Archive for October, 2007

BrightRoll Serves 1 Billionth Video Advertisement

Two days after announcing our financing, we just released news of our billionth ad served which was the HP Gwen Stefani campaign. We are extremely excited about this milestone and believe it demonstrates the scale that is occurring in our business and the overall video advertising market. I have included the release below and it is also available on Yahoo.

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ — BrightRoll, Inc., the world’s
largest video advertising network, announced today that it has served its
one billionth advertisement less than six months since hitting the
half-a-billion mark. BrightRoll helps leading agencies, representing brands
such as Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard and Sony Pictures, launch and scale video
campaigns across the industry’s leading publishers. Since the company
launched in July 2006, BrightRoll has expanded its reach to provide
execution capabilities across over half of the top 100 online media
properties in the United States. The one-billionth video advertisement was
served on September 27, 2007 for Zenith Optimedia, Hewlett-Packard’s
advertising agency.

The campaign, for Hewlett-Packard printers, features Gwen Stefani
elaborating on her creativity and the creative process. BrightRoll helped
Zenith Optimedia execute the Hewlett-Packard campaign across a portfolio of
stellar publishers such as CBS, Clear Channel Radio, CNN and ESPN.

“BrightRoll has been a huge asset to the online video planning and
buying process for Zenith Optimedia and Hewlett-Packard,” said Miranda
Molen, media supervisor at Zenith Optimedia. “They streamlined the creative
production process, improved media efficiency and provided strategic
metrics analysis. Put simply, their knowledge of the digital video
landscape and ability to execute campaigns is unrivaled.”

“Video advertising is an important new category of online marketing and
we are excited to work with national brands and premier publishers to
unleash the incredible opportunities it represents,” said Tod Sacerdoti,
CEO, Brightroll. “BrightRoll’s growth is further evidence that scalable and
trusted solutions exist in the marketplace today and that online video
advertising has officially arrived.”

BrightRoll executes video campaigns on hundreds of publisher sites,
including more than 50% of the top 100 online media properties in the
United States. The average BrightRoll video campaign reaches over 50
million unique users over a six week period. A video advertising innovator,
BrightRoll is built entirely on proprietary video ad serving, targeting and
optimization technology.

About BrightRoll

BrightRoll is the world’s largest and most trusted video advertising
network, having served more than 1 billion advertisements in 12 months.
BrightRoll helps major brands and agencies execute “smart video ad
campaigns” across the industry’s leading publishers, including over half of
the top 100 online media properties in the United States. BrightRoll’s
proprietary campaign execution, inventory management and advertising
delivery technology provide brands and agencies with the reach, frequency
and scalability needed to achieve their campaign goals. BrightRoll is a
privately held, venture- backed company and holds its headquarters in San
Francisco, CA. BrightRoll offers its service at http://www.brightroll.com.

Video Impressions to pass Search in Three Months

ComScore today released worldwide search statistics showing 15B monthly searches in North America, following up on their recent report showing 9.8B monthly U.S. core searches. As a video advertising executive, these numbers seemed surprisingly small given that search represents 50% of all online advertising revenue and the core revenue engine of Google and other large online players.

When comparing these numbers to ComScore’s own video impression data, the vulnerability of search as the core online advertising medium becomes instantly clear. ComScore shows 7B U.S. video impressions in March, 8.3B in May, and 9.1B in July.

So, what does this mean?

  1. U.S. video impressions will pass core search impressions in the next three months
  2. U.S. video impressions will pass expanded search (meaning including Amazon, eBay, etc.) in the next twelve months.
  3. Video advertising spend is being underestimated by analysts (eMarketer currently estimates video will grow from 10% to 25% of search revenue, and from 5% to 12% of total online ad spend, over the next five years)

As with all audience shifts, such as network television to cable television or television to the Internet, ad dollars will follow the audience. However, it does take time, as the network to cable transition took 5+ years and we are still in the midst of the spend movement from television to the Internet.

My bet? I estimate that video advertising will be 50% of search revenue within the next five years and will be larger than the entire search advertising business in the next ten years.

Note: If you include rich media banner units that include video in these statistics, you will find that there are both significantly more video impressions and video ad spend than currently being reported.