2012: the year publishers will invest in multidevice
Video interview with Beet.TV – Sorosh talks to Andy Plesser of Beet.TV about the video market in 2012 as well as monetization in a multidevice world, and our recent fundraise.
Watch the full interview here:
Videoplaza raises $12M USD to accelerate global expansion
We’re hugely excited to announce our Series B funding of $12M USD, coming from two new investors – Innovacom (France) and Qualcomm Ventures (US), as well as our existing investors, Northzone and Creandum.
The funding will be used to further develop our product and service, so we can continue to help our clients solve the challenges of monetising video in a device agnostic world; and to fund further global expansion.
You can read the press release in full below.
Videoplaza secures $12M in funding to accelerate global expansion
New investment comes from Venture Capital firms Qualcomm Ventures and Innovacom
London, UK, 1st February 2012: Videoplaza, the leading global sell side ad management platform for video, announced today that it has received Series B US$12million in funding from Innovacom and Qualcomm Ventures. The funding is to further accelerate Videoplaza’s aggressive global expansion and to ensure their continued product leadership as video advertising inventory rapidly expands to new devices and platforms. Following a strong 2011, Videoplaza has grown its international client base and delivered 5x greater ad serving volumes in the last year. The company has opened new offices in Madrid, Berlin and Singapore, and serves a client base across 17 markets worldwide.
Traditionally the TV advertising market has represented a large opportunity – with a value today of around $160BN USD. As consumption evolves from broadcast to IP delivered content, publishers and broadcasters must gear up commercially and technologically to take advantage of this spend as it shifts on to new channels.
“We believe in picking sides and are 100% committed to the sell side, empowering broadcasters and publishers to effectively monetise their video inventory across any device or service. This investment allows us to further strengthen our commitment as we increase our R&D efforts and footprint to make sure our clients can build a sustainable business in a fast changing and ever more fragmented world,” commented Sorosh Tavakoli, CEO of Videoplaza.
The growth of multiple devices
The New IP-delivered TV represents a range of fantastic new opportunities for media owners to increase distribution, reach and revenues. However it also presents a real set of challenges, including device fragmentation, and developing monetisation policies across multiple platforms. Media owners need a clear strategy and a technical infrastructure to support them as they implement a device agnostic approach.
“With the number of connected devices booming, the New IP-delivered TV is clearly one of the most disruptive markets right now”, Bruno Dizengremel, Partner, Innovacom. “Not only have Videoplaza managed to sign up a large and high profile client base, their technology is at the heart of the monetisation strategy for these broadcasters and premium publishers. Our investment in Videoplaza reflects the importance we place upon developing revenue-generating opportunities across the New TV. Technology platforms will be increasingly important achieving this”.
Videoplaza has rapidly evolved from what was initially an online video business. The growth of connected devices means video is now delivered everywhere. By 2020 there will be around 10B connected mobile devices and media owners need to monetise their content efficiently, regardless of where it is consumed. Videoplaza’s technology platform today delivers advertising on all leading devices and services including Flash, Silverlight, HTML5, iOS devices, Android, Sony Playstation, Samsung Smart TVs, and closed IPTV environments etc. By 2013, Videoplaza expects more than half of its traffic to come from non-PC devices. Q4 of 2011 alone, 8% of the company’s traffic was generated from non-PC devices.
Videoplaza has received previous investment from venture capital firms Creandum and Northzone that also participated in the current investment round.
Excited to launch our new Videoplaza Format Family™
Today, we are very excited to announce the launch of our new Videoplaza Format Family™. We are also launching two new premium formats, the VP Takeover and the VP Ad Selector.
Find more info on our product page or play with the formats on our new demo site.
Here’s our press release in full.
The Videoplaza Ad Format Family brings new flexibility to the online video market
Addresses growing need for differentiation amongst publishers
London, UK, 13 December 2011: Videoplaza, the leading sell side ad management platform for video, has today announced the launch of two new interactive advertising formats, VP Takeover and VP Ad Selector as it extends its Ad Format offering. These new formats address the growing demand for premium ad formats that go beyond standard pre-roll and overlay offerings. The company has also established a strategic partnership with ad format specialist Innovid, to bring a new layer of interactive ad formats to Videoplaza’s Partner Format offering. The Videoplaza Format Family™, including VP Standard Formats, VP Premium Formats, VP Custom Formats and Format Partners, is designed to cover all aspects of publishers’ ad format needs and help maximise revenue opportunities.
Today, the majority of advertising spend lies with trusted formats such as pre-rolls, overlays or companion ads. However interactive formats are becoming increasingly compelling to publishers as they need to differentiate in an ever more developed and competitive market.
The Videoplaza Format Family™ contains:
- VP Standard Formats include pre-rolls, mid-rolls, post-rolls, overlays and companion banners.
- VP Premium Formats create an interactive and engaging experience for the viewer. The VP Takeover is similar to a traditional TV spot in that it takes over the full screen when the ad is showing, while VP Ad Selector allows a viewer the option to select which advert they want to watch, with a range of 2-6 different adverts to choose from. Both formats can generate a higher yield and provide a premium position for the advertiser.
- VP Custom Formats is a service enabling publishers to offer and serve unique ad formats without impacting their high priority internal development projects.
- Format Partners provide Videoplaza clients with the flexibility to work with best of breed ad format specialists such as Innovid.
“The standard formats are understandably dominating the market, however increasingly publishers want to differentiate.” said Sorosh Tavakoli, CEO of Videoplaza. “As a platform provider we want to empower our clients with a comprehensive solution that lets them tailor the best offering for their advertisers, be it standard or premium formats. Looking across our client base and the market we believe the opportunity for premium formats will more than double next year. The entrance of Innovid in the European market will continue to fuel the growth.”
The Videoplaza Format Family™ complies with key video advertising industry standards including Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) and Video Player-Ad Interface Definition (VPAID), to ensure seamless integration between different ad serving technologies and video players. Support for these standards keeps clients’ options open, enabling them to work with third parties and avoid lock in to proprietary technology.
“Working with the world’s top brands, we’re noticing a definite shift in the way that online video is perceived. It’s no longer seen so much as a way to achieve reach and build awareness, but to create a much more compelling and engaging brand experience for the target audience. Our strategic partnership with Videoplaza will help us to reach even more publishers and allow our users to be even more effective in adding interactivity into the video advertising mix. We are very excited about growing the immersive video opportunity together,” said Zvika Netter, CEO, Innovid.
Today interactive formats offer significantly higher engagement levels than traditional pre-roll click-through rates, signifying a shift in the way customers engage with video advertising in the new IP delivered TV world. Innovid’s interactive inRoll for example delivers an engagement rate of 2.25%, compared to a click through rate of 0.61% for a normal pre-roll, delivering an uplift of 368% in engagement[1].
AdVideum, the leading French video ad network, works with Videoplaza to fulfil their format needs.
“Being the exclusive partner of over 200 premium media publishers with 80 million video streams per month, AdVideum is constantly innovating to offer interactive and original video formats to enhance publishers’ inventory and better address advertisers’ needs” said Julien Leroy, founder and president of AdVideum. “Videoplaza’s Format Family enables us to harness the power of standard video formats, whilst also enabling us to differentiate with premium formats like the VP Takeover”
[1] Data was provided by Innovid.
Do you want to know more about development at Videoplaza?
Today is an eventful day for Videoplaza’s developers in Stockholm. During the day we will be at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, meeting future programming rock stars at an industry fair organized by Computer Science students.
KTH offers one of the leading CS programs in Europe, with former and current students often winning the top spots in international programming contests. No less than 7 developers at Videoplaza are former KTH CS students and we look forward to welcoming more fresh KTH talent to our development teams in the future.
Later in the evening we will host an event of our own in our Stockholm office, focused on databases. Serving ads to many of the leading publishers and broadcasters all over Europe generates a huge amount of data and our platform excels in providing real-time reporting and forecasting based on billions of log rows. One of the four data storage strategies we apply at Videoplaza to deal with this challenge is based on the NoSQL high-performance document oriented database MongoDB.
So tonight we’re hosting a MongoDB user group meet-up to share our knowledge and learn from other users of this technology (which in our view wipes the floor with any traditional relational database setup!).
Deutschland, jetzt geht’s los!
Being back from the Admonsters OPS event and dmexco in Cologne, we couldn’t have felt more excited. The market is extremely active and video is becoming increasingly important for both publishers and brands. We thought we’d give you a short update on our activities.
We’re also happy to announce our first German client – Freshmilk.TV – a rather unique publisher in Germany delivering premium video content across a range of platforms including PC, mobile and tablets. They are growing fast and soon expanding their offering to include innovative and interactive ad formats to create a more compelling brand experience for their clients. The company delivers the Freshmilk Urban WebTV Network including the leading fashion channel FashionDaily.TV.
It was great being back at dmexco – the show was bigger and more relevant than ever before. We caught up with lots of friends, old and new, and the main discussion topic was around multi device ad delivery, particularly mobile.
Looking ahead we’ll be at the VDZ’s ‘Potenziale von Bewegtbild – Neue Wege bei WebTV und Video’, where our commercial director Holger Schöpper, is going to talk about the new video ecosystem (9th November in Hamburg). Following that we’re going to the BVDW’s Bewegtbild im Web Konferenz on Berlin on 27th October. And in November we’re looking forward to the BITKOM Forum Consumer Electronics on Smart TV, where Sorosh is speaking, November 9th in Berlin. Please come and say hello if you are at any of these events!
Interview with Sorosh on what video means for ad operations
Yesterday we participated in the Admonsters OPS Europe event in Cologne. Video was a recurring topic throughout the day mentioned by most of the publishers and agencies as both a massive opportunity and a huge challenge. Tom Bowman’s from the BBC talked about how Video Will Become Television, Television Will Become Video, which explored the shift from linear TV to video being delivered across a range of media and devices.
Our founder Sorosh caught up with Admonsters earlier this week talking about the opportunities for publishers around video and its implications on Ad Operations teams. You can read the full post here.
Today and tomorrow we will be busy at Dmexco in Cologne. Come by and say hi if you are here!
Brainient: using innovative ad formats to target and personalize advertising
Introducing our Partners – Part 3
Brainient – increase performance through interactivity
Continuing our blog series on innovation within the advertising space, this post covers our partner Brainient. Brainient is a UK based interactive video advertising platform that helps advertisers increase the performance of their video campaigns through interactivity, personalization and retargeting.
In order to achieve these goals, the Brainient team has created three exciting products:
BrainAds is a personalised video retargeting platform, aimed at online retailers who want to increase their brand awareness while maintaining the performance of their advertising budgets. The team has developed behavioural targeting technology that delivers personalised video ads to users according to their online interests. For example, after looking at a specific product on a retailer’s site, Brainient will deliver personalised video ads based on their browsing history and what the user looked at. This is great for advertisers who want to be more specific about their targeting.
BrainRolls is a simple solution that enables advertisers to create and distribute interactive video ads. The product is also aimed at video ad networks and publishers who can improve effectiveness of inventory through interactivity – helping them increase the CPM price they charge to advertisers by at least 30%. The average CTR generated by BrainRolls is 2.5% and engagement rates range from 3% to 15%.
BrainStudio is an interactive video editor allowing anyone (either beginner or pro) to make existing videos interactive in a matter of minutes. Rather than developing interactivity from scratch, users can simply drag-and-drop interactive layers such as polls and questionnaires or social sharing interactive elements from the BrainStudio library. It only takes a few steps to create an interactive video: upload the video content, choose various layers and set up preferences. The Brainient interactive video editor is pre-integrated with the Videoplaza platform meaning that campaigns are production-ready instantly.
To view a demo of Brainient’s exciting capabilities, click here.
Brainient’s customers love the products for a number of reasons: “Brainient have been a great technology partner for us in extending our video offerings, their ability to turn simple ideas into physical products; and the resultant uplift in CTR and dwell time on campaign performance has been vastly beneficial to us” – Jon Macbeth, FOX Networks.
Videoplaza has integrated tightly with Brainient to ensure we can offer their VPAID formats. And we will continue to work with them closely to bring our joint customers more and more exciting opportunities in this emerging space of targeting and personalizing video advertising.
Videoplaza nominated for Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards
We are pleased to be nominated in the Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Awards 2011, in the Video Advert Platform category.
Voting is simple. There’s no panel or jury. The most votes will decide the three finalists and the winner for each category. Readers choose their favourites. Voting closes 23rd Sept.
If you feel that we have provided you with a high quality service, we would be very happy if you decide to vote for us. You can do so by clicking on the voting image below.
Videoplaza on the road: come and see us at dmexco
We are very excited to tell you that we will be attending dmexco in Cologne, Germany, on 21st and 22nd September. Please come and see us at Hall 8, Plain 1, Aisle B at Stand 67. dmexco is always well organized and has been a really productive event for us in the past, so we can’t wait to be back.
Having recently opened our office in Berlin, we are looking forward to spending time with our German clients and meeting lots of new friends and possible partners at the show.
Please let us know if you are attending, as we would love to catch up with you – pop by our stand for some drinks and a chat. Bis bald am Videoplaza-Stand!
We are also sponsoring the Admonsters Ops Europe event, which takes place the day before dmexco, on September 20th in Cologne. We will be speaking at the event and it would be great to see you there too!
How to monetise the New TV without hitting a brick wall
The online video revolution has only just begun. What started with grainy and stamp sized videos in the early 2000’s and became mainstream with the advent of Youtube in 2006 is only the prologue to a bigger story. Fact is, even though most of us are streaming videos online on a daily basis, the bulk of our video consumption has yet to shift to online platforms.
At Videoplaza, we have been envisioning the transition from old – broadcasted – TV platforms to new – IP delivered – TV platforms since day one. The bigger shift in consumption from the ‘Old TV’ to the ‘New TV’ is the reason for why Videoplaza exists.
The migration is taking place right now. After the prologue of streaming Flash video on computers, we’re now well into chapter one with the smartphone revolution where iOS and Android handsets have finally made mobile video mainstream and tablets like the iPad have had immense impact on consumer behaviour.
Yet, the most exciting part of the story still lies ahead. While there’s plenty of initiatives to connect the living room big screen, ranging from Playstation to Google TV, Samsung and Sony connected TV’s to Youview – mainstream adoption has yet to happen. At Videoplaza, we believe that this is only a matter of time. When someone finally launches the Killer App of the Living Room™, consumer behaviour will take another big leap and the advertising revenues are bound to follow.
Yet, the diverse multi-platform world of the New TV doesn’t only provide a wide range of exciting opportunities. It also comes with a whole new set of tough challenges.
How do you properly monetise content across this vast array of devices? How do you make sure that you’re serving the right number of ads with the right duration to the right person? In fact, how do you even get ads in there? Who’s in charge of making sure that all the 15 differently transcoded versions of that advertising spot is running okay across all platforms?
Well, here at Videoplaza, we’re making it our job. Technology fragmentation is something we love, simply because it gives us an opportunity to create value for our clients. We’re dealing with the multi-platform mess so our clients don’t have to. They should be busy making money.
But what does that mean? Well, already today we’re live serving ads on behalf of our clients to most of the platforms and devices available. We’re serving ads to iOS and Android phones, Playstations and connected TV’s. We’re even serving ads to IPTV set-top-boxes shielded off of the public internet (required some work-arounds).
Still, we have plenty of room for improvement keeping us busy. Right now our focus is on sorting the workflow. Keeping track of all the different devices, transcoding jobs, device targeting and reporting simply has to be solved by a clever piece of technology – everything else get’s out of hand as you add more and more devices to the mix.
We’re making the multi-platform reality a native dimension of our platform to make sure that our clients can focus on how to package and sell their products at the right price, instead of how to cope with the quadrupled workload of trafficking campaigns.
Monetising the New TV without the right technology partner is simply destined to fail. The uncredited heroes of every media organisation (a.k.a. “the ad operations team”) have already suffered enough. For their health and well-being, please make sure to dodge this brick wall.
In order to summarise, to be successful with monetising the New TV, you need to make sure that you:
• Are enabled to serve ads to any device you are distributing content to
• Can customise ad insertion policies dynamically across these devices and services
• Can forecast, target and report inventory per device and/or category of content or user segment
• Have a lean and efficient workflow for ad operations and quality assurance across devices
• Have automatic barriers enforced that prevents the wrong type of asset to end up on the wrong type of device
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