• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, February 24, 2011

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.