YuMe To Offer Brand Security Capabilities

Video ad network YuMe on Monday is expected to unveil a set of brand security capabilities to its ACE technology platform.

The new brand security capabilities will attempt to utilize YuMe's proprietary domain detection technology, which can collect detailed information about the in-page environment of a syndicated or embeddable player when it makes an ad request -- even when the player is not associated with a companion banner.

This capability should allow YuMe to prevent ads from running in video players that have been embedded on inappropriate Web sites, and to help publishers monitor and improve the list of sites where their syndicated and user-embeddable players are appearing.

"We believe that keeping brands secure in the rapidly evolving world of online video requires constant monitoring of new threats, and regular investment in technology to prevent them," said Jayant Kadambi, co-founder and president of YuMe.

Presently, YuMe maintains a dynamic blacklist of roughly 1.5 million domains that contain inappropriate content. When YuMe receives an ad request from a video player, it uses its domain detection capabilities to confirm that the player is not embedded on a blacklisted domain before serving an ad.

Using a proprietary algorithm, YuMe assigns a syndication quality score to each YuMe publisher, based on how well ads served into its syndicated players perform for advertisers, and on whether the publisher has ever requested an ad for a player on an inappropriate domain.

YuMe manually reviews every site that a YuMe publisher claims as an authorized syndication partner to ensure that they meet YuMe's quality standards, and creates a formal list of YuMe-reviewed syndication domains for every publisher.

If a publisher makes an ad request from a new domain that is not on YuMe's blacklist, that domain is flagged for review by YuMe's staff. YuMe closely monitors its publishers' syndication quality scores, and regularly encourages publishers to offer greater campaign performance to advertisers by removing their players from lower-performing domains.

Publishers including MSN, Msnbc Digital Network, IDG Entertainment and Glam Media use YuMe's ACE ad management platform.

YuMe presently offers about 20 different ad units spanning different types of pre-, mid- and post-rolls, overlays and page takeovers that advertisers can customize further by choosing different features. The company's broader efforts include encouraging marketers to experiment with different formats and features in video advertising.

Late last year, YuMe ranked as the third-largest U.S. video ad network, with 73.4 million unique viewers and a potential reach of 43% of online video viewers, according to comScore.

Today, 71% of the U.S. online audience watches video online, while Forrester expects the number of streams consumed to more than double by 2013. Driving this growth is an explosion of video content from users, professional studios, and marketers.

In February, YuMe closed a $25 million round of funding, led by new investor Menlo Ventures. Existing investors Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures and Khosla Ventures also participated in the round.

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