ScanScout Launches CPE Ad Units
- by Gavin O'Malley @mp_gavin, June 30, 2009
"The CPE pricing model fully unites ScanScout's and its client's interests in creating and targeting the best performing advertising," said Bill Day, CEO of ScanScout.
Still, the Boston-based company is hardly the first to offer marketers an alternative to the increasingly antiquated cost-per-click model. Since early last year, for one, rich media purveyor and ad network VideoEgg has offered a cost-per-engagement model that only bills advertisers after users sit through a 3-second countdown, and an expanded ad unit has initiated.
To date, data gleaned from test campaigns across ScanScout's network of over 600 sites show an increase in user interaction rate up to 15 times greater than non-CPE ads.
Competing against ad technology vendors like YuMe and WorldNow and ad networks like Tremor and AdBrite, ScanScout has pursued an aggressive strategy of industry partnerships with the likes of widget company Clearspring Technologies to expand the reach of its contextual in-video ad technology.
Last year, ScanScout became the exclusive domestic provider of in-stream video ads for Web video network Broadband Enterprises, which helped to expand its network five to seven times, to roughly about a billion monthly streams in the U.S.
Despite drawing large and highly engaged audiences, social and video-sharing networks have had difficulty making the experiences relevant and brand-safe for marketers.
ScanScout has been trying to change that with Brand Protector, a proprietary technology that scans online video content to determine its appropriateness for a particular advertiser's brand. Its technology breaks up a video into tiny segments, which it lumps into ad categories, making sure the piece of content is both ad-friendly and relevant.
