Data Drives Adap.tv And EXelate Video Ad Targeting Deal
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, June 2, 2010
Data has become increasingly critical for online video advertisers that demand better ways to reach and target relevant audiences. Adap.tv's video ad marketplace wants to make buying audiences simple by transitioning the same media-buying process from offline to online.
Adap.tv created an open architecture for third-party data providers, allowing clients easy access not only to the data, but the ability to add the data into their bid. It also allows agencies and advertisers to integrate cookie segments already created.
This partnership combines adapt.tv's platform with eXelate's consumer targeting data on more than 150 million unique visitors each month. Advertisers in atm gain access to eXelate's targeting data, from age to gender to household income.
This self-serve model gives control back to media buyers to better manage campaigns with CPMs that range in the marketplace from $3 to $22, and more than 1,000 sites. "Our approach is somewhat different because we enable buyers to pick and choose the kind of targeting they want, whether using their own segments or a third party," says Toby Gabriner, president at adap.tv. "Not only can you scale to run pre-roll video campaigns across a myriad of campaigns, but now you can bring in overlays and targeting tools."
Adap.tv serves a variety of publisher sites across the United States. U.S. Internet users watched 30.3 billion videos in April, with Google Sites ranking as the top properties with 13.1 billion videos, representing 43.2% of all videos viewed online, according to comScore. Hulu ranked second with 958 million videos, or 3.2% of all online videos viewed. Microsoft Sites ranked third with 644 million, or 2.1%; followed by Viacom Digital with 384 million, or 1.3%; and Yahoo Sites with 371 million, or 1.2%.
Latency creates the biggest challenge compared with display when it comes to targeting video ads because file sizes are so much larger, Gabriner says. But there is no integration process for buyers who want to tap into the registration-based data inside the marketplace, making buying audience-targeted campaigns using eXelate data as simple as selecting the desired user segments from a pull-down menu.
eXelate Chief Revenue Officer Mark Zagorski says the ability to pump data into adap.tv will accelerate the growth and quench the thirst of marketers looking for a video ad-targeting platform. The real use of the data will become to find a specific audience, he says. Increasing performance is great, but first advertisers need to find the perfect audience, where they hang out online, for that Mustang convertible with of price tag of more than $30,000.
Adap.tv supports about 500 million ad impressions monthly, but both executives expect that number to increase as the company continues to bring in third-party tools. There are three similar data partnerships being finalized aside from eXelate, but Zagorski declined to release the names.
As advertisers continue to pull offline dollars into online, the performance will become more about finding the audience first. Video has the greatest opportunity. Media buyers understand how to purchase television audiences. "If the video industry can translate that and start speaking the same language online, buyers will understand," Zagorski says.
The platform will not work for everyone. When I asked Zagorski who should not take advantage of this partnership, he explained: "if you're going after performance driven, low-end impressions, then usually high-quality data isn't the right opportunity for you."
