• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, March 1, 2012

Video vendors continue to hunt for ways to distinguish their offerings from the competition, and that means each new week brings new ad formats, new analytics, and new measurement tools.

The latest wrinkle in that ongoing quest comes from online video ad network YuMe, which is announcing today that it’s incorporating metrics into its campaigns to account for optimal placement of a video ad.

YuMe calls the tool the “YuMe Placement Quality Index (PQI)” and it’s an algorithm that monitors and identifies the idea placement of video ads across screens. Site placement and brand safety have been vital issues for video marketers who want to make sure the ads they buy run against the appropriate sites and content.

YuMe said the PQI takes into account key performance metrics such as interaction rate, video completion rate and video player size. Using a baseline as a starting point, YuMe calculates PQIs throughout each campaign and adjusts for the marketer’s objectives. YuMe tested the PQI before rolling it out and said campaigns using the PQI saw a three times lift in interaction rate than those that did not use it. Also, video completion rate nearly doubled when the PQI was used to optimize the campaign.

Optimal site placement also incorporates factors like ad visibility, brand safety, portability across screens, premium inventory, interactivity, and audience targeting. Late last year, YuMe rolled out “Ad Visibility ” to make sure video ads it runs are always visible to viewers on a page.

The PQI essentially layers in another element of real-time monitoring into an online video network and it follows recent efforts by YuMe to broaden its reach into connected TVs. The ad network now distributes ads across connected TVs from LG and Samsung.