Commentary

Channel-Agnostic Video Targeting

Video formats continue to proliferate nearly as fast (sometimes seemingly even faster) than the voluminous influx of digital video content. Yet in comparison video targeting, particularly targeting based on behavioral profiling and segmentation, has been glacially slow. Indeed, despite many incremental starts, video targeting has yet to move fully and decisively beyond the Pavlov's Dog approach of slewing ads at a captive audience of couch potatoes that defined targeting a generation ago. Seriously closing that gap, Steve Robinson, CEO of Panache Technologies, explains below, will be the major challenge of video publishers and advertisers alike in 2008.

Behavioral Insider: What were the motivations for developing your approach to targeting video assets? What gaps were you addressing?


Steve Robinson:
Originally we wanted to develop technology that made it easy to deliver advertising across all of the various media platforms such as the Internet and Television.  As we sat down to work with our customers, it also became clear that the types of advertising units were going to change and they needed ways to rapidly deploy new ad units across each of these mediums that were more effective than just the traditional commercial spots.  Our technology is now at the stage where we can work in conjunction with behavioral and content targeting systems to optimize for effectiveness the advertising experience across conventional TV, Flash, IPTV, or Internet video.

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BI: How does your technology change the way an advertiser or agency can deploy and expand a targeted campaign?

Robinson: Panache can push any type of ad unit into any video platform.  This makes it possible for an advertiser or agency to create the assets once and publish it across multiple video systems in real time.  Since Panache triggers advertising at run time and can work with targeting systems, advertising can be changed on the fly based on how effectively it is performing.

BI: What kinds of video usage behavior can be tracked, and which seem most relevant to ad targeting?
 
Robinson:
Panache is very robust in the information that can be collected.  Simple information such as clicks based on the video assets, all the way to monitoring user behavior such as how they interact with their mouse over the screen, to how far into the video they get prior to drop-off.  This provides our clients with the ability to modify where, when and how they deliver the advertising within the video to maximize effectiveness.

BI: What is the value proposition for publishers or ad networks?

Robinson:
Panache works seamlessly with ad serving and content management system to enable publishers and ad networks to engage their viewers in a richer experience with the advertiser.  Panache does this by removing the barriers of technology, making it possible to create and deploy new experiences within the video without engineering or changing the existing workflow systems.

BI: What do you see as the most important goals for video behavioral targeting in general and Panache in particular moving into 2008?

Robinson: Our mandate is that advertising needs to move and change as quickly as the video landscape is changing. Consumers now are becoming accustomed to watching any video asset when they want it, in whatever format they want it. Advertisers seeking to communicate meaningfully with them need to create, frame and deliver their messages just as dynamically.

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