Video ad technology firm TidalTV raised about $30 million from existing investors, including New Enterprise Associates, Comcast Interactive Capital and Valhalla Partners. Baltimore-based TidalTV offers video advertising, optimization and yield management services to clients. Its AdOSTM technology uses relevant data to improve ad delivery. Launched in late 2007, TidalTV has aggressively raised capital to establish itself as a player in the online video business with its one-to-one ad "decisioning" technology. "Our focus on bringing math and science into the branded advertising space has been well received," said Scott Ferber, chairman and CEO of TidalTV. TidalTV has been described as an outgrowth of Advertising.com, which Ferber founded with his brother before selling the company to AOL in 2004. Ad.com is best known for facilitating the targeting of banner and display advertising. While competition exists, TidalTV is competing for a share of a vastly expanding market. Indeed, eMarketer estimates that by 2015, 76% of Web users -- or 195.5 million people -- will be watching online video each month. In the same period, the research firm predicts online video advertising spending will surge from $1.97 billion to $5.71 billion. Last year, TidalTV raised $16 million in venture capital. In turn, Comcast Interactive Managing Director David Horowitz joined TidalTV's board. TidalTV also tapped ad monetization platform Adap.tv to buy inventory sold via the company's online video marketplace. In turn, TidalTV agreed to use its technology on behalf of clients to deliver pre-roll ads. Will this latest round of funding, TidalTV plans to continue exploring new markets and media channels. In February, the company launched its mobile counterpart.
Mobile video consumption continues to rise sharply. Forty percent more Americans were watching video on smartphones and other mobile devices like tablets and iPads in 2010 versus 2009, according to the Nielsen Company. Some 25 million users watched an average four hours and 20 minutes per month. Video usage in the third and fourth quarter of 2010 rose 33% and 20%, respectively. There were 22.9 million users watching mobile video in the third quarter of 2010 and 17.6 million users in the fourth quarter of 2009. Overall, smartphone ownership rose to 31% at the end of 2010 from 23% in the fourth quarter of 2009. Nielsen attributes the rise to video becoming easier to find and to share via mobile apps or the mobile Web. During a given week, 12- to-17-year-olds watched an average 19 minutes; 18- to-24-year-olds averaged 12 minutes; and 25- to-34-year-olds, 10 minutes. Video consumption during an average week was the highest among 25- to-34-year-olds at 32%, followed by 35-49s, at 27%; 18-24s at 17%; 12-17s at 11%: and 50-64s at 10%.
Marketers gained a demand-side platform to support video ads when DSP DataXu released DX Video Wednesday. The tools range from real-time programmable buying and optimization to advanced targeting and new audience discovery. DX Video automatically optimizes results against advertising objectives, such as awareness, engagement, views, influence and sales. Mike Baker, DataXu CEO, said a handful of companies have been testing the platform, pointing to Universal Studios as an example. "There are about 1 billion video impressions available to us for in-stream video per month, and about 60 billion ad video impressions available on page, not in a stream, but video that shows up in a box," he said. "We support about 4 million URLs daily." Universal Studios, which has been working with DataXu since the beginning of the year, wanted to reach fans of thriller movies, related shows and movies, and females 18-49 for its new theatrical release, "The Adjustment Bureau." As with most ad campaigns for movies, the campaign ran for just a few weeks, not allowing much time to adjust targeting and tactics that don't perform as expected. The campaign's objective to maximize consumer engagement with the auto-start video ad unit was measured as clicks-for-audio and replays. Reaching the audience required targeting tactics, premium content buys, category and behavioral targeting supported by third-party data, demographic targeting of females age 18 to 49, and DataXu Audience Discovery targeting. The campaign outperformed traditional tactics by 2 times at 15 times the scale, according to the company. The results were achieved by observing high variability in performance across times, content, consumer demographics, consumer psychographic segments and geography -- and by identifying and buying the highest-performing impressions both within and outside the campaign's identified targets. DX Video features DataXu's Audience Discovery technology, which enables an advertiser to find the best-performing audience and engage with them across the Internet, as well as gain insights into consumer behavior. DataXu has been experimenting with Web browser technology HTML5 standards to make it easier to distribute content, with a focus on mobile. It will give advertisers the ability to lighten the payloads and expand the ad to provide a "richer experience" across operating systems. Companies paying more attention to platforms supporting video ads have begun to shell out capital to support the move. Adap.tv, which supports buying and selling of video advertising, closed $20 million in financing led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Collective also said it acquired online video advertising network Web TV Enterprise. The deal follows six months after the company's expansion into the United Kingdom and weeks after acquiring video advertising platform Oggifinogi. More than 70% of online video advertisers expect to increase video budgets by 25% during the next six months, according to an internal Web TV Enterprise market report based on a survey of U.K. media buyers. The research also suggests that digital buyers are responding to improvements in audience measurement techniques, an obstacle for many advertisers.
Online video continues to boom, with an explosion of content, technologies, communities and campaign spending. But what hasn't been discussed is the increase in legal problems for businesses with online video -- and the fact that most marketers today still have no idea what the legal issues with online video are. Lack of knowledge of these legal issues is presenting more serious consequences for businesses. These can range from the removal of their videos from sharing sites and web hosts and cancellation of their accounts, to the more serious consequences of civil lawsuits with heavy fines, and even potential criminal charges. All of these can cause real damage to ROI, serious businesses losses, and a negative effect on one's brand and professional reputation. How did we get to this point? First you might be inclined to think back to the last decade of the 20th century, when the Web was considered to be the Wild West of marketing -- a label connotating tolerance of some degree of lawlessness, Our legal issues then were largely around intellectual property and stealing other's content -- including copyright and trademark infringement. In the first decade of the 21st century, the birth and growth of social media and online video brought about new legal concerns such as privacy rights. As we have progress into the second decade of the 21st century, improved interactive technologies and increased rewards for producing and marketing video content and campaigns - be it blanketing Google's search results with video listings, or achieving a viral video success - have driven us further into real-time marketing, with less time for thinking things through properly. It has turned more businesses and entrepreneurs into instinctive marketers than restrained, thoughtful ones. They grow accustomed to taking whatever content they can find without real concern of ownership, publishing it immediately without real concern for accuracy, and pushing social limits to get views on the cheap. Basically, they paying little or no attention to the fact that a virtual creation of a video may cause real problems to real people. What is it about the medium of video that is triggering such a legal reaction - not just in civil courts, but also now with real criminal prosecutions? I've seen the causes to be manifold: · Responsiveness - Marketers know that people typically have a more visceral response to video than other single media, online or offline. The problem for businesses is that producing a video to elicit a strong reaction with an intended positive outcome for your business, also can risk producing an equally strong negative reaction. (Sometimes businesses even intend to generate a strong negative reaction, thinking that it will generate more publicity they can harness.) So when audiences and authorities online see a video that ends up generating a negative reaction, they could be more likely to experience feelings of outrage, and act on it through lawsuits and even criminal prosecutions. · Virility - Online video has its own extremely large communities on YouTube, Facebook and most any social network that are built around sharing content with others. Add to the fact that video naturally lends itself to sharing, and you can realize how a negative reaction by a few individuals over a video can compound into a negative reaction by many people very quickly. · Ignorance - Most people are still not aware of YouTube's, Facebook's, and other social media sites' terms of service, community guidelines, and copyright and trademark guidelines. · Disinterest - Many video users aren't inclined to act responsibly and give proper attention to any guidelines, seeing them as getting in the way of their marketing and fun. · Confusion - With online video and most other social media, much of the law is evolving in the courts, making it extremely difficult sometimes for even attorneys to feel secure about what's permissible to do and what isn't. · Ubiquity - Immersed in an online world where being the fastest and most outrageous is both rewarded and commonplace, businesspeople's perceptions of what's legally permissible can get skewed. It's time for marketers and all professionals involved in the online video industry to get a basic legal video education. We need to start paying more attention to legal rights and responsibilities for this most powerful media, getting permission before publishing, and consulting with attorneys specializing in intellectual property, Internet law, and entertainment law who have a good grasp on the online video landscape. To not exercise this basic responsibility for how we choose to use online video in our business would bring us down -- from a positive YouTube culture to a negative "You Sued" culture.