Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
Call me crazy, but I thought the definitions of pre-roll and companion banners were well understood.
Unfortunately, many vendors in the marketplace have begun to offer a menu of what I call video ad sausage - a mix-mash of low quality ad units being packaged as pre-roll.
The simplest example of video ad sausage is running video and a companion banner jointly withing a 300×250 display unit and calling it pre-roll. In order to get to the bottom of this, let’s start with the proper defintion of Pre-roll:
- Pre-roll - A video ad that plays before the start of a video that a user has selected to play shown prior to the user’s selected content starting to play.
Companion Banner - A banner ad that is displayed simultaneously with a video ad, often remaining on the web page after the video ad is complete.
There are a few important ingredients of pre-roll that media buyers must understand in order to avoid getting a plate of video ad sausage.
- User Initiated - if the units loads automatically, without a user selection, it is not pre-roll
- User Selected Content - if the user has no idea what video content is behind the ad, it is not pre-roll
- Companion Banner - if the companion banner is served within the same unit as the video ad, it is not a companion banner
To be more explicit, running auto-start, sound off video ads in 300×250 display inventory is clearly a violation of the definition of pre-roll. Even worse, is running the companion banner also in the same 300×250, thereby not only reducing the value of the pre-roll but also double counting impressions. These tactics are a clear disservice to both agencies and their clients.
To learn more about true pre-roll, talk to your local BrightRoll contact.
For years, rich media fees have been a necessary evil. As of today, they are an unnecessary evil.
Based on the success of recent campaigns for Liberty Mutual and National Geographic, and months of product development and testing, BrightRoll will be providing video rich media services to clients for free. See our press release or Emily Steel’s article in the Wall Street Journal (free | paid).
We believe video advertisers will maximize the value of their advertising budgets by spending money only on the creative assets and media inventory. Adding an rich media additional vendor into the process complicates execution, limits distribution and costs a significant percentage of the overall budget.
Put simply, the only people getting rich off of rich media are the vendors.
A few years ago, rich media vendors emerged to help agencies take static banner assets and make them more exciting, more engaging and, hopefully (but rarely), higher performing. However, video creative assets costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to create and are already exciting, engaging and high performing.
Online video advertisers are different. They need the industry’s best video ad units and video distribution technologies, coupled with creative custom skins and branding elements, to maximize their video ad budgets.
Now advertisers can execute their video campaigns efficiently and in their entirety, with BrightRoll. In-stream and in-banner video advertising distribution on the largest branded and only transparent video ad network.
If you would like to learn more, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We look forward to serving you and clients.
After a few weeks of heads down work, I am happy to announce the launch of the new BrightRoll.com corporate site.
We hope this new site does a better job explaining who we are, what we do, how we do it and who we do it with. As with every site launch, we are anxious to hear feedback from users / visitors, so please feel free to drop us a note.
The site was designed by Bill Tani, of Tani Design, and the technical / video work was done by the amazing BrightRoll engineering team. Videos were sourced from proprietary BrightRoll video campaigns or from Revostock, which is the best stock video provider in the country.
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?
- U.S. video impressions will pass core search impressions in the next three months
- U.S. video impressions will pass expanded search (meaning including Amazon, eBay, etc.) in the next twelve months.
- 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.
I liked the Amazon contextual links product so much that I put together a Wordpress Plugin for others to use - Amazon Links Pro. The Pro version allows you to input your Amazon Affiliates ID.
Amazon Links is a Wordpress Plugin for adding relevant and contextual links to Amazon.com products. It generates code automatically and allows full customization of how and when contextual links appear within your content.
Rather than placing banner of Adsense advertisements around your site, Amazon Links opens up new, contextual inventory within the content of your site. Essentially, this allows you to profit from the traffic of your blog without negatively impacting the user experience.
Additionally, users benefit from a direct link to products relevant to your content. For example, if you write an article about a great book that you read, a compelling movie you saw or an amazing new product you used, Amazon Links provides a direct link to that product on Amazon.com so your users can explore the product further.
If you want to make money off your content, consider installing Amazon Links Pro. The Pro version allows additional customization, such as adding your Amazon Associates ID so you can directly profit from people that click on the links and buy products from Amazon.com.
Basic (Official Page) - Amazon Links Basic for WordPress 2.1+
Pro (Official Page) - Amazon Links Pro for WordPress 2.1+
Complete Features List
- Full support for Amazon Associates IDs. For more info about the Amazon Associates Program, visit their site.
- Customization supported:
- Link style
- Preview display
- Border Color
- Background Color
- Details Text Color
- Link Color
- Amazon Price Color
- Amazon Text Color
- Context Link Settings
- Exact Product Name Match
- Open Link in New Window
- Inclusion or Exclusion of Product Categories
- Supports the following countries:
- United States
- Great Britain
- Germany
- Japan
- France
- Canada
- Works with WordPress 2.1+
Installation
Installing should be a piece of cake and take fewer than five minutes.
- Upload amazon-links-pro.php
to your/wp-content/plugins/directory. - Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
- Sit back and wait for your content to be crawled
- Within 30 minutes, contextual links will appear on your site
Screenshots:
Download:
Amazon Links Pro for WordPress 2.1+ (zip file)
Thanks to Matt Mullenweg and Toni Schneider for this killer blogging software, and I am happy to finally be contributing to the effort.
I am excited to be co-chairing the host committee for Macy’s Passport Fashion Show. The fashion show is a charity event that raises money for AIDS research and is one of my favorite events of the year.
Tickets include an opening party with appetizers, the full fashion show and the after-party with the models at SLIDE. The pre-party includes local cuisine and cocktails, and music spun by DJ Donovan. The fashion show features collections including Calvin Klein, Marc Ecko, Levi’s, Calvin Klein Underwear and much more. The post-party is at SLIDE with resident DJs Solomon and Chris Clause
Macy’s Passport Opening Night
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Fort Mason Center, Festival Pavilion
6:00 pm Pre-Party
8:00 pm Show
11:00 pm Post-Party
Invitation - http://www1.macys.com/campaign/passport/index.jsp
Buy Tickets - http://www.ticketmaster.com/artist/834445
See Who’s Coming - http://www.socializr.com/event/513086233
Featured Collections will include Calvin Klein, Via Spiga, Marc Ecko, Epic Threads, Levi’s, Academy of Art and Calvin Klein Underwear. This spectacular show will conclude with an epic silver finale with one of a kind pieces from world class designers.
Hosted by: Auren Hoffman, Brendan Coen, Christina Spaulding, DJ Donovan, Don Davis, Elizabeth Johnson, George Karpaty, Irene Hernandez-Feiks, Jessica Mullens, Jonathan Abrams, Kim Wilsey, Kirsten Bartok, Letitia Kim, Lucy Jacobs, Michael Kim, Missy Cohan, Nate Valentine, Nina Oestlien, Rebecca Sacerdoti, Rob Bailey, Todd Palmerton, Tod Sacerdoti, Trevor Hewitt, Zaw Thet
Matt Marshall wrote on VentureBeat:
Advertisers in UK yank ads from Facebook when they realize the ads are posted next to the group page of a far-right-wing political party. Slowly but surely, advertisers are beginning to realize how dangerous it is to run campaigns in social networking sites. Tod M. Sacerdoti, founder of BrightRoll, which inserts advertising into videos for clients, told us recently he has all but abandoned serving social network sites, after seeing multiple examples of advertising networks exposing major advertising brands to lewd, quasi-porn video content.
The question remains, “Is placing your brand next to social networking / user generated content a good idea?” I believe the answer is clear, it depends. Put simply, if your brand is sensitive to adjacent placement and even a .1% chance that you end up next to an inappropriate image, video or political opinion, than it is NOT a good idea. If your brand is adjacent placement resistant, such as a piece of entertainment content, AXE Body Spray or otherwise more edgy brand, than it can be a good idea.
I was forwarded a link last week to a video on the site Heavy.com. To me, this was the most recent, and perhaps most glaring, example where adjacent ad placement is definitely questionable. Here are the three screenshots I took and I ask the simple question, “Is this good for your brand?” I think, in this case, the answer is crystal clear.
CommentRoll