience data, Collective’s private exchange will offer pre-roll video advertising space across targeted audiences and premium publishers in real-time auctions. Publishers include IPC, WWE, The Independent, Sony Music and iVillage.

The move will see Collective become the first in the UK to launch an RTB private ad marketplace for premium video programming.

“Our marketplace gives advertisers and agency partners a new way to access premium VoD inventory, but with this inventory being in such demand, we don’t see it as a low cost entry to buy video in the UK,” said Jamie Estrin, Director of Collective Video. “RTB pricing is controlled by supply and demand, and high quality premium video is always in high demand in the UK.”

Adap.tv’s interface will run the exchange that connects buyers with Collective’s pre-roll inventory.

“Our unique partnership with Collective will see the launch of the UK’s first RTB private marketplace for video,” said Brian Fitzpatrick, MD for EMEA at Adap.tv. “Real-time bidding is relatively new in the video space – our technology will offer Collective Video’s clients a new way to trade VoD directly.”

About Collective
Collective helps brand advertisers connect and engage with target audiences across display, video and social media. Collective’s industry expertise provides a strategic advantage to its clients by leveraging proprietary audience modelling, insights and ad effectiveness metrics. Our flagship products, Collective Display and Collective Video®, are powered by AMP®, our market-proven data and media management platform. Collective is headquartered in New York with offices in London, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Collective’s investors include Accel Partners®, Greycroft Partners and iNovia Capital.
http://uk.collective.com/

About Adap.tv

Adap.tv builds the technology that makes buying and selling video advertising simple and efficient. The company’s products – Adap.tv for Advertisers, Adap.tv for Publishers and the Adap.tv Marketplace – work in harmony to connect video advertising buyers directly to sellers on a single platform. The Adap.tv Marketplace is the industry’s largest video marketplace for premium publishers and brand name advertisers, with over 6,500 sites selling inventory and hundreds of campaigns running daily. Based in San Mateo, CA and with sales offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and London, please visit http://adap.tv/.

Los Angeles, CA – PK4 Media, the premium online video advertising network and publishing company today announced the acquisition of JSFOUR, a media and technology company. As part of the acquisition JSFour founder, Jimi Smoot, will join PK4 Media as the VP of Product Development. The two companies have been in collaboration to develop an advanced video distribution platform named Bishop.

The Bishop Video Platform (BVP) is designed for the next generation of online video. At the core of Bishop’s DNA is JSFour’s Render platform, which was engineered for publishers to lower the cost associated with running video on their site. PK4 Media brings advertisers to the mix to offset any cost. Bishop is at the intersection of JSFour’s technology and PK4’s distribution strength. The platform provides an easy-to-use solution for publishers and advertisers seeking to incorporate video on their website, or in their marketing mix.

This ground-breaking format enables a new breed of marketing. Publishers no longer need content delivery network (CDN) relationships, a video player, or an expensive video platform. Now they can quickly and easily upload video to Bishop, embed a player and begin optimizing their content. Videos are automatically monetized. This easy to deploy solution also benefits creators. As content is deployed and syndicated across more than 4,000 sites within the PK4 Media distribution network, royalties go right back to the content creator.

“When JSFour showed us their low cost and streamlined method for publishers to add video their site, light bulbs went off instantly,” said PK4 Media CEO and Founder, Tom Alexander. “We knew that the publishers we have relationships with would benefit from this platform, and any costs would be offset through our brand partners. We acquired the technology almost immediately.”

Mr. Smoot built the Render Platform, the main asset acquired by PK4Media and the technology behind Bishop, while moonlighting during his tenure at Initiative. Throughout his diverse carrier, Jimi has worked on all of the sides of the advertising ecosystem gaining a unique perspective on the ins and outs of the business. He has held several positions in media sales and account planning. Most recently serving as Innovations Manager at Initiative, he was responsible for identifying cutting edge technology-based marketing opportunities for Dr Pepper, VIZIO and KIA. Holding a seat on the thinkLA Adzoo board, Jimi is an active member of the Los Angeles advertising community.

“As someone who is passionate about innovation, I’m absolutely pumped to see some of my technology advance a whole new video platform,” said Jimi Smoot, newly appointed VP of Product Development at PK4 Media.  “Bishop combines content creation with a broad and vast distribution system, enabling the next generation of online video advertising.”

PK4 Media is a premium advertising network and publishing company with a proprietary video platform for publishers, advertisers and content creators. The company offers a brand-centric, performance-based media solution through a unified network of brand-safe publishers.  The platform delivers advanced tracking, targeting and optimization capabilities extending beyond typical video ad solutions.

About PK4 Media
Founded in 2009, PK4 Media is headquartered in Los Angeles, California with sales offices throughout the United States, including San Francisco and New York. PK4 Media is a privately-held company led by industry leaders from OMD, Blue Lithium, ValueClick, Publicis, and Initiative. For more information, please visit: www.pk4media.com.

LONDON – MirriAd Limited, the market leader in digital product placement, announces the launch of the ‘Hub’, an integrated solution for broadcasters. MirriAd has developed a unique platform for the digital placement of branded imagery seamlessly into professional video that is scalable and can be managed by broadcasters directly. For the first time, broadcasters can enable large sales forces to sell product placement inventory whilst maintaining control of the content.

Leading brands have confirmed that previewing opportunities, understanding the context and knowing the precise size, position, and duration of the placement opportunity de-risks what can otherwise be considered a risky purchase.

The MirriAd Hub is a brand new concept and relies on a networked technology which empowers producer/broadcasters to cost effectively meet client needs for reliable and valuable placement in premium content. The Hub handles media logistics locally, analyses video content, creates inventory suitable for contextual placements and then places it in a secure portal or ‘walled garden’ for sale.

A Hub located at a broadcaster’s premises devolves total control of the creative and commercial decision making to the sales and production teams with fast turnaround at minimal overhead. The Hub is provided by MirriAd as part of the service business model, requiring only minimal initial capital outlay from the broadcaster.

Seven Network, a leading national broadcaster in Australia, deployed a Hub in late spring 2011. After initial trials, Seven launched the Hub Digital Product Placement service commercially in the middle of 2011, to great effect. Today, Seven is placing brands digitally into several top rated shows and long running series. The process is working seamlessly between production and sales organisations and has resulted in a fast growing new revenue stream for the network, having amortized the initial investment within the first six months of commercial operations.

The Hub uses MirriAd’s ZoneSense software technology running on local hardware central to which is a cluster of NVIDIA’s very high performance GPUs. This enables broadcasters to create inventory comprised of visuals at high speed combined with analytical and marketing data which can then be placed in an online Catalogue for sale to brands and agencies. The Catalogue is integrated directly into the MirriAd platform and supports all the producer/broadcaster editorial approvals and compliance processes, thus ensuring that inventory offered to brands and agencies is ready to go.

Mark Popkiewicz, MirriAd CEO, said:

“Seven is a fast mover with high standards for production values and commercial operations. They have deployed a new commercial process which fits seamlessly into their operations and the Hub is central to that. We will be launching our new services such as MirriAd Analytics and the MirriAd Catalogue within Seven early in 2012.”

Kurt Burnette, Chief Sales & Digital Officer, Seven Media Group said:

“MirriAd has proven to be the leading technology in digital product placement. The introduction of The Hub provides further ability for our customers to see exactly what, when and where integration can happen across Seven Network owned and produced properties, in advance and all in one place. Each program and opportunity can be carefully selected for its impact and relevance to the brand.

“MirriAd and Seven have been working together for 12 months and have fully developed the offer for the Australian market, ensuring the MirriAd and Seven offering remains the world’s best practice for advertisers.“

About MirriAd

Launched in September 2007 by CEO, Mark Popkiewicz, previously a director of BBC Ventures, MirriAd aims to revolutionize product placement for the digital era. MirriAd has developed an end to end solution able to digitally place brand imagery into any video on demand and at scale. MirriAd’s digital placements have been extensively researched and proven to achieve excellent results for brands whilst positively impacting production values and the viewer experience on line and on TV.

Headquartered in London with offices in New York and Mumbai, MirriAd is privately owned with institutional investors including Oxford Technology Management, Oxford Capital Partners, STV Group PLC, Seraphim Capital and South East Growth Fund and notable angel investors Bruce Smith and Stephen Bullock.

NEW YORK – The year ended with an extremely strong Q4 for online advertising as U.S. paid search spending grew 22% year-over-year resulting in the best quarter to date. Retailers drove much of this spending, as holiday shopping initiatives pushed their search budgets up 26% year-over-year. Mobile search advertising among retailers was up a huge 269% YoY and accounted for 14% of total retail search budgets – peaking at 24% on Black Friday.

These figures are released quarterly by IgnitionOne, a leading digital marketing firm, managing more than $1 billion in online advertising.

Key findings in the report:

•    Mobile search is growing at an enormous rate – YoY mobile search ad impressions are up 317% and spend is up 269%. Among retailers, mobile search ad spend accounted for 14.2% of total paid search budgets, compared to 5.2% last year. This spiked on Black Friday with 24% of retail search ad spend going towards mobile queries.

•    Search advertising has its best quarter ever – It was a strong holiday season for search with advertising spend up 22% YoY in Q4. Search advertising spend among retailers was up even higher at 26% YoY. There were also large YoY increases in impressions (42%), clicks (42%) and transactions (67%).

•    Search costs (CPCs) declining – In total, Q4 CPCs are down -8.6% YoY and -2.3% compared to last quarter. This trend benefits both marketers and Google as clicks cost less while monetizing at the same rate and expanding impression base and higher clickthrough rates point to revenue growth for Google. The trend is driven by Google, as Yahoo!/Bing saw a YoY 6.4% increase in CPCs.

•    Google retains market share lead – In mid-Q4, Yahoo!/Bing held only a 16.6% share of the search market, but as expected, given its retail consumer focus, it rebounded with a stronger holiday shopping season.  However, by the end of Q4, search market share remained largely unchanged from the previous quarter, with Google commanding 81.8% compared to Yahoo!/Bing at 18.2%.

•    Europe search advertising also on the rise – Q4 shows gains for European search advertising as spend increased 14%, clicks increased 22% and Clickthrough Rate (CTR) increased 19%.

•    Google continues to grow in display – Spending on display was up 9.3% and impressions were up 31.5%. The growth for Q4 came from Google’s DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which saw a 105.5% increase in spend.

“Adoption of smart phones and tablets is exploding and mobile search is becoming a major part of the shopping experience for many consumers,” said Roger Barnette, President of IgnitionOne. “Advertisers are responding to this trend, which is clearly shown in the enormous growth of mobile search advertising spending.”

This report is the latest in a series of reports from IgnitionOne reviewing trends across the online advertising landscape. Previous quarterly reports can be downloaded at http://bit.ly/ignitiononeresearch

About IgnitionOne
IgnitionOne is the world’s first closed loop Digital Marketing Suite, offering multiple solutions to improve online performance within a single interface. Solutions include ad management and optimization (search, display and Facebook), cross-channel attribution and website optimization. The company was formed in 2011 by combining online ad management platform, SearchIgnite, with audience profiling and on-site optimization from Netmining.

Ignition One currently powers more than $20 billion in revenue each year for some of the world’s leading online marketers, including General Motors, Chico’s, Ann Taylor, Fiat and advertising agencies such as MRM Worldwide, CyberAgent and more.

For more information, please visit http://www.ignitionone.com or follow the company on Twitter @ignitionone.

SAN FRANCISCO – LiveRail, the first real-time video ad technology platform for publishers, networks and agencies, and MediaMath, the first and only enterprise-class DSP, announced that LiveRail will serve MediaMath as a video ad serving partner.

Through LiveRail’s technology, MediaMath can now empower marketing professionals to deliver more video advertising in real time across a network of top publishers, utilizing the same automatic buying, efficient pricing, and seamless delivery buyers expect from MediaMath’s platform. The DSP will also sell video inventory from LiveRail’s network of publishers.

Through strategic partnerships with the leading DSPs, LiveRail is now powering the industry transition toward automated, real-time video ad buying. With LiveRail’s technology, DSPs can manage their real-time video ad sales alongside their display sales, and also use LiveRail as a video ad server. LiveRail’s direct relationships with publishers also provide DSPs with both the video ad inventory and consumer targeting that buyers are eagerly taking advantage of.

Nearly $50 million will be spent on video RTB this year, but rapid growth in video ad networks, DSPs, and agency trading desks will lead to triple-digit growth in 2012. LiveRail’s technology touches all sides of the video advertising spectrum, helping agencies, DSPs, and publishers manager video ad sales, inventory, and analytics while ensuring multi-platform delivery, support of VAST and VPAID standards, and total buying transparency.

“Programmatic buying is taking off in the display ad space and buyers are increasingly interested in exploring the potential of video RTB,” said Joe Zawadzki, MediaMath’s CEO. “Because LiveRail offers fully automated buying and easy ad serving through its network of publishers, they were the ideal partner to accelerate our real-time video offering.”

“By further expanding its video offering, MediaMath is showing that ad buyers are very interested in the potential and efficiency of RTB for video,” said Mark Trefgarne, LiveRail CEO. “We’ve seen interest in video RTB grow steadily over the past half year, which is a great sign for the video ad segment. More potential buyers encourage more publishers to adopt the technology, opening up more inventory and creating more opportunities to match advertising to targeted viewers.”

About LiveRail

LiveRail delivers technology solutions that enable and enhance the monetization of Internet-distributed video. By focusing specifically on challenges and opportunities created by online video, its tools are designed to be easier, more efficient and more effective than traditional display ad servers to deliver and track advertising into this new medium. Founded in 2007, LiveRail’s senior team is led by its founders, Mark Trefgarne (CEO) and Andrei Dunca (CTO). LiveRail Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York City and Romania. LiveRail is backed by Pond Ventures.

SAN MATEO, Calif. – Brand.net, the company that connects the world’s biggest brands to their customers across digital media, announced a major expansion of the contextual, targeting, brand safety and campaign optimization features of its video advertising solution.

“Our first generation video product was designed to meet our brand advertisers’ request for guaranteed in-stream only campaigns, in premium, brand-safe environments, with branding impact optimization and measurement completely integrated across video, rich media and display,” said Elizabeth Blair, CEO of Brand.net. “During 2011, demand has consistently exceeded our capacity. With this product release, we increase our in-stream video media delivery capacity more than tenfold and significantly expand the available features and functionality, all while maintaining our full set of reach, frequency, audience composition, media delivery, pricing and quality guarantees.”

Specific enhancements include:

- An expanded set of contextual options within Entertainment, News, Lifestyles and other content categories

- Expanded audience targeting from leading third-party audience data providers including eXelate, Nielsen, Catalina, and Bizo, and more granular geo targeting options

- Full RTB integration with leading video ad exchanges, including Doubleclick Ad Exchange and Adap.TV
Brand-safe environment assurance, through enhanced SafeScreen™ page-level content quality filtering, and full support for third-party verification options

- Impression cross-format campaign optimization to ensure achievement of campaign guarantees and maximum brand KPI performance across display, rich media, and in-stream video formats

- Expanded reporting insights across delivery, composition, GRP, TRP, completion and engagement metrics

Brand.net video continues to incorporate only 100% IAB and VAST-compliant in-stream ad formats, with no hidden in-banner video ad bundling. The success of campaigns including in-stream video can be proved through Brand.net’s full suite of branding-impact measurement solutions, including attitudinal surveys, ActivityLink™ online behavioral impact, and social media measurement. Brand advertisers can also add in-stream video to SalesLink® campaigns, where Brand.net has delivered a more than 500% average ROI.

By extending the MFP guarantees to all types of video campaigns, traditionally a more unpredictable format, Brand.net is enabling large brand advertisers to more effectively plan, execute, and measure their video ad campaigns.

About Brand.net

Brand.net (www.brand.net) connects the world’s biggest brands to their customers across digital media. The company’s MFP™ advertising platform guarantees reach and frequency, audience composition, media delivery and pricing in quality environments up to a year in advance. Brand.net optimizes every interaction for branding impact, proving success through online engagement, awareness and offline purchase. The company leads the industry with an offline sales average ROI of over 500%.

The company is privately held and headquartered in Silicon Valley.

Leading video company Break Media releases Digital Video Advertising Trends: 2012 study, detailing digital video landscape for the upcoming year

LOS ANGELES – Break Media, a leading creator and publisher of digital video content, announced the findings of its annual Digital Video Advertising Trends study, which found that digital video advertising spending is up and expected to continue to increase throughout 2012. In addition to organic growth of budgets, the increase is projected to come from a number of existing sources, including 32 percent from television budgets, and be reallocated into new platforms such as mobile — easily the fastest-growing format — connected devices and the emerging ad selector format.

The study compiles data from hundreds of advertising decision-makers about their digital video advertising plans heading into 2012. In addition to discussing budget growth and allocation, the study includes shifts in cost models and distribution formats. Use of video ad networks has reached a nearly universal level, which has also driven uptake in usage of the Cost per View (CPV) model. The video ads, themselves, come in a number of formats, but most advertisers still prefer pre-roll. However, the mass adoption of multimedia-ready smartphones and tablets has driven significant growth in mobile, which increased almost two-fold in the past year and is expected to jump another 16 percent in 2012.

Key findings from the study include:

- Video spending to increase: In the coming year, 68 percent of advertisers will increase the share of online display advertising devoted to video ads.

- Video budgets being driven up from multiple sources, including TV: Advertisers increasing video ad spend in the next year say the dollars will come from television budgets (32 percent), overall advertising budget growth (38 percent) and non-video display budgets (45 percent).

- Video Ad Network use skyrocketing: More than 90 percent of all advertisers plan to use video advertising networks in the coming year, increasing the share of spend devoted to them from an average 20 percent to 41 percent of total video dollars.

- Cost per View model offered by more publishers and networks: The pervasive use of video ad networks (VANs) has driven variety in the pricing models available, and the CPV model has increased two-fold in the past year (to 40 percent). A number of advertisers indicated they used Cost per Thousand (CPM) and Cost per Click (CPC) models because CPV wasn’t offered by publishers or VANs.

“Video advertising spending is growing faster than expected, and this is the first time a significant portion of the increased resources devoted to it are coming from television budgets,” said Andy Tu, vice president of marketing for Break Media. “New ad formats and pricing models are changing the landscape for how video inventory is bought and sold. The Cost per View model has clearly caught traction in a short amount of time, and new formats including mobile video and advertising on connected devices will be compelling ways for brands to connect with consumers in the coming year.”

For the full study from Break Media, visit: www.breakmedia.com/Digitalvideoadstudy.

About Break Media

Break Media is a leading creator, publisher, and distributor of digital entertainment content including video, editorial and games. The company’s properties include the largest humor site online — Break.com — as well as Made Man, Game Front, Holy Taco, Screen Junkies, Cage Potato, All Left Turns, Chickipedia, and Tu Vez. The Break Media Creative Lab is an in-house production studio creating original videos that range from award-winning branded entertainment to celebrity-driven web shorts to viral one-offs. The Break Media Network represents hundreds of publishers as one of the largest video advertising networks online, reaching more than 120 million visitors each month. For more information, visit www.breakmedia.com.

PALO ALTO, Calif. – Wurl, a new online video engagement platform, launches today with a groundbreaking way for video publishers to build viewer loyalty among smartphone users. Backed with over $3 million in investment capital raised over the past 24 months, Wurl is poised to revolutionize mobile video viewing.

“It’s extremely difficult for publishers to build a loyal audience for their online video series. When viewers visit a publisher’s website or channel, they typically watch one or two videos and then forget to come back to watch new content,” says Wurl co-founder and CEO Sean Doherty. “We created the Wurl video platform so that publishers can attract and retain a loyal mobile fan base for their video series.”

Any publisher or brand can build a network of followers simply by publicizing their “wrl.it” link – the unique short URL they receive from Wurl. Wrl.it links are the linchpin of the Wurl platform, providing one-click video following. Every time a new video is released, followers receive a notification – the new video is then available for on-demand streaming to their smartphone.

“Our Wrl.it links will enhance Stand Up To Cancer’s online and digital video presence, which – in turn – helps build our grassroots movement of supporters,” says Rusty Robertson, co-founder of Stand Up To Cancer, a charitable program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation. “Anyone who clicks our wrl.it link becomes a subscriber to all of our videos; it seamlessly engages them in a dialogue about how innovative science can end cancer.”

“Wrl.it links are central to our service architecture,” says David Martinez, Wurl co-founder and VP Engineering. “Wrl.it links can be accessed effortlessly through a button on a website, a link in a Facebook post – even by scanning a QR code.”

To kick off this new service, Wrl.it links will be simultaneously released today by Wurl’s launch partners and are expected to generate over 5 million wrl.it link impressions on social networks, emails, text messages and their websites. Launch partners include Stand Up To Cancer, NoLabels.org, PBS News Hour, Fora.tv, The Ripon Society, BIPAC, The Daily Caller, The Truman Project, and The Republican Senatorial Committee, and many more. More info about Wurl’s launch partners is available at wurl.com/partners.

ABOUT WURL

Wurl is the first company to create a mobile subscription platform for video. Based in Palo Alto, California, Wurl is a free service that helps video publishers convert occasional viewers into loyal fans. The Wurl platform is open to any publisher, continually tracking each publisher’s video series and notifying followers when a new video is released. Learn more about Wurl at: http://wurl.com. To download the Wurl app for iOS or Android, just click any wrl.it link – for example: wrl.it/y/su2c.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – In spite of the introduction of more than 150 new ads plugging new models and holiday promotions, automotive advertisers have experienced a lukewarm reception from U.S. consumers in Q4, according to Ace Metrix, the authority in television advertising effectiveness. The company, which today revealed lists of the most effective luxury and non-luxury automotive ads to break so far this quarter, found Q4 ads from Chevrolet to be a notable exception, leading the non-luxury automotive category in effectiveness—a category that performed far better than its luxury counterpart. This trend is a departure from last year when luxury brands out-performed non-luxury brands in effectiveness.

“Consumers tend to dislike sales event promotional ads, yet this year many brands opted for this type of messaging instead of better-performing, more creative brand/product messaging,” said Peter Daboll, CEO of Ace Metrix. “The result is the disappointing performance of many of the nearly 35 holiday-themed automotive ads to break so far this season. Case in point: it’s astounding that four of the ‘Top 10’ luxury automotive ads were below norm– a clear signal that many automotive brands have stepped away from good creative this season and fallen back on ‘Buy it now, you idiot’ messaging wrapped up in sales events and bows.”

Verbatim quotes from consumers who were surveyed included: “It’s the Christmas car bow ad…I think advertisers should know we’re tired of these and they should do something else…” “How many times are car companies going to show a car as a Christmas gift?…It makes me NOT want to buy [from them].”

Lexus, a brand typically in the Top 10 creative rankings, was conspicuously absent this quarter. Last year, the brand had more brand/product ads and had an average Ace Score of 584. This year, Lexus geared its creative toward holiday-themed sales event ads (“December to Remember”), resulting in a 14 percent drop in their average Ace Score to 504 – well below norm for the luxury automotive category.

One consumer said of the Lexus ads, “People don’t buy other people cars, and even if they did, do you think hearing one annoying jingle would really clue them into the fact they were getting a new car? No!”

On a positive note, luxury brands like Cadillac, Audi and Mercedes-Benz got their holiday messages right with Ace Scores above the norm. In addition, ads longer than the standard 30 seconds dominated both lists.

“One trend we are seeing a lot of is what we’re calling ‘the return of story-telling’—longer spots that allow a brand to tell a story,” Daboll commented. “Chevy’s top-ranking ads are a great example of this, as is the top-ranking Thomas Keller BMW ad.”

Most Effective TV Ads for Non-Luxury Automotive, Q4 To Date*

Most Effective Luxury Automotive TV Ads, Q4 To Date*

*Definition: Ace Score is the measure of ad creative effectiveness based on viewer reaction to national TV ads. Respondents are randomly selected and representative of the U.S. TV viewing audience. The results are presented on a scale of 0-950, which represents scoring on creative attributes such as relevance, persuasion, watchability, information, attention, etc.

Ace Metrix will reveal the Top 10 Ads of the Quarter and Top Ads for the Year on January 4th, 2012.

Ace Metrix is the industry authority in measuring and understanding the impact of advertising creative. Through patent-pending Ace ScoreTM measurement technology, Ace Metrix collects and measures the consumer impact of every nationally breaking TV ad in near real-time. Through its Creative Lifecycle Management TM suite of products, Ace Metrix provides actionable creative analysis, from ideation through real-time in-market performance optimization, to many of the world’s leading advertisers and agencies. Ace Metrix works with leading global advertisers. For more information, visit www.acemetrix.com.

Follow Ace Metrix on Twitter for additional insight: Ace_Metrix.

With Shopper Access, brands can connect both display and video ad campaigns with actual offline sales to understand campaign effectiveness and optimize it to increase their return on investment. This depth of data also allows brands to activate marketing campaigns using purchaser-based definitions such as light or heavy shoppers of specific products and categories, shoppers of competitive brands, “switchers” and other shopping-based behaviors.

For example, a diaper brand can use Specific Media’s Shopper Access to reach moms with an ad for baby wipes to drive cross-category and line-extension purchases. Specific Media is in discussions to apply the shopper-based solution to a number of brands from the largest CPG companies.

Nielsen Catalina Solutions, a joint venture between Nielsen and Catalina Marketing, accesses 60 million households from a subset of Catalina’s shopper data warehouse. Shopper Access provides insights into how advertising influences consumer purchase behavior. The data is anonymous and aggregated using a secure third-party agent, and does not contain personally identifiable information (PII) to protect the privacy of individuals. The shopper data is matched with Specific Media’s online audience and further modeled based on proprietary Nielsen Catalina Solutions’ shopper profiles.

“Nielsen Catalina Solutions is pleased to work with Specific Media on Shopper Access,” said Mike Nazzaro, CEO of Nielsen Catalina Solutions. “Specific Media has unmatched scale in display and video, a long history of pioneering precision marketing using behavioral triggers and a solid track record of data governance and integrity. They’ve also made significant investments in growing their CPG category and have emerged as a strong leader in this space.”

“The breadth and depth of the Nielsen Catalina Solutions data and analytics are unparalleled in the industry,” said Vic Catalfamo, vice president and head of Global Consumer Goods Category, Specific Media. “Our multi-year alliance with Nielsen Catalina Solutions will now allow our large base of CPG brand customers to reach shoppers whenever they are online, with display and video campaigns that are truly scalable across the Internet.”

About Specific Media

Specific Media is a digital media company driving viewership for content owners, engagement for brands and relevance for consumers. With capabilities spanning original programming, cross-channel distribution and addressable advertising, the company connects audiences, content and brands, adding meaning to each touch-point. As people discover new ways to consume content, Specific Media creates impactful media experiences no matter where they are.
www.specificmedia.com

NEW YORK – appssavvy (www.appssavvy.com), an activity advertising technology company, and its platform adtivity™ by appssavvy, since launching in September has been embraced by more than 125 publishers and advertisers. To further adtivity by appssavvy’s growth and strong results delivered by the platform, including an engagement rate of 4-to-8 times industry average across unlocked and newly created, center-of-the-experience, activity-based display ads, the company today announced the completion of its Series 1-A $7.1 million venture capital round.

“Activity-based advertising we believe will be the emerging digital advertising category that paid search and behavioral targeting were a few years ago, and which video is today. Today’s Series 1-A venture capital round is further evidence of the activity advertising opportunity for both publishers and advertisers,” said Chris Cunningham, co-founder and CEO of appssavvy. “Following the lead of the social space, especially social games, web publishers have identified the need to make their properties a more active, rather than passive, experience. This will create new activity ad inventory and opportunities for our vision and the adtivity by appssavvy platform, but more importantly better display advertising that reaches people when they’re most engaged and as part of what they’re doing.”

appssavvy had previously raised $3.1 million from True Ventures, The New York Times Company and individual investors, including Scott Kurnit, founder of About.com and currently founder and CEO of AdKeeper, and Howard Lindzon, co-founder and CEO of StockTwits, among others. Today’s completed Series A-1 round of $7.1 million includes current investors and new investor, AOL Ventures, and brings the total raised by appssavvy, to date, to $10.2 million.

“Behavior on the Internet has changed where people are much more activity-focused. We feel there is a tremendous opportunity for advertising to adjust to this shift, focusing on reaching consumers as they engage in sites versus the current focus on where people are,” said Tony Conrad, founding member and venture partner at True Ventures. “Since its inception four years ago, appssavvy identified people’s activities online as a tremendous opportunity to not only change advertising, but change it for the better, and for all those involved, including publishers, brand advertisers and, most importantly, consumers.”

adtivity by appssavvy, prior to launch, was under development for more than a year and built on appssavvy’s vision that the future of advertising is focused on what people are doing, not where they’re doing it. In just a few months, more than 70 publishers and developers have partnered with appssavvy and integrated the adtivity platform and adtivity Mobile SDK into activities representing millions of daily opportunities for advertisers.

Unlike existing technologies that deliver ads based on a page loading, the adtivity API is attached to the event of performing an activity, including updating statuses, collecting, sending and earning virtual goods, polls and contests, and completing a level, visiting a friend or sending a message within a game, and “Like”ing something to name a few.

“The adtivity platform is enhancing our ability to monetize our games in the context of our players experiences,” said Dan Hart, chief revenue officer of Arkadium, a premier developer, publisher and distributor of casual, social, and mobile games. “We have found that activity-based advertising delivers a strong additional revenue stream and enhances our profitability.”

Since launching adtivity by appssavvy, every partner has expanded their integrations and usage of the platform to include new, additional activities, thus increasing the inventory creating the largest activity network available to brands. More than 50 brand advertisers, including American Express, Chase, Coca-Cola, Electronic Arts, HP, Sony and State Farm, to name a few, have implemented activity advertising campaigns.

appssavvy will put today’s Series 1-A round to work by continuing to enhance the adtivity platform, build partnerships and relationships with publishers and advertisers, and expand internationally. For more information about adtivity by appssavvy, visit: www.appssavvy.com.

About appssavvy
appssavvy (www.appssavvy.com) is an activity advertising technology company. Through its adtivity™ platform, appssavvy enables leading web, social and mobile publishers to unlock and create new, display advertising opportunities reaching people as they perform activities. adtivity by appssavvy offers scalable, center-of-the-experience, display ads, thus creating the most effective way to deliver and receive advertising. For more information, visit www.appssavvy.com.

San Jose – blurbIQ Inc., the leader in interactive gamification of video across the digital marketing spectrum, announced that Michael Hirshoren who previously ran US ad sales for Rhythm NewMedia has joined the company Board of Directors and  that Jack Hallahan, Vice President of Innovations for Mojiva Inc. has become an advisor to the company.

Other Board members for blurbIQ – whose patent pending interactive video advertising platform allows advertisers and publishers to use game mechanics to drive consumers to interact with their video messaging to remember brands at the point of purchase – include: Dan Stubbs, Director of Business Development at Johnson & Johnson; Todd Bates, Managing Partner at international IP law firm Hilborne Hawkin & Co.; Kimberly Smithson Slaveski, Vice President of Risk and Control at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and BlurbIQ’s CEO Scott Reese, and CTO Drew Spencer.

“blurbIQ has gotten extraordinary traction in the marketplace already, partnering with top technology and ad networks to help brands assure their video messages are both delivered and understood,” says Mr. Hirshoren. “I am pleased to join the Board at a moment of tremendous acceleration.”

“Michael and Jack have fantastic track records with decades of experience developing traditional and digital strategies for Fortune 500 brands,” says Mr. Reese, the company’s CEO. “We will take advantage of it as we grow blurbIQ.”

Mr. Hirshoren previously ran US ad sales for Rhythm NewMedia, driving the company’s US digital strategy and content relationships while focusing on deepening brand connections with mobile consumers. Rhythm has served billons of video, display and rich media ads on behalf of the world’s largest brands including P&G, GM, Verizon, HBO, Marriott, Kraft, Disney and over 200 others in 2010 alone becoming the largest mobile video ad network.

Since 2003 and prior to joining Rhythm NewMedia, Mr. Hirshoren was a director with AOL Media Networks where he managed executive relationships with top clients through integrated online and offline advertising programs. He was part of the team that helped AOL navigate the difficult transition from subscription model to a successful advertising driven business.

Prior to AOL Media Networks, Mr. Hirshoren was vice president for Salon.com from 1998 to 2003 where he directed all sales efforts for the eastern United States and helped Salon achieve a successful IPO.

Mr. Hirshoren was a pioneer in online advertising holding various management positions at Ogilvy & Mather and Y&R’s Wunderman Cato Johnson. He was part of Ogilvy & Mather’s first digital media team and holds an Effie for his work with IBM.
Mr. Hirshoren started his career in the international marketing department of United Parcel Service (UPS).

Jack Hallahan, heading up All Things Rich Media for Mojiva, travels the globe offering best practices and creative solutions for mobile advertisers. He launched Mojiva’s Mobile Creative Alliance, an influential consortium of mobile creative and technology providers helping advance Mobile Rich Media.

Before he joined Mojiva Mr. Hallahan ran Tap Mobile, a consultancy, where he was instrumental in launching start-up social news platform Blancspot. His marketing insights and savvy helped earn Blancspot App of the Week and a #2 Ranking behind CNN on Apple iTunes Store. Mr. Hallahan offered critical guidance and launch strategies for emerging digital platforms including QR Code Innovator JagTag, Travel App MondoWindow, Social App Get Me Rated, Music Fan App New York Rock Exchange, and Best Buy-backed consumer tech advisory App Tecca.

In 2005 Mr. Hallahan helped launch the first mobile television ad platform as VP, Advertising for MobiTV. Spearheading new product and technology innovations, team building, and partnerships, he steered major brands into mobile, including BMW, AXE, Jeep, Intel, Anheuser-Busch, HP, Visa USA, Daimler-Chrysler, Navy, and Nikon.

Mr. Hallahan is a recognized expert in cross-platform integration from years working with brand owners and agencies, including industry leaders Chiat/Day, AKQA, Sports Illustrated, Men’s Health and Young & Rubicam.  During this time, he was responsible for over $200 million in advertising campaigns.

blurbIQ (http://www.blurbiq.com ) is the leader in interactive gamification of video across the digital marketing spectrum. The patent pending technology overlays video with brand and trivia questions as the video streams. blurbIQ turns video commercials into interactive “games” that dramatically increases viewer engagements, video completion rates, and ad retention. These interactive video units are distributed as pre-roll, in banner, mobile, tablet, and social media advertising units. blurbIQ provides quick time analytics dashboards so brands can measure every interaction with their video content like never before. Since launching in July of 2010 blurbIQ has acquired key accounts such as E*Trade, Duracell, Church & Dwight and General Motors.

NEW YORK – VideoHub, a division of Tremor Video, and Nielsen, a global information and measurement company, today announced an alliance giving VideoHub customers access to Nielsen Online Campaign RatingsTM gross rating points (GRPs) via VideoHub for Advertisers. The relationship marks the first time Nielsen has integrated its GRP data with an online video advertising platform.

The incorporation of data from Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings into VideoHub marries the standard GRP metric used in TV advertising to online video performance for the very first time. The collaboration gives advertisers a single metric for their gross reach — the total number of people exposed to an ad — and effective reach – more granular insight into the quality of the ad exposure and actual performance across all screens.

With Nielsen’s online GRPs, advertisers using VideoHub can now see what demographic audiences their campaigns reach online. Then, via the VideoHub advertising platform, they can understand how those audiences responded to their campaigns and identify the key signals driving performance metrics like engagement and brand lift.

Nielsen data is now available to every advertiser running campaigns through VideoHub, whether those campaigns run on the Tremor Video network or VideoHub is being licensed outside that network. Tremor Video is the largest independent online video technology company, with more than 2,000 campaigns currently running through VideoHub.

“Debate over whether the GRP is good or bad for the digital space has gone on for years, but those days are coming to an end,” said Kelly McEttrick, Director of Platform Strategy for VideoHub. “Advertisers can now look at their demographic reach, and then evaluate how their campaign performed within each audience segment. A single view into gross reach and effective reach is the kind of insight advertisers have only dreamed of until today.”

“Marketers want to cleanly compare the reach of online video media to other media – principally TV,” said Steve Hasker, President, Media Products and Advertiser Solutions, Nielsen. “Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings provides a standard GRP across platforms, so that online can be measured the same way we measure GRP’s on TV. We’re excited to work with Tremor to help advertisers understand the audience reach and brand engagement of online video, and we look forward to bringing the same service to VideoHub publishers in the future.”

Clients using VideoHub will also be able to order customized Nielsen Online Brand Effect reports to combine their GRP data with ad effectiveness metrics to further evaluate reach and brand impact of their ads.

Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings combines traditional Nielsen TV and online panel data with aggregated, anonymous demographic information from participating online data providers. It is the only Internet measurement system accredited by the Media Rating Council (MRC) that provides GRPs for online advertising campaigns, enabling for the first time, consistent cross-platform reach and frequency metrics.

VideoHub for Publishers launches in 2012, also incorporating Nielsen’s online GRP data.

About Tremor Video

Founded in 2005, Tremor Video (www.tremorvideo.com) provides in-stream video advertising solutions to Fortune 1000 brand advertisers and top tier publishers and is widely regarded as the leading video company online. Leveraging their innovative video ad formats and publisher technology, Tremor Video delivers the mass reach and campaign results advertisers should expect from digital video. Tremor Video is the only video ad platform that can provide 100% brand safety by scanning and categorizing every single video stream before an ad is ever served. Powered by award-winning SE2 technology, Tremor Video’s video algorithm also gets smarter at finding and engaging viewers with every ad served, enabling the company to welcome and encourage pay-per-engagement pricing. Tremor Video is a privately held company headquartered in NYC with 10 national and international offices.

VideoHub, a division of Tremor Video, is a first of its kind analytics console that helps marketers and agencies monitor the complex video ecosystem to dynamically match ads with content and viewers, deliver upon marketing goals, and maximize brand impact. Unlike traditional video management platforms, VideoHub focuses on effectiveness and delivers real-time analytics for deep transparency across ads, content, viewers, and performance. To request a demo, visit videohub.tv

About Nielsen

Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is a global information and measurement company with leading market positions in marketing and consumer information, television and other media measurement, online intelligence, mobile measurement, trade shows and related properties. Nielsen has a presence in approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA and Diemen, the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

REDWOOD CITY, CA – YuMe, the operating system for TV 2.0, today announced Ad Visibility capabilities to guarantee that brand marketers’ video ads are always visible to viewers, eliminating wasted impressions and ensuring higher ROI on their ad spend.

Using YuMe’s ACE Relevance Engine, which collects detailed information about the in-page environment of the video player, YuMe’s Ad Visibility technology automatically determines the viewing area, detects the player size, pinpoints player coordinates relative to the viewing area, and intelligently delivers a contextually relevant video ad. This integrated viewport detection technology ensures that video ads are served only when the video players are within the viewer’s sight.

According to Radar Research, up to 50 percent of all ad impressions are never seen by the intended audience.[i]  Inclusion of unseen impressions in campaign reporting results in inaccurate metrics. YuMe’s Ad Visibility technology eliminates waste and delivers accurate brand engagement metrics to marketers.

“Ad Visibility technology is not only critical for advertisers to run successful video ad campaigns in which their ads are always visible, it is also necessary to provide advertisers and publishers with accurate brand performance metrics,” said Jayant Kadambi, YuMe CEO. “The Connected Audience Network is the only video ad network in the market that delivers all the essentials of video advertising for brands.”

YuMe’s Connected Audience Network, powered by ACE technology, enables YuMe to effectively deliver visible video content across multiple screens—online, mobile, and connected TV—and provides advertisers with real-time targeting, measurement, and optimization tools to accurately track campaign performance.

YuMe’s video advertising essentials for brands include:

•       Ad visibility assurance: YuMe’s viewport detection solution guarantees that no impressions will go unseen, so every video ad impression truly extends reach and brand awareness.

•       Brand-safe distribution: YuMe ensures ads are associated with safe content to protect brand equity. Since video ad players are portable, YuMe’s brand security measures follow the video player wherever it goes to guarantee protection.

•       Cross-screen compatibility: YuMe enables marketers to reach any screen their customers are viewing, be it a computer, mobile device, or connected TV. Moreover, advertisers can build their YuMe Ads just once and run them on all screens.

•       Premium, 100% in-stream video inventory: User-initiated, well-lit video ad placements on quality publisher properties and applications yield high brand impact and optimal branding opportunities.

•       Video ad placement on professionally-produced content: YuMe ensures that the brand message is always paired with high-quality video content for brand credibility. Ads are never placed next to user-generated video content.

•       Highly interactive video ad units: Socially rich ad units drive brand awareness, favorability, recall, and purchase intent for immediate brand engagement.

•       Advanced, guaranteed audience targeting: YuMe delivers ads to the right audience using a variety of targeting techniques to meet audience guarantees, ensure relevance, and maximize brand favorability.

•       Powerful analytics for brand performance optimization: YuMe provides instant, actionable insight into video ad campaign performance across all connected devices.

About YuMe
YuMe is the software infrastructure provider powering digital video and the next generation of television with its operating system for TV 2.0. Its video advertising technology and services seamlessly connect advertisers, app developers, content distributors, consumer electronics manufacturers, and publishers across the globe. YuMe’s patent-pending Relevance Engine powers its premium in-stream video ad network, the YuMe Connected Audience Network, and its industry-leading advertising management solutions, ACE for Publishers and ACE for Advertisers. The YuMe Relevance Engine matches the right ad to the right audience on whatever screen they are viewing—PC, mobile, or connected TV. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with its European headquarters in London. The company is backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and Translink Capital. For more information, visit www.YuMe.com, follow @YuMevideo on Twitter, or like YuMe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/YuMevideo.

SAN FRANCISCO – Since launching its mobile video ad format earlier this year, Greystripe, the largest brand-focused mobile ad network and a division of ValueClick Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), has seen an increasing number of brand advertisers flock to video.

The mobile video ad units were launched in June 2011. Since then, over 30 brands have run campaigns, delivering over 100 ad creatives throughout the Greystripe network on iOS, Android and the mobile web. The demand for mobile video ads has increased significantly in recent months; Greystripe has already seen a 300 percent increase in the number of campaigns booked so far in Q4 of 2011 relative to all of Q3 2011.

Universal Pictures and its agency, Ignited, ran a successful campaign with Greystripe to drive trailer views and promote the theatrical release of the new film The Change-Up. The two-week campaign, targeting men 18-34, generated nearly nine hundred thousand complete trailer views. A video of the ad displayed on an iPhone can be seen here. In addition to entertainment, retail, consumer-packaged goods, insurance and electronics brands have all run mobile video ad campaigns with Greystripe.

“We are consistently seeing mobile ad dollars flowing to mobile ad digital as users embrace multiple screens — often using their smartphones and tablets while watching TV,” said Vikrant Gandhi, senior industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

Greystripe is benefiting from the massive shift of broadcast advertising budgets into mobile, driven by the efficiency and effectiveness of reaching the 40 percent of TV watchers who are on their smartphones and tablets at the same time (Nielsen). In addition, advertisers are flocking to Greystripe’s video format because of impressive campaign results. On average, consumers have watched the entire video ad 50 percent of the time, with click-through-rates of between 1 and 3 percent. This is particularly impressive because users have the option to skip Greystripe video ads at any time.

“Mobile video ads will be the major growth driver for brand advertising spend in 2012, as traditional broadcast budgets continue to flow into mobile and online screens,” said Michael Chang, Greystripe general manager. “Greystripe is well positioned to take advantage of this video-fueled growth because of a fantastic ad user experience and our ability to serve more full-screen mobile video ads into premium content than any other mobile ad network – over 1 billion per month.”

For more information visit: http://www.greystripe.com/videoads/

About Greystripe

Greystripe, a division of ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK), is the largest brand-focused mobile advertising network in the US by reach. Greystripe delivers the highest engagement and most sophisticated targeting for brand marketers, the maximum revenue for publishers and app developers, and the best ad experience for users. Greystripe’s proprietary advertising platform serves billions of rich media impressions to over 40 million users of touch-driven devices through more than 3,500 application titles and mobile websites across all major mobile platforms.

For more information, please visit: http://www.greystripe.com

About ValueClick, Inc.

ValueClick, Inc. (Nasdaq: VCLK) is one of the world’s largest digital marketing companies. Through a unique combination of data, technology and services, ValueClick increases brand awareness and drives customer acquisition at scale for the world’s largest advertisers, and maximizes advertising revenue for tens of thousands of online and mobile publishers. ValueClick’s brands include Commission Junction, ValueClick Media, Dotomi, Greystripe, Mediaplex, Smarter.com, CouponMountain.com, Investopedia.com, and PriceRunner. The Company is based in Westlake Village, California, and has offices in major advertising markets worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.valueclick.com.

San Francisco – Vizu Corporation (www.brandlift.com), an online ad technology company whose solutions allow advertisers and publishers to measure and optimize Brand Lift in real-time, announced that it has completed an enhanced integration with Adap.tv, the company that connects video advertising buyers and publishers directly on one platform. This next phase of integration will provide buyers in the Adap.tv Marketplace with the ability to measure and optimize towards brand metrics, such as awareness and intent, in real-time and directly within the video experience. This partnership supports Vizu’s “Value in Video” initiative, an effort to provide the industry with the ability to measure and optimize Brand Lift generated by video advertising in real-time.

Until recently, video buyers have been unable to move beyond completion and clickthrough rates, the inadequate metrics by which video campaigns are measured and optimized. Through this enhanced integration, advertisers are now able to determine the contribution of different creative, messages, targeting, and frequency to overall campaign performance and quickly evaluate and adjust them to optimize performance.

“The ability to show Brand Lift in real-time is a game-changer for the industry,” said Jason Shulman, vice president of sales at Adap.tv. “In fact, our annual State of Video Report indicated that brand lift ranked the top three most important metrics for video campaigns, reinforcing that brand awareness and intent are top of mind.”

“The fragmented landscape of video serving technologies is one of the key challenges facing the growth of online video advertising,” said Dan Beltramo, CEO of Vizu. “This integration with Adap.tv is the next step in our “Value in Video” initiative, allowing our customers to seamlessly access our Brand Lift measurement and optimization capabilities within the Adap.tv Marketplace.”

Advertisers are already taking advantage of the integration, and benefiting from the unique capabilities Adap.tv and Vizu are now bringing to market. In one case, a major CPG company running a branding campaign to increase purchase intent for a leading line of odor-eliminating products found that the Adap.tv and Vizu solution provided a powerful one-two punch, delivering:

- 84% lift in purchase intent for the product amongst people who had been exposed to the campaign;

- Brand Lift that significantly outperformed the market norm; this campaign performed in the top 10% of all CPG campaigns as measured by Vizu;

- Identification of the top performing pre-roll creative provided the opportunity for in-market optimization of Brand Lift.

The Adap.tv-Vizu case study can be downloaded in its entirety at: http://brandlift.vizu.com/knowledge-resources/case-studies/pdf/Vizu Case Study – Adap.tv.pdf

Vizu Corporation (www.brandlift.com) brings the same metrics used to measure and optimize brand advertising effectiveness in the offline world to the online medium. By providing the first real-time, enterprise technology platform that allows brand advertisers and their partners in the digital media ecosystem – publishers, ad networks, exchanges, and demand side platforms – to collaborate around measuring and optimizing Brand Lift metrics, Vizu enables its customers to move their target audience through the purchase funnel, from building awareness to creating intent and preference. Vizu’s brand advertising effectiveness platform is used by over 60% of Advertising Age’s Top 100 Brand Advertisers and Comscore’s Top 50 Media properties to support all key aspects of the advertising lifecycle, including media buying, audience profiling, and Brand Lift optimization.

About Adap.tv
Adap.tv builds the technology that makes buying and selling video advertising simple and efficient. The company’s products – Adap.tv for Advertisers, Adap.tv for Publishers and the Adap.tv Marketplace – work in harmony to connect video advertising buyers directly to sellers on a single platform. The Adap.tv Marketplace is the industry’s largest video marketplace for premium publishers and brand name advertisers, with over 6,500 sites selling inventory and hundreds of campaigns running daily. Based in San Mateo, CA and with sales offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle and London, Adap.tv is privately held and backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Gemini Israel Funds, Redpoint Ventures and Spark Capital. For more information, please visit http://adap.tv/.

The market for so-called ‘real time bidding’ is estimated to represent up to six billion dollars in the US this year alone, and this figure is expected to quadruple by 2015. According to market researcher IDC, this new trend will potentially exhibit the same growth observed in online European display advertising.

Real time bidding has transformed the previous industry standard media buying process; purchasing is performed automatically, based on an exact budget and upon the advertiser’s target audience.

Without having contact with the media where the ads are bought, media agencies and advertisers are now able to conduct their insertions via the online display platform Adform, whereby everything happens in real time as on a stock market, ensuring that prices and objectives are 100% up-to-date. As a result, advertisers’ ROI may be significantly increased, as transparency is greater with targeted purchases and the price per viewing often decreases. Adform’s method also offers time-saving benefits, as it eliminates the need to have a media contact or to negotiate price, and it can be applied to all campaigns regardless of size or economic status.

“We have an extremely strong established position in Scandinavia and, with our take on real time bidding, we have our sights firmly set on the rest of the European market,” says Martin Stockfleth Larsen, marketing director of Adform.

“Our competitors typically offer a platform that only handles media purchases,” explains Jesper Urban, Adform’s product director. “We have a unique platform that supports the entire process of online display advertising from media planning and buying to optimization and reporting. We will do our utmost to save our clients both time and money,” he promises.

Adform offers real time bidding ad purchase through three of the market’s major players, Microsoft Advertising Exchange, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Appnexus. The ability to utilize Microsoft’s ad exchange is particularly interesting, as Adform is the first player in the Nordic countries to collaborate with the company.

About Adform
Adform close the loop by integrating media planning, buying, optimization, and reporting for all online display advertising in one place, thus saving an enormous amount of time, money and resources.

Adform’s unique platform incorporates display ad serving, rich media, video, mobile, dynamic ads, personalised targeting, and real-time bidding through integrations with major inventory players, making display advertising simple, relevant and rewarding for media agencies and online advertisers. Adform was established in Denmark in 2002 and now has offices in 10 countries including Nordics, Eastern Europe, UK, Germany, Spain and Italy.

Visit http://www.adform.com or http://www.twitter.com/adforminsider for more information.

NEW YORK, NY – Jun Group (www.jungroup.com), the premier social video platform, released data that shed light on emerging trends and usage patterns in one of the fastest-growing segments of online video, social video. The study defines social video as online video programs created for major brands, which users opt-in to watch and which they can share with others. In addition to the data summarized below, Jun Group has created an infographic to visually represent the findings. The infographic can be downloaded here: http://jungroup.com/infographic2011/

Jun Group based the study on a sample of more than 13 million user-initiated video views between January 1, 2011 and September 30, 2011. The views were a result of social video campaigns created for Fortune 500 brands across a number of vertical categories, including consumer packaged goods, apparel, consumer technology, retail, luxury products, fashion and beauty, sports and fitness, and auto.

Key findings are as follows:

Humor works. Humorous videos are prominent within the social video space, accounting for four-in-10 campaigns. Those who watch a humorous video are more than three times more likely to click to a brand’s Facebook page after viewing than those who watch other types of social video content.

Celebrities don’t guarantee engagement. Only one-in-10 social video campaigns feature a TV or movie personality, and they are actually less effective at driving brand interactions than non-celebrity videos. Celebrity videos drive 12 percent fewer visits to brands’ Facebook pages than non-celebrity videos. This data may indicate that those who watch celebrity videos are more interested in the famous personas than the brands behind them.

Short and long-form most effective. Fifteen-second videos produce the best click-through rates, but they are used least. Only 10 percent of videos are 15 seconds or less, yet they are 153 percent more effective than videos between 16 seconds and one minute.

Videos of 60 seconds or more are the second-most effective format, outperforming videos between 16-60 seconds by 70 percent. This may indicate that 16 second-to-one-minute videos are not enough time to tell an engaging story.

“Social video is re-writing the advertising rules of engagement,” said Mitchell Reichgut, founder and CEO of Jun Group. “While the vast majority of online video advertising is still interruptive, social video engages people on their terms. The data from this study demonstrate why social video is one of the hottest new segments of online advertising.”

The study also provided the following insights:

Girl power grows. According to Jun Group’s first study in January (www.marketwire.com/press-release/Jun-Group-Shares-2010-Trends-and-Insights-From-Social-Video-1385030.htm), women accounted for nearly 57 percent of social video views. In 2011, that number has grown to 63 percent.

18-44 year-olds dominate, younger people gaining interest. Sixty percent of video watchers are between the ages of 18-44, while viewers between 12-17 years-old increased by 48 percent since the beginning of 2011.

Facebook page traffic. The social video opt-in environment is more effective in driving post-view engagement than interruptive video units, such as pre-roll. Users who opt-in to watch social videos are more than three times as likely to interact with a brand after the view, compared to pre-roll*. Social videos are notably effective in driving users to a brand’s Facebook page. “Join a brand on Facebook” is the single most popular post-view interaction, accounting for 40 percent of all post-view activity.

Social video completion. Social video programs deliver completion rates that are significantly higher than pre-roll. On average, 64 percent of users served a 30-second pre-roll video watch to completion, according to a recent study*. In contrast, 95 percent of users who opt-in to a social video of the same length watch to the end.

*YuMe Video Advertising Metrics reports (’10,’11)

About Jun Group
Jun Group is the premier social video platform. The company’s distribution technology delivers millions of monthly opt-in video views across social networks, mobile devices, premium content sites, and YouTube. Jun Group distributes videos from 15 seconds to 3 minutes-long with exceptionally high completion rates and significant post-view activity, such as web site visits, coupon downloads, and store locator usage. The company’s analytics dashboard, Voyeur, provides real time data about views, shares, likes, tweets, ratings, comments, and geographic dispersal down to the state and town. Founded in 2005, Jun Group’s clients include Fortune 500 brands, major entertainment companies, and media and creative agencies. For more information, visit www.jungroup.com.

PALO ALTO, CA – Auditude (www.auditude.com), the leading provider of video advertising technology and monetization for premium content owners and distributors, released a report showing online video publishers, content owners and distributors have greater advertising revenue opportunities as viewer acceptance increases around TV-like commercials within online video. Furthermore, completion rates of ad breaks streamed within live content jumps significantly, compared to those within video-on-demand content. The report indicates that video publishers, content owners and distributors can increase revenue potential based on viewer acceptance of ads in premium content.

The Auditude Video Monetization report shows how content type, length of video stream, ad format and placement affect viewers’ response to ads. The analysis is based on a sample of over 11 billion ad impressions running through Auditude’s video ad serving platform. Auditude’s study reaffirms that:

Live vs. Video-on-Demand: Completion rates of ads on live content are significantly higher (86%) compared to video-on-demand content (60%). This suggests that live content actively engages viewers who know that they may not see that content again after its current availability and, therefore, are more willing to sit through digital commercial breaks.

Mid-Roll Completion: Mid-roll video ads have the highest (75%) completion rates as viewers are watching long-form content that they have likely committed to seeing through completely. These ads are the closest comparison to the TV viewing experience as they can be programmed similarly to television with multiple commercials during a single break within online viewing. This insight has strong potential ad buying ramifications given the popularity of the pre-roll ad format today.

Professional vs. User-Generated Content (UGC): Viewers complete in-stream ads on professional content 68% of the time, versus 52% for UGC. The study also highlights that there are more linear video ad opportunities served into professional content than UGC, regardless of content length. This suggests that advertisers possibly view this type of content as safer and more brand-friendly, and are therefore willing to buy more of it.

Overlays on Video: There are more overlay (non-linear) ads served within UGC vs. professional content. Overlays tend to be more intrusive and are viewed as a performance- or action-oriented product for brands willing to risk exposure on UGC content.

“Our research shows that content owners and distributors can create a highly-engaging ad experience in online video that closely resembles what is present on television. For example, the power of tune-in during digital live content can be just as impactful as on television, and maybe even more so given the interactivity of the creative execution. This provides tremendous opportunities to maximize the value of digital video content and make it available to audiences no matter how they are accessing that content,” said Jeremy Helfand, CEO of Auditude. “With the growing distribution of IP-based video content on desktops, smartphones, tablets, game consoles, and other devices, we see strong cross-platform revenue opportunities within digital video. These are the types of ad experiences where content owners and marketers will find great success.”

Auditude’s study shows that publishers, content owners and distributors must evaluate several elements of the video ad experience, including length of individual content, placement of ad breaks, and the ad format to use. In-stream commercial breaks are the preferred ad solution for professional content while overlays are typically used for monetizing UGC. Audience behavior shows an acceptance of ad breaks in exchange for premium content, similar to a television experience. With multiple ad breaks inserted effectively within digital video, publishers can amplify revenue opportunities for their content.

Auditude’s Video Monetization report examined video ad impressions across 300 publishers to better understand user viewing habits and engagement. This study encompassed thousands of ads from a wide array of advertisers.

The full report is available on Auditude’s site at www.auditude.com.

About Auditude
Auditude provides video advertising technology and monetization solutions for premium content owners and distributors. Its platform enables content owners and publishers to rapidly scale the business requirements and ad serving needs around premium video content. Auditude works with marquee broadcast and professional content organizations in online video to help grow video ad revenue opportunities through superior technology. Clients include Comcast, Major League Baseball, Dailymotion, Dick Clark Productions, FoxNews, Major League Gaming, Lionsgate, UK’s Channel 5, and Starz Media, among others. Auditude has been named one of the top private companies in America by Business Insider, Always On and The Hollywood Reporter. Auditude is based in Palo Alto with offices in London, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City. For more information, please visit us at: www.auditude.com.

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ  – Already a leader in Smart TV products, LG Electronics has expanded its offerings for television application developers, content distributors and advertisers with the world’s first integrated advertising platform for Smart TV applications. The company’s complete ad solution includes in-app advertising support incorporated into LG’s app development SDK, management and optimization of the publisher’s ad inventory, and ad monetization through LG’s alliance with YuMe.

LG Electronics developed the LG advertising platform to strengthen the ecosystem of developers, publishers and users, creating a mutually beneficial platform in which developers can maximize revenues and users receive targeted, relevant and engaging advertisements. The global, multi-device platform offers advertisers the immersive engagement of the TV’s large-screen experience combined with the interactive engagement of digital media.

YuMe and LG announced today that Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., the U.S. arm of global automotive manufacturer Toyota, is the charter advertiser on LG Smart TVs.

“For advertisers like Toyota, the LG ad platform can be the third screen complementing on-line and mobile digital campaigns with an in-home shared viewing experience. As users discover the expanding content and application offerings on LG’s Smart TVs and connected devices, usage is growing rapidly which will provide advertisers with the audience and reach for both broad and targeted campaigns,” said Sam Chang, general manager of LG’s Smart TV Innovation Development Group based in San Jose.

“Toyota customers are watching video online, on their mobile phones and on TV, and we are excited to be able to reach this previously unreachable audience on Smart TVs,” said Dionne Colvin, national marketing media manager, Toyota.  “At Toyota, we pride ourselves on our innovative approach to advertising, and as media consumption habits change, we see a real opportunity to further engage consumers through YuMe and LG.”

Publishers will be able to make use of the accessible, real-time reporting system and a host of other features. The LG ad platform, powered by YuMe’s ACE Relevance Engine, is a turnkey solution for publishers, which manages publisher ad inventory to optimize ad CPMs and supports a variety of ad sales models including YuMe’s Connected Audience Network.  Because the LG ad platform is integrated into LG Smart TV HDTVs, Blu-ray Disc™ players, Smart TV Upgraders and other LG Smart TV platforms, advertisers can run their campaigns on these devices as well as other connected CE devices participating in YuMe’s Connected Audience Network.

“The LG ad platform will enable several common digital ad formats such as interactive display banners, in-banner video and in-stream video as well as some new ad units such as click to sponsored applications and search related ad units,” Chang said. “This combination of LG’s innovative Magic Motion remote control allowing for point and click control of applications and YuMe’s advertising technology opens the way for developers, publishers and content owners  to develop new content and ad models on one of TV’s most intuitive systems.”

LG and YuMe will be running pilot ad campaigns in the United States with several leading advertisers starting in November with broader advertiser participation planned for the spring of 2012.

For more information on the LG Smart TV Solution, please visit: www.lgad.lgappstv.com

NEW YORK – Casale Media Inc., a leading premium online media company, published a research brief showing that advertisers and agencies will increase spending on digital video advertising by 25 percent over the next 12 months and would amount to about 23.8 percent of total online ad budgets. “Digital Video Advertising: Removing Barriers Equals Greater Opportunities,” is based on an October 2011 research study conducted by Advertiser Perceptions for Casale Media that surveyed more than 150 media buyers, managers and planners at leading advertisers and agencies in the United States. The report examines the factors contributing to online display and video media decisions.

Respondents generally agreed that video advertising provides a much more engaging environment for marketers to relay their brand messages. The report shows that growth in spending on video ads will require key factors:

Removal of barriers: A separate study by eMarketer found that 85 percent of advertisers and ad buyers are more likely to book video ads if the planning, creative and execution of video ad campaigns were more simple and painless. More than a third of those surveyed in the Casale Media study found the planning (38 percent), creative (40 percent), and execution (35 percent) phases to be difficult.

Increasing awareness: Marketers and agencies view digital video advertising as one of the most effective ways to realize brand lift – 80 percent of the survey’s respondents use video ads to increase awareness of traditional and new brands, products and/or services.

Measuring and realizing a return on investment: The most common responses to why marketers are not using digital video advertising more were because it is too difficult to measure ROI (40 percent) and there is not enough ROI to justify increasing spend (38 percent).

“When it comes to video, many online advertisers still perceive it as the Wild West because it continues to evolve and grow, but without giving publishers and advertisers enough control,” says Joe Casale, CEO of Casale Media. “Our research provides clarity for those involved in online media spending decisions to help identify where the barriers are, how to overcome them and realize the maximum potential of digital video advertising.”

The Digital Video Advertising report details the issues marketers are facing in each phase of a video ad campaign – planning, creation and execution – as well as who is most responsible for budget and creative decisions at brands and agencies. The full research report can be downloaded at: http://casalemedia.com/dva-report.

About Casale Media

Since 2003, Casale Media has been redefining the standard for online media quality, ad delivery management and media optimization technologies with premium services that generate measurable success for all stakeholders in media and marketing. CasaleX, the industry’s first premium exchange with real-time bidding, is a highly controlled, brand-safe media marketplace that provides publishers with maximum control and advertisers with exclusively high quality inventory.

The company’s premium advertising network, MediaNet, is used by eight of the top 10 U.S. online display advertisers and reaches nearly 70 percent of the U.S. online audience across more than 3,000 actively monitored properties. One of the leading independent digital media companies, Casale Media is guided by its dedication to needs-based development and quality-focused culture. More information is available at www.casalemedia.com.

About Advertiser Perceptions

Advertiser Perceptions is the world leader in providing the media industry with research-based advertiser insight and guidance necessary for strengthening brands and increasing advertising sales, market share and competitive advantage. The company specializes in determining, analyzing and communicating what advertisers think – their plans, opinions and motivations. Advertiser Perceptions proprietary database of media decision makers is one of the largest in the world. The advertiser survey and questionnaire development process that they employ ensures optimal response. Focus and media industry expertise enables Advertiser Perceptions to effectively analyze and accurately interpret the research that they conduct on behalf of their clients who represent many of the largest international media companies.

The partnership with StudioNow has already yielded a new customer, ListingBook™, an online real-estate service. ListingBook will use the SundaySky platform to produce product showcase videos that are personalized for each user wishing to buy or sell a home.

“Businesses in nearly every market realize the power online video has in attracting prospects and converting them into buyers,” said Jim Dicso, President and CRO of SundaySky. “Working with StudioNow to extend SundaySky’s capabilities to its customers and content properties will enable users to fully leverage the potential of automated, customized video generation.”

“StudioNow provides companies with the resources they need to create, manage and distribute premium video that connects with consumers and builds brands. By adding the SundaySky technology to our suite of services, we can offer clients a way to create dynamic, highly personalized video in real time so they can produce on an even larger scale,” said Roy Oron, Vice President of Global Business Development.

About SundaySky

SundaySky has developed a newer, smarter way to use video to communicate with consumers in a deeper, more engaging, and more effective way. By using automated, real-time, personalized videos, leading organizations are significantly increasing their profits. Among our customers are Office Depot, Overstock.com and History Channel. Hundreds of thousands of videos are generated daily by SundaySky’s SaaS-based platform to connect with consumers in different stages of the customer lifecycle, driving them to take action. To learn more, please visit www.sundaysky.com.

About AOL

AOL Inc. (NYSE: AOL) is a premier global media company with a suite of brands and products serving consumers, advertisers and publishers worldwide. The AOL Huffington Post Media Group is a leading source of news, opinion, entertainment, community and digital information comprising a wide range of destination websites, including AOL.com, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Moviefone, Engadget, Patch, AOL Music, StyleList and MapQuest. The AOL Advertising.com Group includes Advertising.com, ADTECH, Pictela, Video (inclusive of AOL Video, goviral and 5min Media), Content Solutions and Sponsored Listings and serves a combined content and advertising market at scale through video, brand advertising, content and ad serving. AOL is focused on engaging consumers and providing online advertising services and solutions on both AOL Huffington Post Media Group destination websites and third-party websites, in addition to serving consumer platforms including AOL Mail, AIM, about.me, and mobile experiences. AOL also operates one of the largest Internet subscription access services in the U.S., which serves as another distribution channel for its consumer subscription products, such as AOL TechGuru and Computer Checkup.

The publicly accessible resources for the DPA Toolset are now available dpatools.cablelabs.com.

“By opening access to the DPA Toolset to vendors, developers and the public at large, CableLabs is offering a speed-to-market resource that will accelerate the availability of technologies supporting advancements in electronic advertisement delivery, including the dynamic insertion of commercials into viewer-requested VOD streams,” said Don Dulchinos, CableLabs Senior Vice President, Advertising and Interactive Services.

The DPA Toolset streamlines the testing and validation process for SCTE-130-compliant technologies by allowing developers to emulate multi-platform architectures involved in the delivery of interactive advertising messages and related content across an array of distribution channels. These channels may include VOD streams, web pages, interactive program guides and other media vehicles.

The DPA Toolset solves a pressing challenge for advanced advertising technology developers: the need to assure interoperability across complex labyrinths of web services and message flows involved in the dynamic delivery of targeted advertising to cable customers. The DPA Toolset provides a specific, well-defined, interoperable and multi-vendor message set for each use case that occurs in the implementation of advanced advertising at national, regional and local levels. With the DPA Toolset, technology developers can test the performance of their solutions in advance of deployment at both isolated service points and across multiple service points involved in advanced advertising implementations.

How it works

The DPA Toolset creates profiles that define the valid web services message for every use case tied to SCTE-130 implementations. These profiles, combined with Web Service Description Language (WSDL) descriptions that define the functionality and parameters of web services involved in SCTE 130 implementations, can be used to test all elements and attributes of messages in an environment that emulates real-world deployments.

The toolset provides a two-pronged approach: a set of profiles and a tool to exercise those profiles. The profiles are exercised in a software emulator that can represent any SCTE-130 service at the message level. The toolset allows any mixture of real and emulated devices to make up a testable configuration. It validates that an actual message exchange contains the correct set of messages, and validates each message exchanged against a specific example of a profile.

Interop event

CableLabs hosted an interoperability event in July 2011 that allowed advanced advertising vendors to exercise the DPA Toolset for the first time.

“It’s critical to our business that the BlackArrow Advanced Advertising System maintains support for the latest standards — ensuring seamless deployments, and maximum interoperability. The DPA Toolset offers our development team a ready resource for testing and verifying the interactions of complex technologies within a real-world emulation environment,” said Chris Hock, Senior Vice President of Product for BlackArrow. “Our participation in the advanced advertising event held at CableLabs this summer enabled us to use the DPA Toolset in a laboratory environment to verify key interoperable aspects of our technical development.”

Although the DPA Toolset is initially directed at implementing and testing SCTE-130 messaging, the technology is generic to any web services messaging environment, including very large and complex problem spaces. The CableLabs community license allows free, non-commercial use of the DPA Toolset to address any problem space. CableLabs invites developers to contact the organization for further commercial use or distribution.

About CableLabs

Cable Television Laboratories (www.cablelabs.com) was founded in 1988 by members of the cable television industry. The Emmy Award winning laboratory is a non-profit research and development consortium that is dedicated to pursuing new cable telecommunications technologies and to helping its cable operator members integrate those advancements into their business objectives. Cable operators from around the world are members. CableLabs maintains additional web sites at www.cablenet.org, www.ebif.tv and www.tru2way.com.

Advanced Digital Cable™, CableCARD™, CableHome®, CableLabs®, CableNET®, CablePC™, DCAS™, DPoE™, DOCSIS®, EBIF™, Go2BroadbandSM, M-Card™, OpenCable™, PacketCable™, PeerConnect™, and tru2way® are marks of Cable Television Laboratories, Inc.

San Francisco – Vizu Corporation (www.brandlift.com), an online ad technology company whose solutions allow advertisers and publishers to measure and optimize Brand Lift in real-time, today announced that it has completed an integration with Firefly Video, which is powered by Tribal Fusion’s E9 Audience Engagement Platform. The integration represents the next step in Vizu’s “Value in Video” initiative, an effort to provide the industry with the ability to measure and optimize Brand Lift generated by video advertising in real-time, wherever and however the video is delivered. In so doing, Vizu will help address one of the key challenges facing the growth of the medium – a fragmented landscape of video serving technologies.

“Vizu’s real-time capabilities are a core part of our Insights Focus suite of analytics,” says Kelle Martin, Executive Director of Audience Insights at Tribal Fusion. “Metrics like viewing time and completion rates are important, but at the end of the day advertisers want to know if they’re driving Brand Lift against traditional brand funnel metrics, from building awareness to creating intent and preference. This integration with Vizu makes it incredibly easy for our customers to do that.”

“Many of the advertisers we work with leverage Firefly Video to engage with and influence their target audiences,” says Dan Beltramo, CEO of Vizu. “This integration allows our customers to measure and optimize Brand Lift generated from these units in real time, maximizing the return on their video investment.”

Advertisers are already taking advantage of the integration, and benefiting from the unique capabilities Firefly Video and Vizu are now bringing to market. In one case involving a campaign run by the world’s largest children’s entertainment network, Firefly Video was proven to drive significant tune-in intent for a new feature length television movie. Specifically, Firefly Video leveraged their integration with Vizu’s Ad Catalyst solution to show:

- 251.1% lift in consumers’ intent to tune into the feature-length television movie amongst those who were exposed to the campaign

- This campaign performed in the top 10% of all entertainment campaigns measured by Vizu

- Brand Lift was generated after just two exposures, indicating the branding effectiveness of Firefly Video’s video units

Vizu’s Ad Catalyst solution, part of the company’s brand advertising effectiveness platform, is used by leading brands, agencies, ad networks, and publishers to measure and optimize the effectiveness of online brand advertising efforts in real time. Ad Catalyst measures the Brand Lift generated by online advertising campaigns, replacing click-through rates with a much more appropriate metric for brand advertisers. As Brand Lift data is available in real time, it also enables in-market optimization of campaigns. Leveraging an intuitive dashboard, the contribution of different creative, messages, targeting, and frequency to overall campaign performance can quickly be evaluated and adjustments made that ensure both Brand Lift and return on advertising spend are maximized.

“Video advertising is inherently a brand-building medium, and requires brand-relevant metrics,” says Harris Bernstein, Regional VP of Sales at Tribal Fusion. “Vizu’s real-time Brand Lift metrics helps us provide the proof that our video units deliver superior value to advertisers. The integration will make it easier for us to provide this proof to all of our customers. We are very excited to be working with Vizu.”

The Firefly Video-Vizu case study can be downloaded in its entirety here.

To learn more about the “Value in Video” initiative, read the press release at: http://brandlift.vizu.com/about/press-releases/20110926.htm

Firefly Video (http://www.fireflyvideo.com/) is an online video advertising company that provides brand advertisers the ability to effectively complement their TV and pre-roll buys, easily, efficiently and with full brand safety. Leveraging Tribal Fusion’s E9 Audience Engagement Platform, Firefly Video combines mass reach and world-class targeting to connect advertisers with their most desirable prospects and drive brand lift across a worldwide audience of 453 million unique users.  Firefly Video enables brand advertisers to connect with consumers who are most interested in their brand and engage with them by combining the impact of video with interactivity. Firefly Video combines the best of TV advertising: emotionally engaging full-motion ads, with the best of display advertising: interactive engagement, fine-grained targeting, user feedback, social sharing and intelligent insights.

Vizu Corporation (www.brandlift.com) brings the same metrics used to measure and optimize brand advertising effectiveness in the offline world to the online medium. By providing the first real-time, enterprise technology platform that allows brand advertisers and their partners in the digital media ecosystem – publishers, ad networks, exchanges, and demand side platforms – to collaborate around measuring and optimizing Brand Lift metrics, Vizu enables its customers to move their target audience through the purchase funnel, from building awareness to creating intent and preference.  Vizu’s brand advertising effectiveness platform is used by over 60% of Advertising Age’s Top 100 Brand Advertisers and Comscore’s Top 50 Media properties to support all key aspects of the advertising lifecycle, including media buying, audience profiling, and Brand Lift optimization.

London, UK – Improve Digital (www.improvedigital.com), the European Sell Side Platform (SSP), launches an updated version of 2010’s successful ‘market map’ as a visual illustration of the complex European online display advertising eco-system.

The map was released today at ExchangeWire’s Ad Trading Summit in Paris http://www.exchangewire.com/atsparis and is available to download for free from: http://www.improvedigital.com/knowledge

Comparing the new map to last year’s version shows a huge increase in the number of audience targeting networks (200% growth), trading desks (337% growth), and agency trading desks (166% growth) as the industry moves towards audience buying and automation. New players have entered the market, but much of this activity is also undertaken by ad networks expanding their business remit.

As the buy-side rapidly adopts buying and bidding technologies, European premium publishers are also embracing new strategies. They are keen to benefit from Real Time Bidding (RTB) as long as they have full control of how their advertising inventory is being traded and to whom. On a more strategic level they are building and managing their own private ad exchanges, powered by SSP technologies.

“We launched the initial market map to guide our customers through the maze of the rapidly changing online display advertising system,” explains Joëlle Frijters, CEO of Improve Digital. “This year it also acts as a useful industry gauge, for example showing that audience buying is now a reality. But these shifts are not just connected to RTB, they are about creating huge efficiencies through automation, thereby making digital media more attractive overall for advertisers.”

To prepare this edition of the European online display advertising industry as it currently stands, Improve Digital followed the same strategy as for 2010, gathering information from its offices and various partners in the UK and Europe.

About Improve Digital
Improve Digital is the European Sell Side Platform. Founded in Amsterdam, the company provides advertising technology to large publishers that want to build their own Private Ad Exchange and / or Private Ad Market. The company’s mission is to automate the selling of digital media and maximise revenues for publishers through unlocking the value of their content and audiences. Headquartered in Amsterdam, where it was founded in 2008, Improve Digital has sales offices in London, Madrid, Munich and Paris.

Along with traditional banner display ads and in-text options, InTopic Media also offers MicroBanners, a unique form of in-text advertising that turns text into advertiser logos. MicroBanner ads grab web visitors’ attention and direct them to specific products or information via pop-up notification, which allows advertisers to target key demographics at higher conversion rates than traditional in-text ads using underlined words only.

“MicroBanners give us an edge over the competition,” Bakker said. “Our data shows that MicroBanner ads generate significantly higher click-through rates than traditional banners while expanding brand recognition at no additional cost to advertisers. InTopic’s redesign allows our clients to take full advantage of our innovative technology at some of the highest payouts in the industry. We are offering even higher than usual revenue share for a limited time to celebrate our relaunch and reward our loyal base. We are excited about expanding our footprint in online advertising in the coming years and we anticipate a huge response to our new platform and services.”

InTopic Media, LLC, based in Atlanta, GA, offers a number of in-text and traditional online advertising solutions. For more information, visit www.intopicmedia.com or contact Jake Bakker directly at (678) 486-1916 or jbakker@intopicmedia.com.

LOS ANGELES – AdColony, a division of Jirbo, Inc., announced the launch of AdColony Express, the world’s first self-serve HD mobile video advertising platform exclusively for mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. AdColony Express provides savvy marketers the easiest way yet to deploy high-quality TV advertising to an ever-growing network of mobile devices in just a few clicks.

With the explosive growth of mobile devices like the iPad 2, and the new iPhone 4S, marketers are increasingly looking to drive brand equity and purchase consideration across this broad-reaching audience. With AdColony Express, this has never been easier. After a one-click account sign up process, marketers can simply upload their video and creative assets, set their campaign budget, and submit their campaign for launch. Following AdColony campaign approval, the ads are instantly deployed across AdColony’s powerful mobile video ad network in full Instant-Play™ HD.

“With AdColony Express, we want to make deploying an ad campaign across our network as seamless as possible,” said Will Kassoy, CEO of Jirbo Inc., “We’re confident this provides an ideal solution for brands looking to reach this growing audience that’s increasingly spending more time on mobile devices. This is also an amazing way for app developers to drive discovery and engagement. What used to only be available to brands and agencies through a formal RFP process will now be right at the fingertips of anyone.”

The AdColony network reaches millions of mobile devices and generates industry-leading click-through rates for advertising campaigns averaging from 2.5% to 10%+ and was the first mobile network to charge advertisers just for completed video views. Videos played on the AdColony network have a 97% completion rate. Additionally, AdColony users tend to be high quality loyal users who return to the apps they’ve downloaded. In an internal study, users were 15 to 25 times more likely to engage with apps they downloaded after watching an AdColony video ad than users from other app promotional networks.

AdColony Express for Google’s Android platform is in private beta and will also be available soon.

Please visit www.AdColony.com for additional information.

About AdColony

AdColony™, a division of Jirbo, Inc., is the premium mobile video ad network that exclusively features Instant-Play™ technology to deliver HD mobile video ads instantly to consumers across the most popular and highly engaging apps in the world. Ad units include preroll/midroll/postroll Instant-Play video ads and, for the most popular social apps that often do not have banners or pre-roll, AdColony offers Videos for Virtual Currency ads which allow users to earn in-game virtual currency and goods by watching Instant-Play video ads. AdColony, Jirbo, Instant-Play, Videos-For-Virtual-Currency, and V4VC are trademarks of Jirbo, Inc. All rights reserved.

San Jose – blurbIQ Inc., whose patent pending interactive video advertising platform allows advertisers and publishers to use game mechanics to drive consumers to interact with their video messaging to remember brands at the point of purchase, today announced the launch of its cross platform interactive video ad units. Brands can now deploy and measure their interactive video campaign’s messaging across the digital marketing spectrum – from online pre-roll and in-banner units, to mobile, tablets, social media, and interactive TV – with one technology provider.

With game mechanics, blurbIQ inserts questions as video streams creating an unobtrusive game environment for the consumer to interactive with the video messaging. With its new cross-platform interactive video ad units, blurbIQ can create and execute video campaigns on any platform within 48 hours. As a result consumers pay closer attention to brand messages producing effect, cost efficient results. For example, after a 30 day cross platform interactive video campaign, a leading online financial company saw video completion rates as high as 81%, interaction rates of 38%, a click through rate of 5.86% and most importantly, achieved a 428% reduction in their cost per acquisition.

“Consumers want to be entertained instead of being annoyed by advertising. blurbIQ turns ordinary video into interactive video that engages, entertains, and educates like never before. We drive consumers to interact with and understand the messaging of the video,” says Scott Reese, CEO of blurbIQ Inc. “When consumers remember your brand at the point of purchase, they will buy your products.”

Advertisers and publishers are also able to serve blurbIQ’s interactive video in-stream as blurbIQ is fully compliant with VAST/VPAID standards developed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

“We have always operated under the premise that advertisers must be able to deliver their interactive video content wherever they want easily and quickly,” adds Mr. Reese, CEO of blurbIQ Inc. “Over the last few months our team has built out the necessary tools to allow for a one stop shop environment.”

Leading brands, agencies, ad networks, and publishers can now leverage the blurbIQ Interactive Video Advertising Platform as part of the company’s engagement, brand messaging measurement, and ad retention strategy. With quick time analytics dashboards, dynamic insertion of brand questions within video, brand rankings to encourage replay and sharing, brands are truly able to measure video campaign performance that ensures return on advertising spend are maximized.

Quiz questions pertain to brand massage

blurbIQ (http://www.blurbiq.com ) is the leader in interactive gamification of video across the digital marketing spectrum. The patent pending technology overlays video with brand and trivia questions as the video streams. blurbIQ turns video commercials into interactive “games” that dramatically increases viewer engagements, video completion rates, and ad retention. These interactive video units are distributed as pre-roll, in banner, mobile, tablet, and social media advertising units. blurbIQ provides quick time analytics dashboards so brands can measure every interaction with their video content like never before. Since launching in July of 2010 blurbIQ has acquired key accounts such as E*Trade, Duracell, Church & Dwight and General Motors.

New York, NY – According to a new study by VINDICO, the leading online video ad management platform, mid-roll video ads offer advertisers higher performance than pre-roll or post-roll video ads within long-form video environments. VINDICO analyzed millions of video ad impressions within the consumer and packaged goods category delivered by VINDICO over the past 12 months to identify viewing trends and help marketers set benchmarks for advertising success.

VINDICO’s data revealed that mid-roll ad placements in the study worked better than pre- or post-roll ads: 93 percent of mid-roll video ads were viewed in their entirety, compared with only 83 percent completion of post-roll video ads and 85 percent completion of pre-roll video ads. Pre- and post-roll ads are attached to most ad-supported content regardless of length, whereas mid-roll ad placements are typically found only in longer-form online content, such as in the middle of a TV program or movie.

“The industry has grown accustomed to predominantly using pre-roll ads as the main vehicle for delivering brand messages via video,” said Matt Timothy, president of VINDICO. “However, our data shows that online viewers may respond better to mid-roll ads particularly because they are delivered within ‘full meal’ video environments as opposed to ‘snacking’ opportunities, such as a movie trailer or video clip. As a result, mid-roll within episodic content where the viewer is invested in watching the full video event tends to offer higher completion rates. Advertisers should consider giving more emphasis to mid-roll when developing their video media plans.”

The study also revealed that many video ad campaigns that run in long-form environments lack sufficient labeling of pod position, suggesting there is a huge opportunity to further understand online viewing behavior.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for marketers and publishers to better understand not only which pod placements work best, such as pre-roll or post-roll, but also the frequency and timing of such video ad placements within each piece of content,” Timothy added.

Serving almost 40 percent of all online video ads, VINDICO provides advertisers and leading agency groups such GroupM, Havas, IPG, Publicis and Omnicom the easiest way to buy, serve and track all online video ad campaigns with a single video ad management platform. A market leader, VINDICO delivered more than 15.7 billion video ad impressions over the last 12 months, including five billion video ads in Q2 2011, up from 1.8 billion in Q2 2010.

About VINDICO
As the first ad management platform dedicated exclusively to video, VINDICO allows advertisers to buy, serve, track and measure all of their online video ad activity. Since 2006, VINDICO has been the gold standard in online video platforms, providing standardized reporting and analytics for the online video industry. The power of online video isn’t just the audiences it reaches and how it reaches them. Its strength also derives from its ability to track an ad campaign and precisely measure the campaign’s effectiveness. For more information, please visit http://www.vindicogroup.com. For insights into the dynamic landscape of online video advertising, follow VINDICO on Twitter: http://twitter.com/VINDICO_Group.

NEW YORK – Online targeting platform leader [x+1], www.xplusone.com, announced the availability of Media-Aware Home Pages, a new solution that connects display media experiences with personalized website messaging by going beyond clicks to leverage user interactions across the entire Internet. The launch follows a three-month joint development beta period with a consumer subscription services client.

Media-Aware Home Pages know what online media consumers have been exposed to even if they didn’t click on a display ad. It then uses this information to empower marketers to provide more relevant and consistent website messages to improve campaign engagement and performance. With a focus on quality at scale, Media-Aware Home Pages don’t retarget publisher audiences.

“This solution distinguishes [x+1] from ad technology providers who require clicks in order to capture and leverage customer experience data,” said Toby Korner, Vice President of Client Solutions for [x+1]. “With click-through rates (CTR) for online ads averaging only about 0.2% to 0.3%, this process is very limited in reach. Media-Aware Home Pages open up vast new opportunities for marketers to tailor messages to audiences they couldn’t before, going beyond the click to deliver greater content and message relevance and results.”

Media-Aware Home Pages work with [x+1]’s Media+1 and Site+1 products, and are fully integrated with Origin, [x+1]’s Digital Marketing Hub. Benefits include:

- The integration of display ads with website content personalization for a consistent consumer experience
- Better-performing websites
- More insight and understanding of online behavior

For example, a man visits a sports-themed website and is exposed to a company’s ad. Later, if he searches for the company or its product, or visits the company’s site, the Media-Aware Home Page creates a consistent site experience specifically geared to him and his interest in sports – even though he never clicked on an ad.

“The more personalized someone’s online experience and interaction with a brand, the more likely they’ll be to take a desired action – a registration, a purchase,” said Korner.

Using a tracking pixel, Media-Aware Home Pages record who was served which ad and where. When a user later visits a company’s activated Media-Aware Home Page, either through search or typing in a URL, [x+1]’s patented Predictive Optimization Engine (POE) leverages sophisticated mathematical models to determine the optimal messaging for the webpage based on the user’s previous site and ad exposure.

The process happens automatically and in milliseconds, eliminating any manual creation of landing pages by the marketer.

About [x+1]

For more information on [x+1] and digital marketing integration, visit www.xplusone.com; follow on twitter @xplusone.

LOS ANGELES – Online publishing is thriving according to global research by Econsultancy and the Rubicon Project published today, with 73% of publishers saying online display advertising revenue has gone up in last year. Nearly half of publishers (44%) now sell their online display advertising via real-time bidding (RTB), which itself is delivering twenty percent more revenue to publishers. The research also found that two thirds (66%) of publishers sell inventory through online advertising networks.

the Rubicon Project, the US-based advertising technology company, commissioned Econsultancy to survey more than 1,000 internet advertising professionals, including nearly 500 online publishers, sales houses and rep firms, in August and September 2011. The survey follows the publication of a companion report which delivered analysis of similar questions to advertisers and agencies.

Increasing Revenue for Publishers

- The vast majority of publishers surveyed say that their rate card prices have either gone up since last year (40%) or stayed the same (46%). Only 14% of respondents say pricing has decreased. Direct-sold premium inventory accounts for 55% of sales volume, delivering 67% of revenue for publishers (this number is somewhat lower in the US, where 50% of inventory is sold by direct sales team and accounts for 62% of revenue).
- Publishers in the United States are more likely than their European counterparts to say that rate card prices have gone up in the last year (46% of US respondents compared to 36% in Europe).

A similar survey in 2009 found that only 53% of publishers had enjoyed increased display advertising revenues over the previous year. The research shows that supply-side platforms are playing a prominent role in the online advertising ecosystem where real-time bidding is becoming increasingly prevalent. Publishers cite the main benefits of working with supply-side platforms as the ability to open up inventory to RTB (58%), incremental revenue (54%) and extraction of greater value from inventory (48%).

Impact of RTB; growth of Private Marketplaces

- On average, real-time bidding has given publishers 20% uplift on their remnant display ad revenue.
- One in 10 publishers say they have established a private marketplace, and further 35% say they are planning to.
- More than three quarters (78%) of publishers with private exchanges say that this has resulted in demonstrable revenue and a positive lift on yield.

“The truth is in the data, and this report shows that RTB represents a watershed moment for publishers around the globe. RTB is having a positive impact on publishers’ cross-channel monetization strategy, and aligns squarely with the value advertisers are gaining,” said Kara Weber, SVP of Marketing at the Rubicon Project. “We predict that 2012 will mark the confluence of two key trends: a massive influx of new dollars coming online, accompanied and powered by RTB and the broader burst of innovation around the automation of digital ad buying and selling. And most importantly, publishers who leverage a single platform to control access to their inventory, and monetize that asset across all buying channels, can ensure that every impression is sold for the highest possible price.”

The Role of Online Advertising Networks

Econsultancy also surveyed online advertising networks around the world and discovered that 37% of online advertising networks are using RTB for both buying and selling inventory. Around a third (31%) are using RTB just for buying, while 7% are using real-time bidding just for selling. 60% of the ad networks surveyed revealed they buy inventory from other ad networks and 60% buy from online advertising exchanges.

For publishers working with ad networks:

- Three-quarters (74%) of US publishers sell through ad networks, compared to 61% in Europe.
A third (33%) of publishers say they work with more ad networks than a year ago, but 28% work with fewer ad networks.
- On average, globally, 42% of display inventory goes to ad networks, increasing to 51% for the US but decreasing to 34% for Europe.
- On average, globally, 35% of display advertising revenue comes from ad networks (42% in North America and 27% in Europe), up from 33% in 2009.
- One third of pubs do not work with advertising nets and the challenges faced when working with them have increased. One third of all publishers consider channel conflict and data leakage as problems.

Linus Gregoriadis, Econsultancy’s Research Director, added, “This research shows a positive commercial environment for publishers globally, with rate card prices holding steady or increasing for the vast majority of responding companies. Real-time bidding is creating opportunities for publishers who are having to adapt quickly to a fast-changing environment. Ad networks and exchanges continue to play an important role, while supply-side platforms are becoming increasingly influential in the marketplace.”

“The research also looks at how publishers are reacting to data privacy legislation, with half of respondents saying they are worried about changes relating to the use of cookies. Worryingly, a significant proportion of publishers (21%) have a poor understanding of data privacy law and its implications.”

This is Econsultancy’s second Online Publishers Survey Report, produced in association with the Rubicon Project. The study, supported by the IAB UK, IAB France, IAB Europe and AOP, follows a similar piece of research carried out in 2009 and is based on a survey of over 1,000 online advertising professionals carried out in August and September 2011. This report is specifically focused on results from almost 500 publishers around the world. A copy of the full report is available for download from here.

About the Rubicon Project

the Rubicon Project launched in 2007 with a mission to automate buying and selling across the $65 billion global online advertising industry. Powered by data-driven algorithms and pricing intelligence data, REVV, the company’s yield optimization platform, has optimized nearly two trillion ad transactions for more than 450 of the largest properties on the Internet. REVV helps premium Web publishers like Time Inc., News International and CareerBuilder make more money by optimizing their ad space, eliminating unnecessary ad operations costs and protecting their brands. The platform powers the REVV Marketplace, the world’s largest premium display advertising marketplace. More than 650 ad networks, exchanges and DSPs access premium inventory and audiences through the REVV Marketplace and its unparalleled reach of more than 575 million unique users. Headquartered in Los Angeles, with offices in New York, Seattle, London, Paris, Hamburg and Sydney, the company is backed by $60 million in funding from Clearstone Venture Partners, Mayfield Fund, IDG Ventures Asia, Comcast Ventures and News Corporation.

About Econsultancy

Econsultancy is a digital publishing and training group used by more than 200,000 Internet professionals every month. Econsultancy has offices in New York and London, and hosts more than 100 events every year in the US and UK. Many of the world’s most famous brands use Econsultancy to educate and train their staff.

New York – PubMatic (www.PubMatic.com),  a media technology company that provides a holistic inventory, data and advertising revenue optimization platform for digital publishers, today released a study conducted with research firm IDC showing that Real-Time Bidding (RTB) will amount to $6.47 billion in ad spend by 2015 in the U. S. and major markets in Western Europe. The IDC findings, led by Karsten Weide, Program Vice President, Digital Media and Entertainment, have been published in PubMatic’s Ad Revenue Report, which published in conjunction with the Ad Revenue 4 conference taking place today in New York City.

PubMatic’s Ad Revenue Report is available here: www.pubmatic.com/adrevenuereport

The IDC research analyzes the state of RTB across the United States and in Western European nations France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The report estimates the current and past spending on RTB-based display ad sales and forecasts yearly growth until 2015. Highlights from the research include:

·      RTB-Based Spending: By 2015, RTB-based spending will stand for 27% in the United States (up from 10% in 2011), 25% in the UK (up from 6%), 21% in France (upfrom 4%) and 20% in Germany (up from 4%). Total spending on RTB in the US will reach $5.1 billion; $680 MM for the UK; $219 MM for France; and $495 MM forGermany.
·      Expected Growth: Display advertising sales based on RTB will experience strong growth until 2015 in the US (71% from 2010-2015), the UK (114%), France (103%) and Germany (99%).
·      Direct vs. Indirect Sales Related to RTB: By 2015, the majority of indirect ad revenue volume will be traded using RTB in the US and the most developed European markets. By 2015, RTB-based direct sales will contribute to 15% of total RTB sales in the US, 7% in the UK, 14% in Germany, and 13% in France.

“Real-Time Bidding is rapidly penetrating the display ad market, with spending nearly doubling in 2011. Furthermore, we expect it to double again in 2012. The value it brings to both publishers and marketers is undeniable,” said Karsten Weide, Program Vice President, Digital Media and Entertainment, IDC.

“Spending on RTB will grow not just for indirectly sold inventory – premium inventory will also be sold via RTB on a much greater scale in the near future,” said Rajeev Goel, Co-Founder and CEO of PubMatic. “The benefits of automation are clear for all parties in the display ecosystem.”

Catalysts for RTB
RTB has been growing due to its promise of improving return on investment for publishers, agencies and advertisers. Through RTB, publishers stand to improve yield, automate sales processes, and reduce costs. Agencies and advertisers benefit because RTB trading improves campaign efficiency and return on ad spend.

The Future: Automating Direct Sales
The mounting pressure to improve profitability will compel more and more publishers to transition into RTB-based trading of directly sold inventory. As advertisers become more comfortable with the process for indirect ad sales, they will demand more ways of incorporating it with ad buys, which will include media bought directly from publishers.

Methodology
Information for the Ad Revenue Report was gathered by IDC through multiple sources including in depth interviews with senior online advertising industry executives in the US, UK, France and Germany as well as IDC’s own proprietary research. IDC uses a predictive model to forecast RTB data.

The full IDC report is available here: www.pubmatic.com/idc

About PubMatic
PubMatic’s (http://www.PubMatic.com) ad management and monetization technology combines an impression-level ad auction, the most comprehensive brand protection tools, and enterprise ad operations support to give the Web’s top publishers the most control over their revenue and brand. Some of the world’s most respected online publishers have chosen to work with PubMatic, including The Huffington Post, eBay, United Online, TV Guide, and the majority of the comScore Top 10.

PubMatic is privately held, backed by funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Nexus Venture Partners, and Helion Ventures, and has seven offices around the world in the US, Europe, and Asia.

RESTON, VA – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, and dunnhumbyUSA, a global leader in building brand value for consumer goods and retail companies, released results of multiple studies measuring the offline sales impact of online display advertising for consumer packaged goods (CPG) advertisers. Retail sales were measured by analytically linking the permission-based comScore panel of one million U.S. Internet users to their anonymous loyalty card in-store purchase data provided by dunnhumbyUSA; no identifiable personal data was disclosed. By comparing the in-store brand buying of households exposed to online advertising with that of households not exposed, it was possible to determine the impact of online advertising campaigns. The results of the studies indicate that exposure to online display ads can lead to improved in-store sales for CPG brands.

“Effective advertising has always been about increasing awareness, favorability and purchase intent in order to increase in-store conversion,” said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni. “After several years of conducting advertising effectiveness research for CPG brands, we are learning how digital campaigns can lift sales in retail stores. It’s now clear that online ad campaigns should be an integral part of any CPG marketer’s integrated communications strategy.”

“The comScore dunnhumbyUSA research highlights the potential impact of an integrated, customer-driven approach across channels,” added Matthew Keylock, Senior Vice President, New Business Development & Partnerships at dunnhumbyUSA. “With these results we are one step closer to a more comprehensive understanding of what motivates shoppers to buy and how online advertising can play a significant role along the path to purchase.”

CPG Campaigns Show Median Offline Sales Lift of 21 Percent

An analysis of multiple CPG online ad campaigns that involved comparing the offline buying of households exposed to advertising with the buying behavior of households who were not exposed revealed a median in-store sales lift of 21 percent among the exposed households, with five out of every six campaigns generating a positive sales lift. Approximately 70 percent of campaigns generated a double-digit sales lift, and more than 40 percent generated lifts of at least 30 percent.

Ads Anonymously Targeted to In-Store Brand Buyers Drive Incremental Conversion

comScore also analyzed the offline sales results of a limited set of ad effectiveness campaigns that leveraged a new advertising product called Microsoft CPG Online Effect. This solution uses sophisticated predictive targeting algorithms powered by anonymous in-store buying data from dunnhumbyUSA coupled with online browsing data from comScore. These targeting algorithms are deployed by Microsoft Corp. across its network of sites.

The results showed an in-store sales lift of 42 percent, double the lift from campaigns that were not targeted using this approach. These results demonstrate how targeting algorithms can help improve efficiency and effectiveness in display ad delivery, providing more relevant ads to consumers, improved ROI for advertisers and higher CPMs for publishers. Dr Pepper Snapple Group is one of more than 20 CPG advertisers that have used this purchase-based targeting solution.

*Non-purchased based targeting includes, but is not limited to, the following types of media-placement strategies: contextual, audience, run of site/run of network, etc.

Mr. Fulgoni added: “Based on these results, the power of purchase-based ad targeting is clear. By delivering a relevant and persuasive message to the appropriate consumer segment, brand buying at retail stores can be increased substantially. It’s clear that the level of accuracy in reaching a brand’s consumer target that is possible with the Internet can drive ROI several times higher than what can be obtained using traditional media channels.”

About comScore
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

About dunnhumbyUSA
dunnhumby is the global leader in personalizing customers’ experience of retailers and brands. Analyzing data from over 350 million people in 25 countries, we help companies put customers at the center of every decision. We use our insight to improve customers’ experience of stores and communications to earn their lifetime loyalty. Our work with some of the world’s biggest retailers and brands has demonstrated that those companies that deliver value to customers through personalization become and stay their customers’ first choice. This strategic approach to putting the customer first in business improves our clients’ like-for-like sales and profit margins – or, put simply, their brand value. dunnhumbyUSA is a joint venture of The Kroger Company and London-based dunnhumby. Employing more than 1,500 people in 30 offices in Europe, Asia and the Americas, dunnhumby serves a prestigious list of companies including The Kroger Co., Tesco, Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kimberly-Clark, Macy’s, Panera Bread Company, PepsiCo and Procter & Gamble. For more information, visit www.dunnhumby.com.

Otilia Otlacan: YuMe has just launched three ad units, all focused on increasing the brand engagement of video ads. Can you comment on what have been the drivers behind this launch, what has made you look into new ad formats?
Scot McLernon: This particular launch was primarily driven by findings from our brand advertiser clients and our Innovation Lab. Many YuMe advertisers want to run interactive ads on the YuMe Connected Audience Network as opposed to plain pre-rolls that lack opportunities for immediate, on-the-fly engagement. As a result, we now offer interactivity to all advertisers, particularly those seeking high brand engagement metrics.

Video ad innovation is not new to YuMe. This launch simply underscores our commitment to designing high-impact video ad experiences. We will continue to innovate and launch new ad units through our new ad framework and powerful video player technology. Moreover, we will continue to build and serve ad executions that reach audiences wherever they are watching video: at work, at home, and everywhere in between.

Otilia Otlacan: I have taken a look at the new YuMe Ads gallery and noticed there is quite a variety of social interaction that can be added to a previously standard video ad. Could you tell me a bit more on how the integration with various social media platforms works and whether there are any requirements for the publishers carrying these ads?
Scot McLernon: YuMe Ads allow for multiple hooks into social media integration such as driving brand followers and sharing brand videos on popular destinations like Facebook and Twitter. With that in mind, our brand advertisers utilize social interactions in three ways to build upon their social media presence and create a viral impact:
1.    Increasing fan base via follows or likes for opportunities to re-market or upsell.
2.    Sharing video ads or other video content, such as product demos and client testimonials to allow for further user engagement.
3.    Driving traffic to apps on social networks to drive brand consideration, improve recall, and [eventually] increase purchase intent.

YuMe publishers are not required to take further action in order to serve these ads as they are already equipped with this functionality. Also, new YuMe platform publishers and app developers can begin to serve socially rich, interactive video ads quickly and easily.

Otilia Otlacan: It is my understanding that these new interactive video ad formats can also be delivered on TV. What types of interaction and what engagement metrics are available in this case?
Scot McLernon: YuMe can report all interactions with our screen-agnostic video ad units. However, each connected TV environment into which we serve video ads varies in the level of interactivity support for video ads. Since some devices may not accept interactivity, Yume Ads can easily adopt to each manufacturer’s video ad environment. Whatever the case may be, YuMe tracks and reports on essential video ad metrics.

Otilia Otlacan: Of all new features offered by YuMe’s three new ad formats, which one is the most employed by advertisers so far?
Scot McLernon: While the Ready-Mades have proven to be quite popular among advertisers on cross-screen, integrated campaigns, the new YuMe Pre-Roll is the hottest new ad format, both on web-only and mobile/tablet video campaigns.

Otilia Otlacan: Earlier this summer, YuMe has strengthened its presence in Europe . Considering the differences in online privacy regulations between the EU and the US, do you have a different approach in working with your EU-based advertisers, as far as socially-enabled ads go?
Scot McLernon: YuMe complies with regional targeting and re-targeting regulations and does not map social media data to cookies. YuMe’s socially-enabled ads drive highly engaged users to brands’ various social campaigns to encourage interactions with advertisers’ landing pages, such as a Facebook fan page or official Twitter account. That is exactly what our brand advertisers want: to drive engagement within their already established social media channels.

Otilia Otlacan: Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
Scot McLernon: Brand marketers are increasingly looking to reach audiences via video ads across all screens and to obtain deeper insights into how viewers engage on those different delivery mediums. YuMe’s socially rich, interactive ad units help brand advertisers deliver a consistent video ad experience across any screen with the same interactive features, while sharing detailed analytics to provide insight into campaign performance on each platform. Moreover, allowing for sharing of video ads yields a greater reach of brands’ marketing messages, as impressions driven by a friend, colleague, and/or community recommendations on social networks can help a brand’s video ad campaign go viral.

About Scot McLernon, Chief Revenue Officer – YuMe

Scot brings over 15 years of interactive marketing experience to the YuMe team. He has built and led three successful web sales teams, including at CBS Marketwatch and CBS Interactive. Most recently, McLernon was President of Upstream Group, Inc. where he developed Habitat–the industry’s only combined training and networking event for sellers. 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 his accomplishments as an innovator and industry pioneer, McLernon received the ad:tech Industry Achievement Award in 2007.

REDWOOD CITY, CA – YuMe, the leading relevant video advertising technology company, today announced the availability of new product offerings focused on increasing brand engagement impact of video ads. The new initiative, YuMe Ads, consists of an entirely new base pre-roll unit that features automatic hooks into Facebook, Twitter, YouTube campaigns and features supplemental brand awareness and response elements. Additionally, other units in the YuMe ad portfolio include Ready-Made, quick to market experiences that incorporate key interactive features, and a brand new Custom-Made offering that lets brands create one-of-a-kind video advertising experiences.

YuMe’s unique player technology and video ad framework enables brands to offer interactive experiences natively on publisher sites, providing advertisers with scale across three screens — mobile, online and TV, reaching audiences wherever they are consuming video content.

“Consumers are actively consuming online video and brand advertisers are getting more adventurous and creative about their cross-screen video ad campaigns and offering consumers more ways to interact with their brands,” said YuMe CEO Jayant Kadambi. “These new interactive video ad formats will help brands connect the dots and engage with consumers more fully wherever they are viewing content—whether it be on their phone, PC or TV.”

“With YuMe Ads, we were able to successfully combine both engagement and response objectives in one unit that led to stronger brand recall and purchase intent in a single execution,” said Kelley Elizabeth Train, Group Digital Director for Omnicom PHD. “We have already experienced a 20 percent increase in viewer downloads and trial sign-ups from the custom ad units as opposed to just the traditional video and companion banner. Moving forward we aim to leverage highly interactive ad units in more unique ways to allow the media buys to feel richer and have the ability to answer multiple business objectives.”

Three New Units

YuMe Ads includes three distinct category ad offerings with interactivity and standardized cross-platform compatibility.
·         YuMe Pre-Roll: Enhances traditional pre-roll and supports up to three interactivity options, from a rich set of options, with zero turnaround time and no pricing surcharge. Optional interactions include: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Special Offers, and Store/Dealer Locator and more.

·         Ready-Made: Quick to market for advanced mix-and-match capability and builds off existing pre-roll video with support for special in-player web API integrations (Twitter, Google, YouTube, etc.).

·         Custom-Made: Built to order signature ad units with massive in-player interaction and flexibility around branding. Also supports special in-player web API integrations.

Redefining Pre-Roll

As brands build extensive campaigns that encompass Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social content sites, video campaigns are an important portal into their broader campaigns. With the new YuMe pre-roll, brands will be able to select up to three optional links as overlay buttons on their video ads, including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, other websites, offers, and dealer/retail information. This format replaces the current pre-roll format from YuMe and commands the same CPM as a traditional video-only pre-roll.

Ready-Made and Custom-Made Units

Ready-made ad units extend flexibility for multiple video combinations, enabling the addition of sophisticated animations, social and interactive features, and supplemental videos and even rendering a microsite experience in the player.  Encompassing some of YuMe’s most popular formats such as PowerRoll, an interactive banner across the bottom of the pre-roll, and InSynch formats that synchronize with other elements of a page, ready-made ad units now include more interactivity and extend to the mobile environment with all new Tap2Motion and 2Motion ad units.

Custom-made ads provide a wholly unique experience, enabling endless creative options specific to the brand and their desired viewer experience. In addition, YuMe’s built-in advanced analytics track all user interactions and provides multi-level insight to marketers seeking to measure their brand impact, such as interaction rates, brand lift, campaign ROI and overall viewer engagement.

For more information on YuMe Ads, please visit: http://www.yume.com/ad_gallery_all.

About YuMe
YuMe is the leading, relevant video advertising technology company. It enables top-tier publishers to maximize profits on their professional video content while safely delivering the most effective advertising campaigns for major brands and their agencies. YuMe’s patent-pending Relevance Engine powers both its premium in-stream video ad network, The YuMe Connected Audience Network, and its industry-leading advertising management solutions, ACE for Publishers and ACE for Advertisers. The YuMe Relevance Engine matches the right ad to the right audience on whatever screen they are viewing—PC, mobile, or connected TV. As a result, YuMe gives publishers and advertisers unprecedented reach, brand safety, contextual relevance, controlled syndication, unique YuMe Ads and consistent delivery across all digital media platforms. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with its European headquarters in London. The company is backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and Intel Capital. For more information, visit www.YuMe.com, follow @YuMevideo on Twitter, or like YuMe on Facebook at www.facebook.com/YuMevideo.

NEW YORK – Crisp Media, a cross platform rich media advertising provider, announced today that it has added several new interactive features to its Adhesion ad units — including 3D, video and animation campaign capabilities. Adhesion is a persistent, above the fold overlay ad placement that outperforms standard banners by more than 2 to 1, and enables publishers to sell premium mobile inventory more effectively and at higher prices. Adhesion is the perfect springboard for mobile rich media campaigns on smartphones as ads are kept in view while scrolling vertically up and down the page.

Adhesion for iPad expands the value proposition for advertisers who want to run rich media on tablets. Safari is the most popular app on iPad, but it suffers from a major formatting problem — publisher sites cannot control the ad experience when users pinch and zoom desktop formatted pages, leaving ads missing from the page or pixelated. Adhesion corrects this problem. Beyond being an advanced placement, Adhesion layers on a bevy of new interactive features aimed at driving up dwell time, without overloading the user or the mobile network. Adhesion’s new features include enhanced video performance, animated creative without Flash and accelerometer controlled 3D effects without plug-ins.

Over the summer Crisp launched a wide set of campaigns that leverage Adhesion’s new design flexibility and deep device functionality.

http://www.crispmedia.com/content/rich-media-ad-showcase

“The introduction of these new features provides advertisers and agencies worldwide with an imaginative, dynamic way to interact with mobile consumers,” said Boris Fridman, CEO, Crisp Media. “Adhesion ads are built on Crisp Engage, a flexible, standards-ready rich media platform that publishers and agencies alike can trust to run their campaigns across any HTML5 capable device.”

“As the premier digital media company, Yahoo! is dedicated to working only with trusted partners to deliver innovative advertising solutions for the world’s top brands. Crisp has been one of those strong partners for us in the mobile and tablet space,” said Alex Linde, Director of Mobile & Tablet Advertising, Yahoo!. “Crisp offers a compelling ad format for both advertisers and users – in fact, it’s been at the heart of some of the highest performing campaigns across Yahoo!’s mobile experiences.”

“Adhesion is the most advanced placement on the market. It ends banner blindness on any sized screen,” added Fridman. “Finally, publishers can monetize desktop sites viewed in iPad Safari with rich media ads, and advertisers can stop wasting money on banners that are invisible or distorted on the iPad.”

About Crisp

Crisp is a pioneer of mobile ad products that make HTML5 advertising scalable across device platforms for native apps and browsers. Crisp Engage, an interactive ad platform designed to deliver the slickest ads to multiple screens, enables agencies to easily build, manage and measure rich media advertising campaigns on connected devices. Crisp is also a founding member of the Open Rich Media for Mobile Advertising (ORMMA) standard API, an Open Source project for letting agencies deliver HTML ads to native applications. Leading brands — including GM, Ford, Toyota, VW, IBM, Intel, HP, Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Coca-Cola, HBO and Paramount Pictures — have run Crisp ads. For more information visit www.crispmedia.com.