• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, November 13, 2013

Digital video advertising still takes its key from traditional media players. This is especially true for digital independent advertising video players.

Bill Day, president/chief executive officer of Tremor Video, took great pains to offer an explanation about why his company’s sales projections were so much off that Tremor’s stock price, and that of other related companies, took a major hit on Monday.

Seems this year’s traditional TV upfront process went on too long, into late July/early August, causing a delay in the money taken in by the likes of Tremor, which sells a digital advertising video network.

Not only that, but Day said the video advertising dollars that traditional TV companies receive for their networks in big media packages is increasingly complemented by new digital video money.

No surprise here: Traditional video marketers like the idea of buying up packaged deals from those they have been doing business with for decades. The promise is to add digital extensions in a more seamless way to all those networks and channels they are already comfortable with.

Increasingly, however, traditional video marketers like to use regular cost-per-thousand-viewers metrics. But they also like new metrics.

Confidence is everything -- even if just perceived. Even Google relented to having Nielsen measure its YouTube activity. Analysts say this could persuade TV marketers to do more business with the big, mostly-user generated, video platform.

Tangential evidence means a lot.  Recently, a number of TV network digital executives at OMMA Video events said  they had big revenue results, especially relating to “premium” video product and placement.

Stock market investors can’t be blamed if they think that, while digital video is the nice shiny new object to admire, there are key differences between it and traditional TV. Not only that -- but traditional marketers recognize those differences and can adjust their media plans accordingly.

All to say many new digital video networks, while attractive in terms of price, still show gaps in delivering reach and media quality.