Behavioral Targeting Cozies Up To Video Ads

Meir New York-based eXelate unveiled Wednesday a targeting technology for video ads based on consumer behavior. Supporting the service, it has launched the Access+ Partner Program by inking deals with video ad networks BrightRoll and TidalTV.

Through the company's Select Partner Program, advertisers and agencies now have access to eXelate's target data through certified partners that meet technical, business and privacy requirements.

The video BT targeting service is the first that eXelate will launch through an initiative dubbed "Data Anywhere." The exchange can reach 150 million U.S. consumers through three segment categories: Demographic, Interest and Intent.

The Demographic category supports age, gender and ethnicity. The Interest category supports parenting, real estate, pets, profession, and organization size, such as small businesses. The Intent category supports shopping, travel, automotive and more.

Meir Zohar, chief executive officer at eXelate, says "the technology wasn't easy to build, but we have smart engineers in Israel."

Israel has emerged from being a technology incubator in early 2000, to a country that spits out one innovation after another in recent years. It drives a variety of technologies, from semiconductors to BT. Zohar says many venture capitalist moved in during the past 10 years to support development.

Aside from eXelate, BrightRoll, San Francisco has partnered with BlueKai, which also provides data on-demand to marketers. The video ad network will match the audience to one of three category segments, which eXelate relies on as well. For each segment, a different data provider will support the targeting based on behavior.

Advertisers will have an option to target a consumer segment with streaming or banner video ads across the Internet, wherever the ads are served. The ads will not appear where BrightRoll doesn't control the end-to-end process or doesn't have the "contractual rights" to serve up video ads, according to Tod Sacerdoti, BrightRoll's cofounder and CEO.

Sacerdoti says eXelate has built a new category for BT, developing a "cookie-cutter approach" to targeting video ads, which isn't true of the entire market. "About 99% of ads are not audience or behavioral targeted," he adds.

BrightRoll, a video advertising network, ranks No. 3 with 51,250 total unique viewers -- taking 34.1% of the market, according to comScore's Metrix Key Measures Report Top 100 Video Properties for May 2009. The company follows Google sites with 103,865 at No. 2; and Fox Interactive Media at 57,083 at No. 2.

BrightRoll and eXelate say the services are compliant with the IAB's Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising.

BrightRoll launched a Performance Pricing model for online video advertisements in August. The model includes: Cost Per Engagement (CPE), cost per each user-initiated video engagement; Cost Per Completed Video (CPV), cost based on successful user-initiated video; and Cost Per Click (CPC), cost-per-click on video advertisements.

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