• by Alex Weprin , March 12, 2018

Uproxx, a millennial-targeted digital media publisher, is launching a programmatic pre-roll video advertising product that will pair ads with the company’s content and distribute them across the web.

The Uproxx Video Amplifier was designed to work with an individual brand's preferred technology stack and trading desk, giving it more granular control over content.

Jen Sargent, president of Uproxx, tells Digital News Daily "it goes back to trust in the data.”

She adds, “A lot of brands and agencies want to take control over where things are running and how they are running, but more importantly, often times they want to use their own data overlay,” she says. “It is not just about pre-roll ads in front of brand-safe premium content. It is about targeting the people where it is going to resonate.”

Uproxx will work with brands to figure out what videos will be paired with each ad. In many cases, the ads are paired with existing editorial video content from Uproxx’s library of content, but in some cases the company will create “bespoke” content to pair with the ads, Sargent says.

Marketers can choose specific videos to pair with their ads, or channels or shows that they expect to align with their brand.

“The process is pretty collaborative and sometimes consultative, depending on the clients and what they need,” she says. 

The marketer can then take the ad and video pairing and use its preferred trading desk or distribution platform to place it on other sites, or on Uproxx’s own platforms.

According to Sargent, the idea for the video amplifier product came about partly because of advertiser concerns about brand safety. “They wanted to be around content that would support and amplify their brand, and not be around negative content that would detract,” Sargent says of her conversations with advertisers. “By marrying the pre-roll to very specific content, the adjacency there is transparent to the client, so they know exactly what video content they are running in front of.”