By: Alex White, GM, Data & Trading


AOL announced Marketplace, an effort to consolidate the stack of tools publishers use to serve ads. Here’s the article on paidContent.


AOL has long been a leader in ad technology and continues to develop incremental product offerings in support of its business. But I share the skepticism expressed in the article that someone is always coming out with a new shiny thing to make advertising cheaper.

I am sure this product may in fact help publishers optimize among the many buyers that exist in the ecosystem and perhaps AOL is in a position to pay more for access to the publisher. But at the end of the day, claims that there has not been innovation on the publisher side are false.

There has been an equal amount on both sides. Claims to put more money in the publishers pocket are also false as AOL can’t control the middle men. And if AOL is going to create competition for the publisher’s inventory, they will need to connect it to large pools of supply. That means DSPs. And once they do that, they might share 50 cents on the dollar. However that has already been reduced by other technologies before AOL or the publisher sees it.

These are my opinions and I’d love to hear from others…leave a comment or reach me at
awhite@dgit.com.

The iMedia Video Sumimt is underway in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The theme this year is “TV Everywhere: The New Video Era” and discussions are forming around trends and opportunities in multi-platform video, timeless viewing, video on demand and much more.

Make sure to check out this article by our very own Boaz Ram, Senior Manager of Video Product Marketing for DG MediaMind. Boaz talks about whether online video will drive more dollars for brands in 2013 and whether you should plan to invest more in video. Here’s what the future holds. Continue reading

Marketers should be shifting more budgets to online video. They know perfectly well that consumers are there in droves waiting. The reality is that they are; TV content and advertising is not shifting to online, in fact they are both growing together and more importantly the lines are starting to blur. And let’s be honest, we need to do better than simply repurpose TV ads online; online offers many advantages to TV ads.

There are a myriad ways to make video more engaging and relevant so boring your audience is no longer acceptable; they will simply shift their attention to one of the numerous options available to them. We have seen things like leveraging content and letting people choose the ad and MediaMind’s research showed that online users are 200 percent more likely to engage with an interactive in-stream ad than with an interactive banner.

Most people are now familiar with the “in-stream” ads that play online before a video, pretty much the same as TV. But let’s take it a step further by improving relevancy and the user experience. Rather than repeat the same mid-roll, why not increase relevancy by utilizing dynamic creative optimization to tailor components of your video assets based on location, user’s interaction, demographics, or other factors?

Video standards like VPAID allow you to mix up your creative to keep your ads fresh. You can sequence your ads and also frequency cap them. This allows you to create awareness, engage the user and once the user navigates away to other pages or sites, you can retarget them with interactive rich media in-banner to allow the user to learn more about the brand or product, and then drive it home with display to elicit brand recall or a specific action. This drives better performance than running the same video ad over and over.

Still skeptical? Check out these two dazzling showreels that demonstrates DG MediaMind’s latest innovative interactive in-stream and rich media ad formats.

1. An in-stream showreel including demos of DG MediaMind’s most engaging VPAID ads.

2. An IAB rising stars showreel, featuring some of DG MediaMind’s coolest examples of the IAB’s most advanced rich media formats.

The endless engagement capabilities of online video are inspiring and marketers should be all over this for their upcoming campaigns.

Editor’s Note: Below is a note we received from Rebecca Page, Business Manager from Initiative, who won our Plan It to Win It contest.  Her dream vacation – a trip to Mongolia to visit a child she has been sponsoring for the past 5 years – is truly inspiring. 

A huge thank you to MediaMind for an absolutely amazing holiday. In July 2012, I was lucky enough to win the Smart Planning Dream it. Plan it. Win it. vacation contest. My destination of choice was Mongolia, a country I have always been fascinated with for so many reasons – its nomadic traditions, history, vastness of land and colour! Also I have sponsored a child in Mongolia for the last 5 years (through World Vision), and it has always been my wish to visit her. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would happen! And all the more special because my mum and I travelled together, mother/daughter bonding at its best!  

 How to sum this trip up? The team at World Vision Mongolia absolutely welcomed us with open arms. From picking us up at the airport, to taking us to the Zavkhan mountains, to schools where little children sang for us, to visiting hospitals, to having the community play music and dance and welcome us, it was so special. Visiting nomadic families who cooked us lunch in their gers (felt-lined tents), was something I will never forget – mutton and mare’s milk was the traditional meal, and the hospitality of these families to complete strangers was incredible. And the absolutely highlight, meeting my beautiful sponsor child Dolgor and her family! It was a great afternoon, firstly with lunch, followed by the children singing and dancing for us, some basketball (Dolgor and I won!) and a trip to the mountains, with some of Dolgor’s best friends coming too! The language barrier didn’t matter, her smiles and excitement were wonderful to see. It was an emotional experience and we were quite teary when it was time to leave.

The landscape was beautiful. We stayed in the province of Zavkhan, located in western Mongolia. Although cold (it was about -20 degrees), the sky was the bluest I have ever seen. Relaxing on a yak trek after a day of horse trekking through the country side with not another person in site, passing camels, cattle, goats with eagles soaring above.. I couldn’t help but have my camera out all the time! Not to mention the colours of the outfits (particularly the traditional Mongolian costume) as well as inside the gers and the extremely cute children all rugged up. A tip if you visit Mongolia – make sure you have spare memory cards!

 On the way back to Australia we also stopped in Beijing for 5 days and visited all the major sites – the Forbidden City, Great Wall, Summer Palace, Tiananmen Square, Temple of Heaven, Ming Tombs, Hutongs, Lama Temple, Silk Market, Olympics Sites, Panjiayuan Market.. site and sensory overload! As well as shopping up a storm on Wángfǔjǐng st and much more.

 
An incredible holiday and again a big thank you to MediaMind for an unforgettable experience that I will treasure always. Thank you!

Predictions for the upcoming year in video – iMediaConnection.com