• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, April 19, 2017

Online video is spreading to another new format: digital magazines. Flipboard, which helps publishers produce digital content in magazine-like formats, is introducing new video advertising products for three of its biggest content categories, the company announced in a blog post this week.

Flipboard publishers in the technology, news and lifestyle, and entertainment categories can now offer standard in-line video ad units across appropriate inventory, in both horizontal and vertical formats.

The ads are available both directly and programmatically through Flipboard’s private exchange, which allows targeting by audience, media outlet, or using Flipboard’s first-party interest data.

On the publisher side, the list of launch participants includes ABC News, CNBC, Elle, Hearst Digital Media, and TransWorld SKATEboarding, published by TEN The Enthusiast Network. On the client side, the new video ad formats debuted with launch advertisers including eBay, Oracle Data Cloud, and Essence.

The new offering comes on the heels of a 38% jump in video consumption on the platform over the last few months, according to Flipboard, which has also enabled publishers to include more video in their editorial content.

Much Flipboard content including videos is actually viewed on smartphones (in fact 97% of new downloads are on smartphones). Overall the platform claims to reach 100 million people per month.

Like other publishers, Flipboard has been scrambling to keep up with fast-changing technology trends, including the rise of social, video and marketing AI. Most recently, that includes a big revamp with new functionality, called Version 4, which uses AI to more accurately choose articles of interest to the reader. It also rewarding advertisers who eschew annoying formats and tactics.

Last year, the company launched Storyboard, a new ad product that allows brands to deliver messages combining articles, images, gifs, video and audio, to form engaging multimedia narratives. Storyboard helps advertisers compose the narratives with algorithms that gather their existing branded content from across the Web, allowing them to craft messages without the need to create new content.

Like Flipboard’s platform for editorial content, the ads are optimized for consumption on mobile devices including both smartphones and tablets.

Finally, on the programmatic front, last year Flipboard began making its mobile ad inventory available for real-time automated buying through an invitation-only private marketplace, created in partnership with Rubicon.