Yahoo to Acquire BrightRoll

November 11, 2014 04:40 PM Eastern Standard Time

SUNNYVALE, Calif. & SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and BrightRoll, Inc. today announced a definitive agreement for Yahoo to acquire BrightRoll, a leading programmatic video advertising platform. The transaction will combine Yahoo’s premium desktop and mobile video advertising inventory with BrightRoll’s programmatic video platform and publisher relationships to bring substantial value to advertisers on both platforms. BrightRoll is a large, growing and profitable business with net revenues expected to exceed $100 million this year.

Yahoo expects the transaction to enhance its EBITDA.

“We believe the next step for programmatic video advertising as an industry is to extend and
standardize globally, make cross-device buying simple and measurable, and complement and
integrate with TV.”

The acquisition will accelerate Yahoo’s strategy, which is focused on search, communications, and digital content through growth in mobile, social, native, and video advertising. Acquiring BrightRoll will dramatically strengthen Yahoo’s video advertising platform, making it the largest in the US.

Online video advertising is increasingly fragmented across thousands, if not millions, of sites and mobile apps. More so than with traditional broadcast television, advertisers are seeking ways to buy online video advertising at scale across many sites in fewer, simpler transactions. BrightRoll provides an elegant solution, aggregating high-quality publishers together into a unified network and utilizing programmatic advertising and aggregation to allow real-time buying on the largest set of online video advertising inventory available. BrightRoll’s approach not only benefits advertisers and publishers, but also improves experiences for consumers, through better quality, more relevant advertisements.

BrightRoll is the industry’s leading programmatic video advertising platform for reaching audiences across desktop, mobile and connected TV.

BrightRoll powers digital video advertising for the world’s largest brands and agencies, including 87 of the AdAge Top 100 US advertisers, all of the top 15 advertising agencies, and all 10 of the leading demand-side platforms.

BrightRoll served more video ads and reached more consumers in the US in 2014 than any other platform, according to comScore. Tens of thousands of sites and mobile apps send approximately two billion requests per day to BrightRoll to monetize the inventory they worked hard to create

“Video, along with mobile, social, and native, is driving a surge in digital advertising. Here at Yahoo, video is one of the largest growth opportunities, and BrightRoll is a terrific, strategic and financially compelling fit for our video advertising business,” said Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO. "As with every acquisition, we have been extremely thoughtful about our approach to the video advertising space.

This acquisition will accelerate the growth of both companies – we can help BrightRoll scale to even more advertisers globally and they can bring their tremendous platform offering to Yahoo’s advertisers. The combination builds positive momentum for Yahoo’s broader display advertising business in 2015.”

“We believe the next step for programmatic video advertising as an industry is to extend and standardize globally, make cross-device buying simple and measurable, and complement and integrate with TV,” said Tod Sacerdoti, BrightRoll CEO and Founder. “We are excited to join Yahoo to materially advance efforts in each of these areas. We’re still in the early innings as an industry, and together, BrightRoll and Yahoo are committed to the vision of helping grow the entire video advertising ecosystem.”

Following the closing of the acquisition, expected in Q1 2015, BrightRoll will continue to offer its current suite of industry-leading products and services. With Yahoo’s additional investment and global support, BrightRoll’s platform and advertising solutions will continue to improve and expand. BrightRoll will retain their talented team of approximately 400 employees, all of whom will remain completely focused on digital video advertising.

Yahoo is acquiring BrightRoll for approximately $640 million in cash. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions.

FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE

2014 Video, Mobile, Display & Programmatic Advertising Conferences - via AdExchanger.com

October 2014

• Predictive Analytics World, Boston, Oct 5-9
• Pubcon, Las Vegas, Oct 6-9
• Inbound Marketing Summit, Boston, Oct 7-8
• E-Tourism Summit, San Francisco, Oct 8-9
• C3 2014, NYC, Oct 8-9
• MIT 2014 Internet of Things Conference, Cambridge, Oct 8-10
• World Publishing Expo, Amsterdam, Oct 13-15
• Luxury Interactive, NYC, Oct 13-15
• Dreamforce '14, SF, Oct 13-16
• Strata Conference + Hadoop World, NYC, Oct 15-17
• ANA Annual Conference, Orlando, FL, Oct 15-18
• AdMonsters OPS, Germany, Oct 16
• GigaOM Mobilize, San Francisco, Oct 16-17
• Pivot Convention, NYC, Oct 16-17
• BOLO Conference, Scottsdale, AZ, Oct 19-21
• AdMonsters Marketing Tech Forum, San Diego, Oct 19-22
• Digiday Agency Summit, Austin, Oct 20-22
• The Market Research Event, Boca Raton, FL, Oct 20-22
• ad:tech London, London, Oct 21-22
• Structure Connect, SF, Oct 21-22
• Shopper Marketing Expo, Minneapolis, Oct 21-23
• AdMonsters Media Analytics Summit, San Diego, Oct 22-24
• Predictive Analytics World, London, Oct 23-24
• DMA Conference, San Diego, Oct 25-30
• iMedia Breakthrough Summit, Atlanta, Oct 26-28
• SearchLove, London, Oct 27-28
• WSJ.D Live, Laguna Beach, CA, Oct 27-29
• Ad Age Data Conference, NYC, Oct 28-29
• Conversion Conference, London, Oct 29-30

November 2014

• IAB Ad Operations Summit, NYC, Nov 3
• ClickZ Live, Chicago, Nov 3-6
• Predictive Analytics World, Berlin, Nov 4-5
• Conversion Conference, Berlin, Nov 4-5
• GigaOM RoadMap, San Francisco, Nov 5-6
• AdMonsters Screens, San Francisco, Nov 5-6
• ad:tech New York, NYC, Nov 5-6
• Internet Summit, Raleigh, NC, Nov 11-13
• AdMonsters Publisher Forum, Austin, TX, Nov 9-12
• Quantcast Supernova Big Data Summit, NYC, Nov 12
• Search Marketing Expo, Milan, Nov 13-14
• Digiday Programmatic Summit, Bonita Springs, FL, Nov 17-19
• Roadmap 2014, SF, Nov 18-19
• Real-Time Advertising Summit, London, Nov 19-20
• Search Marketing Expo, Las Vegas, Nov 19-21
• O'Reilly Strata Conference, Barcelona, Nov 19-21
• Admonsters Screens, London, Nov 22

December 2014

• Business Insider IGNITION: Future of Digital, NYC, Dec 1-3
• ClickZ Live, Singapore, Dec 2-4
• Digiday Brand Summit, Deer Valley, UT, Dec 7-9
• iMedia Agency Summit, Bonita Springs, FL, Dec 7-10
• Dallas Digital Summit, Dallas, Dec 9-10
• Search Marketing Expo, Beijing, Dec 10-11

Full list Here at Adexchanger

Yahoo in Talks to Acquire BrightRoll

repost from TechCrunch - Posted by Ingrid Lunden (@ingridlunden), Sarah Buhr (@sarahbuhr)

Yahoo has been building up its video and video advertising content, and we have heard that it may make another key acquisition in the area to further raise its game. The company is in talks to acquire BrightRoll, the cross-platform digital video advertising service.

TechCrunch has heard that term sheets have been signed, and that the price, if the deal is completed, could be anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion, but looks likely to be in the region of $700 million – $725 million.

Yahoo is currently under pressure from activist investor Starboard Value to consider a breakup and/or sale of the company. This could potentially have an impact on negotiations. Tim Armstrong, the CEO of AOL — Starboard’s target for a merger — earlier today said that a Yahoo sale does not figure as part of AOL’s future plans.

Were a BrightRoll acquisition to go through, you can see Yahoo’s logic: BrightRoll is a strong competitor against the likes of Google and its leading online video property YouTube when it comes to video ad volumes and attracting publishers and advertisers.

BrightRoll’s platform — which works across web, mobile and connected TV devices — acts as an intermediary and service for both advertisers and publishers. Advertisers plan, target, optimise and report digital video ad campaigns, while publishers plug BrightRoll ad inventory into their content.

Its platform is one of the biggest of its kind: “#1 in ads served and largest reach to unique video viewers,” according to comScore in June 2014, and as pointed out by BrightRoll itself. The company works with 25 of the top 50 publishers, and 85 of the top 100 advertisers.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is in a period of change. Under CEO Marissa Mayer, the company has made more than 30 acqui-hires of smaller startups to bring more talent to the company, in part to build out a stronger mobile business. But according to a report in the WSJ, Yahoo, now flush with post-IPO Alibaba cash, will shift its acquisition strategy.

Going forward, Yahoo’s acquisitions will be more in the Tumblr model: focusing on companies that build up Yahoo’s product and revenue-generating muscle. That’s crucial, given that the company has seen several recent quarterly sales declines.

BrightRoll — estimated in 2013 to be “easily doing over $100 million in revenue” and a clear video play that could help monetise Yahoo’s long-term ambition to grow and make money from its video content — could fit the bill.

According to CrunchBase, BrightRoll has raised just over $40 million from investors that include Adams Street Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Comerica Bank, True Ventures, Trident Capital, KPG Ventures, Michael Tanne, Fabrice Grinda, Auren Hoffman and Jeff Clavier.

BrightRoll CEO Tod Sacerdoti would comment for this story. We have reached out to Yahoo for a comment and will update if we get a response.

Roku Makes Video Ad Push - WSJ

By
JACK MARSHALL - WSJ

Over-the-top streaming platform Roku already distributes content from over 1,800 different partners through set-top boxes and connected TVs. Now it wants to sell video ads alongside that content, too.

Since the beginning of the year, the company has been quietly building its own video ad network; aggregating inventory from a range of the “channels” available on its platform, packaging it and offering it up for sale to marketers and agencies.

It’s a model reminiscent of the one commonly employed by cable TV companies, whereby cable TV networks typically allow their distribution partners to sell two or three minutes of their ad time each hour.

“There are lots of ad-supported business models coming onto our platform now. We decided there was a lot more work we could be doing to help our partners with monetization,” Scott Rosenberg, Roku’s vice president of business development, told CMO Today.

Major ad-supported channels on Roku currently include Hulu, Vevo, Sony-backed Crackle, and those operated by major networks such as Fox, CBS, A&E, and the History Channel, for example. Mr. Rosenberg declined to disclose which channels Roku currently sells ads for, per its agreements with those companies, but said it represents ad space for both large and small channels on its platform.

“We’re able to access inventory fairly broadly. At one end of the spectrum we have the small partners, which are real brands with real audiences but just want to get going on the ad side so are happy to be a part of our network,” Mr. Rosenberg said.

When it comes to larger channel partners, Roku typically has access to a smaller amount of ad inventory, Mr. Rosenberg explained. In some instances it reaches arrangements with content providers whereby it distributes their content in return for access to some of their ad inventory, or a share of the ad revenue they generate from Roku viewers.

“Our deals vary significantly… We have deals where we get a share of inventory from a partner. When we put the partner on the platform we trade distribution for economics,” Mr. Rosenberg said.

Roku has spent the past nine months building its new ad division, including hiring ad sales teams in New York and Los Angeles to pitch its ad packages to marketers and agencies. It’s working with Facebook-owned ad tech firm LiveRail to inject those ads into content streamed via Roku.

According to Mr. Rosenberg, Roku works carefully alongside its partners’ sales teams to avoid any conflict, but its proposition is different to what its channel partners offer. Marketers can’t usually work with Roku to buy their way into specific shows, for example. Rather, Roku sells packages of ad space that it promises will reach a specific audience demographic across multiple channels. It’s own data can be used to help inform those ad placements, it says.

“Generally we’re not interested in selling specific channels or content. Our pitch is scale,” he said. “Brands and agencies are often looking for broad-based buys across multiple channels on Roku.”

Indeed, agency buyers say Roku’s network is potentially interesting, depending on the inventory it has access to.

“There is room for an ad network from Roku, the idea of rolling up inventory makes a lot of sense. We buy direct from the big guys, but Roku probably has inventory from content owners beyond the ones we’re capable of buying direct,” said Tracey Scheppach, Innovations Director at Publicis-owned VivaKi.

Currently there are relatively few options for buying over-the-top TV inventory at scale, Ms. Scheppach added, which could make offering such as Roku’s an appealing prospect to ad buyers.

“Apple TV and Amazon don’t offer any advertising solution,” she concluded, in reference to those companies’ own over-the-top platforms. “I’m rooting for the one that’s got some ads in there.”

Full Article Here

BusinessInsider.com - Online Video Advertising Provider Videology Is On Track To Hit $300 Million In Revenue This Year

Videology CEO Scott Ferber says his company is "on track to approach" $300 million in revenue this year, a sizeable jump from the $100 million the company reported two years ago. 

Videology CEO - Scott Ferber

Videology is an online video advertising provider that caters to buyers, sellers, and clients. The company works with big agency holding companies including WPP and Publicis, as well as big publishers like Yahoo! JAPAN.

It's also one of the few big private players left in the video ad tech space.

The company has raised $130 million in funding to date and has expanded its operation from three countries in 2011 to 28 countries today. Ferber says more than half of the company's nearly $300 million revenue is now coming from outside of the US.

Ferber says one of the best ways his company has been able to get such a huge reach, internationally, is to become integrated with the rest of the ad tech world. Videology says it is integrated with roughly 50% of the ad tech space, or at least half of Terry Kawaja's video LUMAscape chart.

Videology also says that 50% of its revenue is coming from TV buying groups, not digital buyers, even though the company is not selling them traditional, linear TV spots. Of that, Ferber says 90% of all buys are done on a reserved basis with premium inventory, similarly to how TV is purchased.

Simply put, people would rather pay for their ad to run on high-quality site and know they are guaranteed a certain number of clicks or impressions. People prefer certainty over the game of bidding and chance.

Ferber also confirms that the company is still preparing for an IPO in the near future. Ferber recently told Business Insider Videology was looking to go public in 2015, and that is, most likely, still the case. 




"We are fortunately privileged in the sense that we have the luxury to time it when we feel is best from the market and company perspective," Ferber says. "But our goal is to be prepared to literally go at any time we feel the market is right."

Full Article at Business Insider

45% of Agency Clients Plan More Digital Video Advertising

by Jack Loechner, September 9, 2014, 7:15 AM 

A recent survey of media buying agencies, conducted by Strata, found that 45% of those polled are more interested in digital/online video than they were a year ago, while streaming/online radio saw a 53% increase. Overall, 67% of agencies said that their clients’ primary focus for campaigns is video advertising (including traditional TV, cable, and network, as well as digital video).

Client Interest in Advertising on Streaming/Online Video

• More than last year (45%)
• Same as last year (49%)
• Less than last year (6%)

72% of agencies said their clients are interested in advertising on YouTube, up 5% from last year. HULU followed at 36%, a 32% jump from 3Q13. Despite the strong growth for digital video, agencies still question the value of online video ads. 47% said they are fairly confident they are getting a good value for their money in recent digital video ad purchases, while 40% say they are unsure, says the report.

Driven by television along with digital advertising, the overall ad economy is strong, as 62% of agencies say their business is increasing this quarter compared to the same time last year, says the report. Spot TV continues to be the top source for advertisers, as 55% say their clients are the most interested in that medium, the largest percentage in 22 quarters of the survey. For spot radio, 13% of agencies responded that that medium is receiving the most interest, up 32% from a year ago. 

Client Media Interest (Areas Focused On, Q2 September 2014)
Media Focus	% of Respondents
Spot TV/Cable	56.3%
Internet/digital	21.9
Spot radio	12.5
Network TV	4.7
Print	3.1
Network cable	1.6
Out-of-home	0.0
Source: Strata, September 2014

Joy Baer, president of STRATA, says “… our agencies continue to ask for better ways to buy digital video advertising… long-form digital video content increasingly mirrors the 30-second TV ad experience… blurring the lines between devices… “

39% of agencies are still undecided as to whether they trust programmatic to carry out their media buying, while an equal amount of agencies believe that programmatic buying is effective in reaching their clients’ target audiences. The most popular form of programmatic buying, according to agencies, is digital, with a third of agencies polled stating they use programmatic to purchase their digital ads.

More key findings from the study:

• 89% of the respondents plan on using Facebook in client campaigns, which is the third highest number in the STRATA Survey since 2008. YouTube (53%), Twitter (50%), LinkedIn (36%) and Pinterest (32%) followed 
• Pinterest had the largest year-to-year growth, jumping up 31% over 2Q13
• 51% project the second half of 2014 to be better than the first half, up 19% from the second quarter of 2013
• 31% are less interested in Out of Home advertising than a year ago, the largest percentage since 2008 

For additional information from STRATA, please visit here.

Click here for MediaPost article.

Spotify Now Showing Video Advertising

The Swedish-based streaming music service today launched two video advertising products. The first allows brands to buy 15- or 30-second video “takeover” ad breaks on its desktop platform. The second (and arguably more interesting one) allows mobile users to opt in and subject themselves to 30-second video commercials, in exchange for 30 minutes of free listening.

It remains to be seen how users will respond to the new ads. But it makes perfect sense for Spotify to explore using them. Online video is one of the fastest growing segments of the advertising industry. Jefferies Equity Research expects online video ad spending to hit $10 billion next year. Video advertising is more effective and less commoditized than other forms of online advertising, so in theory it should command higher rates.

It also makes sense for Spotify, potentially readying itself for an IPO, to explore new ways to monetize its free user base, which at last count stood at around 30 million. (Another 10 million users pay about $10 a month for an ad-free experience.) Spotify has never confirmed or even commented on any plans for an initial public offering, but this year, the company established a credit facility with investment banks, sought to hire compliance professionals, and even hosted practice earnings calls.

There is at least one more reason why Spotify’s foray into video advertising is intriguing.

The biggest streaming music service of them all (according to no less an authority than Spotify’s CEO, Daniel Ek) actually is YouTube. For years, people have used the Google-owned video upload site as a de-facto free streaming music service, creating playlists of film clips to play back and listen to. YouTube is now reportedly edging toward the launch of a full-fledged streaming audio service (with both free and subscription-based tiers) that would be a direct challenge to Spotify.

WRITTEN BY
John McDuling
@jmcduling

See full article from Quartz 

With The Launch Of iPhone 6, Mobile Video Advertising Could Skyrocket

As rumor and speculation build around the new iPhone 6, we in the mobile industry can hardly wait for Apple’s announcement on Sept. 9.

The new iPhone is rumored to come with a larger screen size, higher resolution and faster processors, all of which will be a boon for the mobile video market. The iPhone 6 will also come with the iOS 8 operating system, with more than 4,000 developer APIs.

How might each purported feature impact app developers and marketers?

The Ultimate Media Consumption Device

When the iPhone 5 was released in 2012, it was clear that Apple was willing to adapt its iPhone design based on changing consumer behavior and competitive pressures. Apple’s own research shows most of the growth in the smartphone market is coming from larger screen devices. It is likely that Apple is again going to bump up the screen size from a 4-inch diagonal screen size, possibly to 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches with new iPhones.

Though the exact screen resolutions to expect have been a matter of heated debate within the industry, we can bet there will be a dramatic increase in the iPhone 6 screen resolution relative to its predecessor. This will lead to sharper and denser screens, which will result in a dramatically improved end-user experience for media consumption, including photos and videos.

With consumers spending most of their time with media on mobile apps, it would be a smart and strategic move by Apple to position iPhone 6 as the ultimate media consumption device.

Bigger, Better Screens

More than 40% of YouTube’s traffic comes from mobile devices. Combined with the iPhone 6 upgrade cycle, bigger and sharper screens, and growing consumer adoption of mobile video, I believe the new iPhone will catalyze the growing mobile video advertising market.

Video advertising platform TubeMogul recently reported a big increase in mobile video auctions on its platform. Mobile video advertising is growing rapidly, but is still a nascent market compared to banner ads and interstitials.

Here is how I think iPhone 6 can make a big impact on the market and make it mainstream: 

• App developers will get rid of banner ads and instead move to bigger ad units such as video, interstitials and native ads to take advantage of the larger screen size in iPhone 6. 
• Video, interstitials and native ad units’ CPMs and click-through rates are already 10 times more effective than banners and we expect them to be even better with bigger screen sizes. 
• Larger screens will provide a bigger palette for creative agencies and brands to convey their message as opposed to banner ads. 
• Fifteen or 30-second videos on mobile provide an ideal environment for a brand to connect with a consumer. 

As app developers get ready to update their apps for iOS 8 and iPhone 6 screen sizes, they should definitely consider ad units, such as video and interstitials, that enhance user experience as well as significantly increase monetization potential. Video advertising, especially on a 4-inch-plus screen, will make banner ads a thing of the past. 

All in all, Apple’s long-awaited iPhone 6 and iOS 8 release couldn’t come at a better time. With the rumored faster processors and larger, higher-resolution screens, the new iPhone could usher in a golden era of consumer media consumption that both developers and brands should leverage.

Follow Ash Kumar (@ashwani), TapSense (@tapsense) and AdExchanger (@adexchanger) on Twitter.

Over 90% Of Buyers Using Programmatic, Per AOL Survey

According to a new study from AOL, 76% of advertisers buy display via programmatic, while 56% buy mobile inventory this way; 48% use programmatic for video ads; 24% for social; 32% for search; and 13% for television. Just 8% say they aren’t using programmatic in any channel.

From the agency perspective, 86% are buying display via programmatic, 60% for mobile and video, 34% for social, 24% for search, 7% for television and just 9% aren’t using it at all.

In other words, over 90% of buyers are now using programmatic in some capacity.

Although it is already prevalent in all digital media channels, agency and brand respondents said advertisers will increase the use of programmatic buying over the next six months. The expected growth is nothing to scoff at: Respondents said advertisers will increase the use of programmatic in display by 58% over the next six months -- by 53% in mobile, 54% in video, 18% in social, 12% in TV and 10% in search.

AOL notes: “87% of brands and agencies plan to increase spend in Display and Video up to 50% in the next year.”

“What started as a way to automate real-time bidding on remnant inventory has evolved into a force for innovation across numerous areas of the advertising landscape, including the trading of premium display and videos buys,” Allie Kline, chief marketing officer of AOL Platforms, told Real-Time Daily. “Programmatic is moving out of the minor leagues.”

Ad technology is not without its faults, however, and brands, agencies and publishers all agree that inventory quality is a serious concern. It has been a known and documented issue for months now, and still progress has been slow, if not absent.

“Inventory quality” is one of the top two challenges that brands, agencies and publishers all face with programmatic -- with agencies and publishers citing is as their biggest hurdle. For brands, the number one issue is transparency, followed by inventory quality and technology complexity. Transparency and technology complexity are the second and third biggest challenges for agencies.

Publishers, on the other hand, don’t cite transparency as an issue -- instead noting that education and measurement are their second and third biggest challenges, respectively.

While the “technology complexity” is a major problem, according to the survey, advertisers aren’t doing themselves many favors. AOL’s survey says that 73% of buyers are working with up to 20 different vendors.

“This shows that while consolidation may be happening at a corporate level, the effects of it have not yet trickled down to the transactional level, requiring numerous partners throughout the process,” AOL theorizes.

The complexity can perhaps be blamed for another complaint buyers and sellers share: Nearly 60% of all respondents say digital media buying and selling is still too time consuming.

READ FULL ARTICLE BY MEDIAPOST

Are We All Doing YouTube Preroll wrong?

Here is Nail's blurb about the dog video:

As marketers, it's time we change the way we do YouTube preroll.

The current model seems to be to simply throw your TV commercial in front of any video a loosely defined demographic happens to be watching.

What a missed opportunity. The skip rates are unbelievable (94 percent is a generous estimate). And when there is no skip button, you can practically feel the resentment oozing through the Internet. Hardly the temperament most brands want to inspire from their customers, right?

.....

YouTube ads should be designed for YouTube. They should use the tools and features given to us and interact with the user and the platform in a way that can't be rivaled. They should be self-aware. They should talk to one person at a time.

What the heck are we talking about, you ask?

OK, here's an example. We wanted to raise awareness and money for an organization near and dear to us: the ASPCA. We had virtually no money but had given ourselves a serious challenge: can we make a skippable YouTube that virtually no one skips?

Did we do it? You tell us."

Iframing - The VAST Problem Of Video Viewability

Remember the scene in the movie "Kill Bill, Vol. 2" where the vengeful heroine, the Bride, is buried alive in a coffin and has to pound her way out with her bare fists? That’s your video ad.

Click Here for Full Article on AdExchanger

It’s essentially trapped in a box and buried in the publisher’s web page, and whether it can get out and reveal any metrics to the advertiser depends on whether it can bash through the various impediments blocking it from the surface.

A VPAID In The VAST

Even if the video ad can crack through the iframe, it still needs to crack through the player, and this creates another issue. The problem, points out Pieter Mees, CEO of Zentrick, is that “most video doesn’t have the infrastructure to run code.” This makes it difficult to run interactive video – Zentrick produces a tool that enables the creation of interactive video – and analytics.

Consequently the ability to gather any salient metrics, not just those related to viewability, depends largely on the publisher's video integration methodology. If the video was integrated using only the Video Ad-Serving Template (VAST), then marketers might as well dump their video ads into a titanium box for all the visibility they’ll get. VAST video placements, according to Kandi Onwuama, Extreme Reach’s VP of software architecture, don’t allow third-party tech vendors or advertisers to apply viewability technologies.

CBS Makes Up to 20% More Ad Revenue Online Than TV per Viewer: Research Chief

Click Here for Full Article on Variety
CBS, like every other TV network, is seeing audiences increasingly shift to Internet viewing of programming — and that’s been a good thing for the Eye, according to chief research officer David F. Poltrack.
“We actually make more money per viewer streaming than we do on television,” Poltrack said Tuesday at the 2014 Media & Entertainment Industry Forum in New York, presented by the IESE Business School and Variety. “If you stream our programming online, you’re seeing a full complement of advertising – you can’t bypass it.”
On average, CBS generates 10% to 20% more ad dollars per viewer from Internet-streamed programs than TV. Poltrack expects that to differential to increase even more later in 2014 because of a dearth of inventory for premium video online: “There’s been a flight to quality this year. Demand for our online video is through the roof.”

For CBS shows streamed online, such as “The Good Wife” (pictured, above), viewers can’t fast-forward through the ads. That also means that brand recall and recognition rates are higher for Internet video than TV, Poltrack said.
Of course, one of the big reasons ad rates for premium Internet-streamed video are higher than TV is because the online audiences are smaller – and hence, harder to reach. Online audiences also skew toward younger viewers, which are a more desirable target for marketers.
In addition, TV ad spending is far greater than digital-video advertising today, although the Internet segment is growing as a faster rate (from a smaller base). TV advertising in the U.S. will grow 3.3% in 2014 to $68.54 billion, while digital-video ad spending will increase 41.9% to reach $5.96 billion, according to a recent study from eMarketer.
According to Poltrack, the top 30 TV programs today overall have the same size audience as the top 30 in 2000. The difference today, he said, is that “it’s just not all on the television set in the living room.”
The majority of TV viewing is still live on television, but it’s been shrinking. In the first quarter of 2014, 80% of TV viewing was live, compared with 89% in 2011 among adults 18 and older, according to Nielsen data.
Poltrack, as he’s inclined to do, discounted pundits who have predicted that the rise of Internet video will damage the TV biz. In a December survey commissioned by CBS, 28% of respondents said they were watching more TV than  a year earlier, while 55% said their viewing was about the same and 17% said they were watching less.
Up until recently, consumers were more likely to say they were watching less television, in spite of the fact that Nielsen data showed time spent viewing TV was increasing. “It used to be a more ‘socially correct’ statement to say you were watching less television,” Poltrack said. “Today, I would argue, it’s ‘socially correct’ to say you’re watching more television.”
As for the trend of younger consumers watching less television, Poltrack said that’s been a recurring theme over the past 40 years. “The reason (younger people) watch less TV is because they are not home as much — and as we get older, we spend more time at home,” he said.

Todd Spangler

NY Digital Editor@xpangler