As last Friday was a bank holiday we’re doing a Fortnight in Review’ this week. To have a weekly summary of the industry’s news delivered to your inbox, simply subscribe here.
VAN Announces New TV Frontiers, London, June 10th
VAN has announced a new event, New TV Frontiers, aimed at the technology and strategy of data-driven TV and connected TV advertising. The discussion will focus on issues such as:
- Can the tech giants crack the TV advertising market?
- What’s the role of the agency in a programmatic world?
- What does an effective TV data strategy look like?
- Are we seeing scale on the second screen?
- Is connected TV advertising ready to go from fragmentation to fruition?
Early bird tickets are now on sale. Book your ticket today to avoid disappointment.
Samsung Invests $2 Million in Enswers, a Korean Second Screen Technology Company
Enswers, a provider of automatic content recognition (ACR) technology, announced today that it received a $2 million strategic investment from Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, the venture capital arm of Samsung. Enswers, a subsidiary of KT (formerly Korean Telecom) has been working with Samsung since 2012, providing its ACR technology for Samsung Smart TVs sold in North America and its screenshot image to video playback service “Imideo” for Samsung Galaxy devices sold in Korea, and a statement issued by Enswers said this deal is expected to bring the two companies closer.
“As TV sales reach saturation point, Samsung has been thinking of new business models. One of which is to distribute smart TVs as a content platform capable of providing complementary programming, t-commerce, and real-time analytics,” said JP Lee, CEO of Enswers America. “Our technology, as well as our extensive experience in the ACR space, has demonstrated that Enswers is a good fit with Samsung’s future strategy.”
Read VAN’s recent Q&A with Joonpyo “JP” Lee, CEO of Enswers America
MediaMath Acquires Tactads for Cookieless Targeting
MediaMath, a media buying platform, announced its acquisition of Tactads, provider of cookieless and cross-device targeting technologies. Tactads is a French company which developed proprietary software that uses algorithms to identify and associate devices using statistical techniques. MediaMath say the technology does not rely on cookies, does not employ personally identifiable information about consumers, and adheres to industry privacy standards.
“The usage of multiple web-enabled devices has reached a critical mass and so has the challenge of targeting hyper-connected users across screens” said Joe Zawadzki, chief executive officer, MediaMath. “Our acquisition of Tactads is just one of the many means we are employing to help our clients overcome this challenge, improve marketing effectiveness, and drive ROI.”
Sightly Launches ‘TargetView’ to Deliver Personalised Localised Video Ads
Sightly, a video advertising technology company that focuses on the local video advertising market, has launched its new TargetView platform that allows advertisers to local businesses and their marketing partners to geo-targeted personalised ads.
“With TargetView, we have built a next generation video ad platform that delivers personalised video ad content to micro-targeted audiences in hyper-local areas on every screen,” said John McIntyre, founder and CEO of Sightly. “The level of relevancy that personalized, highly-targeted ads deliver will forever change how people view and interact with advertising—completely disrupting the industry as we know it.”
Sky and Twitter Launch #WatchonSky, So Users Can Tweet to Record TV Shows
Sky has started to trial #WatchOnSky, a brand new tool on Twitter that lets Sky customers watch or record TV shows, sporting events and movies by clicking icons contained within a Tweet. Twitter users who see #WatchOnSky on Tweets from Sky can expand the Tweet and tap on an icon that directly links to Sky’s mobile TV service Sky Go to start watching the show. Alternatively they can tap the Sky+ ‘R’ to remotely set their Sky+HD box to record.
Ebuzzing Study Finds Emotional Engagement and Distribution are Equally Important for Viral Videos
A new research study by Ebuzzing, Europe’s fastest growing online video technology company and Affectiva, a spin off group from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that focuses on emotion analytics and insights, has examined the Top 40 UK & US YouTube videos of 2013, and found that emotional engagement and effective distribution are equally important in achieving viral video success.
The study ranked video adverts by emotional response using Affectiva’s Affdex Engagement Score – which considers the range of facial emotions elicited by a video, their intensity, duration and variability. The score also takes into account visual cues such as smiles, disgust, concentration and surprise.
The Ebuzzing Affdex study found that viral successes such as Evian’s Baby&Me, DevilsDueNYC’s Devil Baby Attack and Pepsi Max & Jeff Gordon generated very high emotional engagement with viewers, showing an average Affdex Engagement score of 92. However, the study also confirms that content alone is not enough to ensure virality – a comprehensive distribution strategy is of equal importance for brands seeking a viral hit.
Tremor Video to Enable Advertisers to Run Ads Across Multiple Screens with a Single Placement
Using Tremor Video’s patented technology, VideoHub, advertisers can now place a single video ad campaign that will be programmatically delivered where it works most effectively against a marketer’s goal, whether on desktop, tablets, smartphones or connected TV.
The optimisation is completely automated, so buyers no longer need to predict the right amount of their budgets to allocate to each screen, but instead can set a campaign goal and let the technology deliver ‘the optimal mix’ across all devices. Tremor Video say they are the first and only video technology company to price, target, optimise and report on video campaigns across all devices with a single placement.
LiveRail Served Most Video Ads in the US in March
LiveRail, a video supply side platform, served the most ads in the US in March of this year, with 3.9 billion ad impressions, according to comScore. AOL, Inc. came in second with 3.8 billion ads, followed by BrightRoll Platform with 3.1 billion, Google Sites with 3.1 billion and TubeMogul Video Ad Platform with 3 billion.
Channel 5 Selects FreeWheel for Ad Management
FreeWheel, the leading provider of video ad management and monetization solutions for the television industry, announced today that it has been selected by Channel 5 to power advertising across its owned and operated digital properties and syndication partner sites. Freewheel already work with both Channel 4 and BSkyB in the UK.
BrightRoll Announces Various New Partnerships
BrightRoll announced new partnerships with comScore and Nielsen on measurement, with Google’s Doubleclick (providing access to the DoubleClick Ad Exchange for BrightRoll buyers), and with Bluekai on mobile audience targeting.
