Here is the link: TechCrunch

The part of the article that seems to be generating the most amount of interest is the section titled the “Patzer Problem.” Essentially, this is the entrepreneur vs. VC problem of deciding when to sell a company, and highlights my surprise that VCs would actually say that they believe Mint.com’s sale was a mistake. I consider the company to be a huge success and this issue worth talking about.

In the comments, I note that…

I deeply share the concern “about any VC who says to you that any deal which puts tens of millions of dollars in a young founder’s pocket is something to avoid,” and that is why I wanted to shed light on the practice. I understand this phenomenon first hand, having been at Plaxo, a company that exited at $180M+ in equity value but had VCs saying it had failed behind closed doors.

My perspective is on this issue is that VCs are actually acting counter to their goals. They should tout these 3 year, $180M+ exits, and share the story with any budding entrepreneur who will listen — what better example is there of the incredible fruits of starting a successful company?

Furthermore, this exit in particular was at close to 40x revenue! It’s not like the company was a guaranteed success. Any rationale person would consider this a home run and I say congrats to Patzer and the entire Mint.com team.

Here is the raw data:

Here is why this is important:

1. We Only Serve Video Ads. Hulu Serves Video Content And Ads. Yes, we are comparing apples and oranges — if you compared our reach to the reach of Hulu’s ads, there would be a much larger difference between our two networks. Agencies and advertisers often forget that the reach of a site is irrelevant, the only metric that matters to them is the reach of the site’s available ad inventory. As the gap between our network and Hulu continues to grow, it will become more and more clear that the most efficient way to reach targeted video audiences at scale are through video advertising networks.

2. TV Everywhere? More like Video Ads Everywhere. Although there has been a lot of press recently about TV Everywhere, the reality is that online video advertising will be far larger than online television. Why? Because online video advertising is being used by premium publishers to monetize all free content — including broadcast video, short form video, games, radio, social apps — and many of those publishers have much more reach outside of their video content area than within it. Plus, many premium publishers don’t have huge production costs outside of their broadcast content, so advertisers are flocking to more cost efficient placements.

3. By The End of 2010, The Majority of the Top Ten Video Properties Will Be Networks. As I recently predicted in MediaPost, this is beginning of what will be a long trend of networks and aggregators surpassing the largest video properties in total reach. By the end of 2010, the majority of the top 10 video properties (as measured by Quantcast, comScore or your preferred third party) will be video companies that don’t produce any meaningful amount of video content. This means the top 10 properties will be dominated by video ad networks (BrightRoll), video-sharing sites (YouTube), video syndicators (Grab Networks) and vertical video sites (Break.com). Yes, some of these players produce some content, but the vast majority of the views on their properties are generated from content they did not produce.

We look forward to continuing to lead the industry and driving innovations across our platform, pricing, targeting and research initiatives. If you share our passion about video advertising, please reach out or join our team.

Today, I pose the question “Is buying video advertising from a video syndicator a good idea?”  The answer is, it depends.  But, again, bad actors are hurting the video ad business. Broadcast videos sites such as Hulu and CBS have done a phenomenol job of maintaining high quality users expereinces when their videos are in syndication.  Hulu distributes their player to MSN, Fancast and other sites, and maintains a universal user experience.  CBS, through the audience network, controls video content, placement and advertising, to insure consistency.

The problems for brands become more evident when we are talking about the content licensors such as Roo, NewsMarket, JamboTV, a slew of others or any of the video ad networks that offer video syndication.  In an attempt to compete with the broadcasters (or each other), these publishers syndicate their players far and wide, with little attention paid to user experience, site or site placement.  As a result, video advertising campaigns can end up on low quality sites or, worse, not even be seen by the consumer.

This problem is most evident when brands unknowingly buy fake pre-roll, either from a video syndicator or a video ad network. Fake pre-roll occurs when an advertiser buys pre-roll video inventory, but gets a placement where the video player autostarts a video ad in display inventory, usually with the sound off and often below the fold.

Examples of fake pre-roll are abundant (see screenshots below).  In 15 minutes one day I found examples of Mars, State Farm, Nicorette, Van de Kamps, Starburst and Starkist running in low quality, fake preroll placements.  On day two Hellmans, Jello, Tide, Oil of Olay and Bounty.  Sites such as Luvcube.com, Sweetiessweeps.com, Hairpedia.com and Pajiba.com provide clear examples of fake pre-roll with video syndication from Jambo and video ads from many “leading” video ad networks.  This gaming of video advertiser’s budgets is hurting all of us for the following reasons:

• These advertisements won’t perform for the advertiser, which hurts budgets moving online and the perceived efficacy of online video advertising
• These placements are priced at banner rates (or lower), which drives down rates for the entire category and falsely gives agencies the belief of a market rate
• Advertisers run the risk of being placed next to inappropriate content, which could result in an advertiser or agency pulling out of video altogether

The problem of fake preroll can either be solved by agencies (by paying more attention to the placements they are buying, comparing ad performance among players and demanding URL by URL reporting) or by the players in the industry (by not taking advantage of unknowing buyers, “gaming” the medium and returning to focus on selling a high quality product).Personally, I am much more a fan of self-regulation. 

                  

Get it? Tod + bit.ly = tod.ly?  

It is actually quite straightforward.  To do so, follow these easy steps:

1.  Register a (short) Vanity URL 
   • Make sure it is short - that’s the whole point!
   • Either a simple tod.com at GoDaddy or 
   • A foreign domain such as tod.ly from LibyanSpider
2. Redirect your short Vanity URL to bit.ly (or similar url shortener)
   • This can be done by pointing your A Record to Bit.ly’s IP address - 75.101.132.183 (see http://75.101.132.183/aboat) or
   • Simply redirecting your domain to http://bit.ly at your registrar / hosting provider

After following the two steps above, you have to wait anywhere from 1-9 hours for your new DNS records to propogate.  Then, shorten a URL at Bit.ly and insert your new URL.  For example, I created http://bit.ly/aboat and changed it to http://tod.ly/about 

That’s it, your done!

Congrats, now you are truly vain.  :-) 

Here are the highlights:

Pre-Roll Quality Categories
1. Gold Standard: Traditional Pre-Roll, as defined above
2. High Quality: Video ads that play in the middle of long form content (such as an ad between segments of House on Hulu.com)
3. Medium Quality: Video ads that auto-start with sound in a publisher’s video section; no user initiation
4. Low Quality: Video ads that auto-start with sound on a publisher’s home page; no user initiation or attention
5. Questionable Quality: Video ads that auto-start without sound in display inventory (typically by an ad network without video technology)
6. Borderline Fraudulent: Video ads that auto-start without sound on a publisher’s video player which can be embedded by users anywhere

Key Queries to insure 100% Pre-Roll:
1. Will my video ads ever be played in the middle of content, as opposed to before content?
2. Will my video ads ever be served into an environment where video is not the main content on the page?
3. Will my video ads ever be auto-started, i.e. started without a user initiation?
4. Will my video ads ever be started with the sound off?
5. Will my video ads ever be served into display inventory?
6. Will my video ads be served into any syndicated content? (Syndication almost always means a reduction in quality.)
7. Can you provide me with a list of every URL my ads will appear on?

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.

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.

We continue to be focused building online video advertising solutions that are more impactful (bigger and higher quality), more effective (higher engagement and click through rate) and highly scalable (reaches over 65% of the BrightRoll network).

We are excited that this new ad unit delivers on all fronts and is a true innovation in the video ad category. In addition, the response to this new ad unit has been overwhelmingly positive. We have already signed up multiple advertisers in the entertainment and technology verticals, and we are expecting HD ads to represent at least 10% of our business this calendar year.

It is clear that innovations involving high quality and HD video, which impact file size and therefore streaming costs, will likely not come from the high volume video sites which typically drive video innovation. This is because most high volume video sites have yet to generate a profit and streaming higher quality or HD video files simply accelerates an upside down business model.

On the contrary, our business model is based on delivering an increasing amount of value for our advertising clients on every ad we serve, so our incentive is to deliver the best quality experience that is technically possible. This is the most recent step in our efforts to add additional value to the online video advertising process for advertisers and agencies, and we are looking forward to additional announcements coming soon.

Here is screenshot of the ad unit:

Here is some of the press on the announcement:

CNET
TVWeek
MediaPost
Mashable
NewTeeVee
Webware

This is a horrendous outcome for all parties involved. Clients miss key marketing opportunities in the most important marketing period of the year, agencies miss their targets which is a disservice to their clients and tv networks miss out on significant revenue opportunities.

Additionally, this problem is only going to get worse. The writer’s strike has negatively impacted television content quality and ratings, but the real hit in both categories has yet to come. Many shows have strung along previously filmed content but are about to reach the end of that rope. If money is flowing back to agencies this quarter, expect a large chunk to be searching for a new home in Q1.

Fortunately, not all media channels are struggling. At BrightRoll, our video inventory is growing in both quality and quantity. We have significant Q4 and Q1 inventory available for broadcast buyers who have budgets previously allocated to under performing television placements.

Although we expect advertising dollars to follow their audience online regardless - sometimes it takes a shock to the system to accelerate the adoption.