Collective will announce Thursday the acquisition of Oggifinogi, a video advertising platform and services company, to expand in-banner and in-stream video ad formats. The deal, for an undisclosed sum, furthers a relationship between the two companies that began a couple of years ago. Bellevue, Wash-based Oggifinogi supports more than 100 companies, including Bing, Best Buy, Sony, NBC, and Paramount. Its platform already integrates into Collective's AMP platform and media network, with more than 300 campaigns running since 2009. The company will run as a subsidiary. Oggifinogi means "today, we get it done" in Italian, according to Joe Apprendi, CEO at Collective, which has been a strategic investor. "Since working with Oggi, especially in 2010, we delivered billions of ad impressions that Oggi enabled," he says. An example of the company's work can be found in the "Max It" ad unit, which consumes the entire browser window. eMarketer analyst David Hallerman estimates companies will spend $1.97 billion in online video advertising this year, reaching $5.71 billion by 2014. One reason for the surge -- brand advertisers will shift more ad budgets online, he writes in a blog post. Apprendi says it was a natural next step to acquire the company and technology. Collective's acquisition of Oggifinogi not only allows the company to factor in operating cost savings from owned-and-operated cost of goods sold (COGS) versus outsourced, but gives it three core capabilities in video. Oggifinogi's platform measures the effectiveness of ads beyond clicks and conversions through an analytics tool that helps brands understand social, engagement and interaction of ads running online. Through a partnership with comScore, Collective also makes available Internet Gross Rating Point reporting for all Collective video, rich media and display campaigns to measure reach and frequency -- similar to television. In its study of video advertising trends, Digital Video Advertising Trends 2011, Break Media revealed that the majority of advertisers believe that online advertising should be measured using GRPs, and 47% would spend more with online video if it were available.
In the face of legal woes and industry-wide anti-tracking efforts, behavioral ad network Interclick moved forward this week with the launch of its own video ad platform. The platform is integrated into OSM, Interclick's data valuation platform, which purports to help marketers quantify the effectiveness of their display and video campaigns. "By being able to quantify the impact of video on display, and vice versa, we are helping clients build consistent cross-channel executions," said Michael Katz, CEO of Interclick. Interclick is also promising brand-safe environments for clients, thanks to its large network of media partners. Facing an uncertain future, however, Interclick was recently sued by a New York resident for allegedly violating her privacy by using history-tracking technology. Just this month, meanwhile, the first "do not track" legislation was introduced in Congress, which increased the likelihood that Web users will be able to prevent companies from recording their online behavior for marketing purposes. The bill, dubbed the "Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011," would give the Federal Trade Commission the right to enforce regulations prohibiting online marketers from tracking consumers' online behavior. What's more, top browsers -- including Google's Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer -- have recently agreed to add mechanisms to make it harder for advertisers to track user behavior. Readying for a fight, Interclick recently appointed Bill Wise, current CEO of MediaBank, to its board of Directors. Wise came to MediaBank from Yahoo, which he joined after the portal acquired ad exchange Right Media in 2007. In addition, Interclick appointed another media veteran, David Honig, to its advisory board. Honig is currently vice president of business development of BuddyMedia. For all its troubles, Interclick was named as a top-performing ad technology company in 2010 -- based on the number of non-compliant incidences in campaigns -- according to recent research from digital media-verification company DoubleVerify.
While much has been written about the evolution of branded video content and "viral video" ads, less attention has been given to the integrated video ad experiences that are helping blur the line between content and advertising. Advertisers are now regularly looking for well-integrated video ad experiences that will help their branded video content fit more naturally within the content experience of a site to drive higher levels of engagement and sharing. In spite of significant innovations around pre-roll and banner advertising formats, the fact remains that consumers have developed equally advanced abilities to ignore the bulk of these types of ad units. Brands have recognized the attention deficit inherent to these models and are increasingly investing in more content-driven, longer-form videos. As brands continue to open their minds and wallets to new types of entertaining video content, publishers and video advertising companies need to respond with innovative, new ad experiences to deliver engaged viewership and drive sharing of their videos. So, what are media buyers looking for today when placing their brand video content? The highest priority for today's branded video ad experiences is to make them as organic as possible to the content experience of the sites that they run on. This means that you can't take a one-size-fits all approach. The challenge for advertisers is to find the balance between entirely customized ad products for every individual website (not scalable) and overly generic ad units (easily ignored), so the goal for publishers should be to offer ad experiences that have a customized, integrated look-and-feel without requiring implementation times and prices that are prohibitive. Below are a few key qualities advertisers look for in ad experiences for brand video content: 1) Feels like content. Ad placements that are far removed from the content experience or too intrusive will lead to low engagement and sharing rates for video. 'Featured content' video ad models are beginning to take shape, which fit more organically within the site experience and allow sponsored videos to be integrated seamlessly within the regular content flow.< Video-focused sites, from UGC platforms like YouTube to highly curated sites such as Devour, offer great opportunities to place branded video content within the natural flow of the site experience. Additionally, editorial sites that use a lot of video, like game and movie review sites or viral content curators such as Buzzfeed, can be great venues to integrate creative branded video placements. 2) Discoverability. Consumers love to discover new, entertaining content on the Web. An effective ad experience allows consumers to stay within that discovery mindset, while also providing a high level of visibility. Social recommendation and bookmarking sites have good potential to help their users maintain the discovery mentality even among sponsored content, as do social games and virtual worlds that integrate branded videos directly within the site experience. Sites that do a great job of this include recommendation sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit and social games like CarTown. 3) Social features. Video ad units that have embedded the social graph and sharing features within the experience give social context to the content can dramatically increase sharethrough rates. Facebook's Social Graph API's allow ad units to highlight connections between the brand and the user's friends and followers, such as related videos or fan pages that they have liked. Leveraging more immediate social connections on sites that are not Facebook, such as followers/friends/shared interests within a specific site, can help ad units feel more integrated. The game has changed for brand video advertising. Brands are going to extraordinary lengths to create video content that will entertain and inspire, and it's the responsibility of publishers and video advertising companies to be equally innovative with their ad experiences. The combination of well-integrated, social ad units and entertaining brand videos can unlock unprecedented value for savvy advertisers and greatly benefit both the publisher's users and its bottom line.