YuMe To Debut Algorithm To Aid Video Ad Placement
- by Gavin O'Malley @mp_gavin, March 1, 2012
Media buyers are always looking for better ways to evaluate expected campaign performance. Video ad network YuMe on Thursday is expected to debut a proprietary algorithm that aims to identify the best placement of video ads across digital properties.
Publishers such as MSN, MSNBC Digital Network, IDG Entertainment and Glam Media use YuMe's ACE ad management platform.
The new Placement Quality Index (PQI) measures key performance metrics, including interaction rate, video completion rate, video player size and player on-page location.
A baseline PQI is calculated continuously for YuMe’s Connected Audience Network, so new campaigns can be evaluated in real-time against the average performance of the entire network. As a marketer’s campaign progresses, the real-time PQI calculations allow YuMe to automatically adjust campaign placements in an effort to optimize performance.
With a continuously updated stream of metrics, the PQI does away with “outdated or oversimplified data,” claims YuMe CEO Jayant Kadambi.
As such, YuMe is selling brands on the promise that their campaigns will reach “the right audience and run on sites that yield the highest possible performance,” according to Kadambi.
Prior to its debut, Kadambi said YuMe conducted extensive testing to demonstrate the impact of utilizing a PQI-based media allocation compared to a traditional site list-based media allocation on video ad campaign performance.
In one instance, YuMe compared a set of 10 campaigns with major travel and telecommunications brands utilizing the PQI algorithm against 10 campaigns that opted out. These campaign sets and audience targets were identical, and the associated creatives were placed on the same digital publisher properties.
According to Kadambi, PQI-optimized video ad campaigns yielded a 215% lift in interaction rate -- compared to non-optimized campaigns -- along with a 90% lift in video completion rates.
By 2016, Forrester estimates that domestic digital video ad spending will explode by over 250% -- from $2 billion in 2011 to $5.4 billion.
Late last year, YuMe received another strategic investment of $12 million from Samsung Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Samsung Group, along with Translink Capital.
This sounds like a great achievement for YuMe and one that will help create a great deal of media efficiency in video *advertising*. But it seems to me that an outstanding issue for us all should be addressing the need for universal standardization and increased frictionless distribution of video *content*. Talk about a fragmented space in the larger ecosystem.
I'm confused about one thing as I read this... If Yume has just gotten around to developing an algorithm to optimize a campaign to performance (something most other video networks have been doing for 3-4 years now) then what have they been selling advertisers prior? So up to now there has been no technology driving performance??? Has it just been a couple of people in backroom watching and clicking on ads??? I know if I were buying from them over the years I would have lots more questions about where my money went and what I was sold in return.....