• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 5, 2022

CatapultX, which created an on-stream video ad and monetization platform, announced the launch of a self-serve video ad platform on Wednesday. Its products, which support programmatic, are based on artificial intelligence (AI).

The offering makes it possible for small- to medium-sized agencies and brands, as well as direct-to-consumer advertisers to create and serve ads across premium video ad platforms at a fraction of traditional costs.

“About 80% of internet traffic is against video traffic, but only 25% of advertisers can afford creatives,” said CatapultX Co-Founder and CEO Zack Rosenberg. “That’s why we created the company.”

Historically, SMB and direct to consumer advertisers spent much of their budgets on display or search ads across Facebook and Google. High-quality video production costs made premium video advertising cost-prohibitive.

The company takes standard, native and display ads, bringing them into video environments, but using artificial intelligence to match the ad depending on the events in the video. It lets brands become a video advertiser without using video assets.

The technology, built on AI, catalogs every frame in the video. The data creates patterns that lets the technology learn, enabling it to pick the “prefect moment” to serve the ad.

Kiss Products, a company focused on beauty products and treatments, and Bitdefender, a cybersecurity company, are among the first to use the self-service platform. 

KISS Products, for example, uses the platform to reach consumers at the point when they are immersed in video content. At that moment viewers are exposed to ad message leading to brand recall and inspires consumers to act, learn more about the product or make a purchase.

The company said that when comparing standard native and display ads that typically run on Facebook and Google with the quality of traffic on video sites, the price is about 60% less -- not only the media cost, but costs to create the video assets.

A dashboard and tools help marketers manage and optimize the brand’s programmatic video campaigns across multiple channels within the self-service platform once they have determined the media spend.