Ikon Australia published a ground-breaking press release last week. The release states unequivocally that Ikon will only work with VAST compliant publishers as of April 1st. MediaMind approached Sandra Wee, Digital Director at Ikon, for the story behind their bold move:

What brought you to take this stance in favor of VAST?
With an average of 15% of our TV budget being allocated to digital video strategies, it highlighted the need for robust measurement and data transparency across our digital video buys.
With the digital video market expected to grow significantly this year, it is vital that Ikon has complete visibility around reach and verification that our ads have run. That is why we made the stance to only run with publishers who are VAST compliant from 1st April.

What are the benefits VAST is bringing to the buy side?
From an agency perspective, there are 3 main reasons why VAST is so important:
1. Transparency in reporting metrics across publishers. e.g.,: dwell time, publisher duplication, video completion rate, reach & frequency. Without a standardized ad serving system, measurement differs from publisher to publisher with different methodologies and an inability to measure duplication across a media buy.
2. Frequency capping: Advertisers are reliant on the publisher to perform the due diligence on frequency capping your digital video buy. Ever seen the same TVC 5 times in a 45 min program on catch-up TV? Yes, it’s annoying and VAST means agencies can now control frequency.
3. Reduces creative inefficiencies and costs associated with having to create multiple video creative specifications for different publishers.
Without VAST, agencies are very much in the dark when it comes to measuring the success of digital video and verifying if our ads have run. With an average of 15% of Ikon’s TV budget being allocated to digital video, it is pertinent that we are able to look at our campaign from a holistic view rather than rely on publisher data.

How did publishers respond to your announcement?
We did get some reactions from publishers- all positive and supporting our stance.
You mentioned an April 1st dead line? Why then?Based on the research of our key digital video publishers, we understood their rollout with being VAST compliant and 1st of April was a realistic timeline without too many implications across our client set.

What’s the status of the standards (VAST, VPAID) adoption in Australia and APAC?
Most of the digital video publishers in AU aim to be VAST compliant towards the end of March- April of this year. VPAID is also on the radar but this will come once VAST2.0 is implemented.
We think that the video networks will be leading the market by being the first ones to adopt VPAID over the portals here in AU.

What else can be done as an industry effort to promote adoption?
We think there could potentially be more trade press from the IAB promoting what VAST 2.0 is and the benefits for both advertisers and publishers.


To learn more about MediaMind and VAST 2.0, please visit our website here.

Being a pioneer among agencies and actually demanding publishers to accept 3rd party serving for In-Stream and adopting VAST, is not easy.  But Horizon Media took on the challenge for a recent campaign, which went live with In-Stream VAST ads running on the first publishers that already support this new industry standard.  Horizon Media recognized the benefits of standardization and prioritized VAST-compliant publishers on its media plan, served by MediaMind.


In theory, all stakeholders in the online video market (publishers, networks, agencies and technologies providers) understand that the adoption of VAST 2.0, the new IAB standard for In-Stream serving, is key to the growth of online video ad spend. In reality, the industry might be facing the chicken and egg problem where on one hand publishers are waiting for agencies to demand 3rd party ad serving in order to adopt VAST and on the other hand, agencies are waiting for publishers to allow 3rd party ad-serving in order to actually demand it. Needless to say, the only way forward is for adoption of VAST to become a joint industry effort.


As online video advertising continues to mature, we expect more and more publishers to adopt the standard, and it is critical to see the demand starting to come from the agencies as well!

Imagine a world where your full media plan includes an array of VAST-compliant publishers…  It would mean less frustration for all parties.  Publishers, networks, agencies and technology enablers can now speak the same language allowing 3rd party In-Stream serving to flourish and be managed as part of the overall campaign. Specifically for agencies, it means easy set-up and one unified tool for reporting and optimization.


Very encouraging news about the standard adoption came recently from the BrightRoll publishers survey 2010. According to this survey, the major players in online video have responded by largely accepting standardization efforts. BrightRoll’s publisher survey shows nearly 78% of publishers claim to be VAST compliant and 69% said their systems are VPAID compliant. Of the publishers surveyed, 77% responded that their sites were compliant with both VAST 1.0 and 2.0, 14% said they are VAST 1.0 compliant only, with 8% VAST 2.0 compliant only.


Hats off to those pioneers leading the way!


 To learn more about the benefits of the VAST 2.0 click here


Hava Kelman Eisenstein | Director of Product Planning

The Digital Video Committee (DVC) at the IAB released VAST 2.0 in November 2009, wishing it would take the video advertising market a vast step forward. At first glance, the list of VAST 2.0 compliant companies might seem a bit slim so to set the record straight on adoption rate and where VAST really stands, here’s the latest lowdown.

Does today’s momentum reflect a good adoption rate for VAST? The list of VAST 2.0 ready companies seems a bit short, but when you consider the amount of players in the digital community, it’s important to remember that this list only includes companies that already implemented VAST 2.0 and overlooks those that are committed to incorporating VAST 2.0 by the end of 2010. Based on conversations with different parties in the video advertising market, we expect this list to look completely different within the next 9 months. From an adoption cycle perspective, it’s not surprising that a majority of the companies are technology vendors and ad networks as we expect them to be the early adopters of the VAST standards. The next step in the adoption chain will be for publishers. Just a few days ago, ADTECH – AOL advertising’s ad serving platform, announced it implemented both VAST and VPAID standards. Moreover, although the list is short we see that some key companies already implemented VAST 2.0. – Hopefully this will lead everyone else to follow.

Can we afford to take our time? Not really. As ad spending for in-stream video is expected to grow and more dollars are shifted from TV to digital channels, VAST and VPAID will play a critical role and the adoption of these standards will increase momentum.

With VAST and VPAID now published, there’s a small window of opportunity to build momentum and reach an adoption level that can open up the online video space. It is in our hands now…

What’s the word outside the US? Historically, the IABs in Europe adopted the IAB US standards. Just last month, the IAB’s video council in the UK, announced it had received the backing of publishers and broadcaster members to enforce the VAST 2.0. More specifically, UK publishers including BSkyB, Channel 4, Microsoft and Telegraph TV have already committed to incorporating the VAST 2.0 standards into their video players in 2010. The adoption from these publishers will result in increased investment from advertisers running campaigns across multiple sites as well as greater efficiency with online video advertising being trafficked and tracked like traditional online display. Get the skinny on the full list of companies in the UK committed to the initiative here. Furthermore, we suspect that global publishers (and technology vendors) like Yahoo will implement the VAST across different operating countries where in addition to the local IABs efforts in Europe, they will set the tone for standards.
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More and more marketers today are shifting from the “pull” to the “push” strategy where engagement with users is offered on the publisher site, within the banner. For 2009, it is evident that social has become an element applied to almost all brands and campaign strategies, but is it better for a brand to mix social elements directly into display ads to drive performance?

Here is a look at some recent campaigns that pushed social integration with display ads to a new level.

Talkback: Real Engagement in Real Time

Talkback is an ad format that features real-time two-way conversation between the consumer and the brand. A great example of this is the real-time social and display campaign featuring Talkback Ads launched by Intel last month. In its fourth Talkback Ad execution since October 2008, Intel expanded its campaign globally and aimed to connect the IT community with Intel experts. Through the Talkback Ad format, Intel technology experts participated in real-time dialogue with consumers, product reps and decision makers to establish an additional connection to the brand and its products.

Kelly Kernaghan, SVP and group account director at MRM, explained that this was also a way for Intel to reach an audience that depends on peer advice. “For IT managers, trust comes from dialogue with peers. Technical pros like to speak with people who speak the same language.”
Using Talkback, brands can build relationships by engaging users where they are, without the need to click-thru to a separate site. Talkback ads are ideal for brands interested in building or maintaining a community, product launches and can help push users down the purchase cycle.

Twitter Integration
VW pushed the social element to a whole new level when it launched a Twitter-integrated campaign where users typed in their Twitter account ID and watched as their twitter results were analyzed to determine the VW that best fits their personality, all within the banner.

Sharing with Messenger

Another ‘social’ ad format is the ‘ad sharing’ feature now available for messenger ad units. Both BMW and Universal Pictures (for the Bruno campaign) recently tapped into the ad sharing feature on MSN messenger, allowing users within seconds, to share and discuss the ad or movie trailer with buddies and contacts all without having to leave the banner.

In late August, eMarketer reported that consumers who chat with friends using AOL, MSN, or Yahoo messenger services spend more time looking at instant messenger ads than almost any other Web display spot (aside from the email category). The average messenger user spends almost 74 seconds on every advertisement rolled over while talking to friends.

Webcam-in-Banner + Social = Ultimate Brand Engagement
In light of the January 2009 Presidential Inauguration, Pepsi launched its Dear Mr. President campaign where users uploaded live video messages to Barack Obama without leaving the banner. Results from the Pepsi Refresh Everything campaign, where a direct line between the users and the Oval Office was created, confirms how integrating social media within the banner increased campaign performance and interaction. By harnessing video content with social, this campaign showed impressive results. More than 6 million people visited the brand’s Facebook page called “Refresh Everything” and nearly 85% were from the target audience of Millennials. Additionally, more than 175,000 became fans of “Refresh Everything” on Facebook and the webcam in Banner unit helped garner over 700 total video submissions that generated 4 million views and 100,000 text submissions to YouTube. More than that, the Pepsi campaign became the #1 sponsored YouTube page. For the full case study click here

So, to answer the question, is it better for a brand to mix social elements directly into display ads to drive performance? Yes, absolutely.

Hava Kelman Eisenstein | Director of Product Planning