Adap.tv Announces Campaign Optimizer For Video

Adap.tv announced last week its Campaign Optimizer for video, a technology that provides buyers with full visibility into the results of a campaign before running a single impression. Using historical data to analyse billions of impressions, the Campaign Optimizer aims to allow buyers to set the performance goals they want, and get the real-time price and inventory availability needed to achieve them.

In a recent study, Adap.tv analysed campaigns over a three-month period and found that on average, optimised campaigns delivered 30% higher completion rates and 21% lower cost per competed view (CPCV) than those not using the Campaign Optimizer.

With Adap.tv’s Campaign Optimizer, buyers can adjust performance goals for a specific ad, such as completion rate and level of distribution on preferred sites and see the immediate impact on price and available inventory. Adap.tv technology automatically allocates inventory that will best achieve the pre-set goals at the most efficient CPMs, while continuing to monitor the campaign to a successful completion.

Brian Fitzpatrick, Managing Director for Adap.tv in Europe, comments: “Buying media shouldn’t be a guessing game. Buyers need to see and understand the outcome of their campaigns in order to make intelligent decisions. Adap.tv’s Campaign Optimizer takes the mystery out of video advertising performance by providing media buyers with the information and tools they need to create the results they want.”

Adap.tv’s Campaign Optimizer will be available to platform and marketplace buyers in July 2012.

45% of Consumers Would Opt-in to Mobile Marketing

The new survey, conducted by Velti, found that consumers will only sign up to communications from three companies on average, making it difficult for brands to take advantage of this opportunity on a wide scale.

When respondents were asked what type of companies they would opt-in to receive information from, mobile network operators came out on top (42.4%), followed by retailers (25.6%), financial services firms (16.9%) and travel companies (16.5%).

The survey also shows the importance of mobile email. While 36.9% of consumers prefer to receive messaging on a mobile (SMS – 24.3%, MMS – 5.1% and mobile optimised email – 7.5%), 78.3% said they prefer email marketing.

ClickDistrict Debuts Proprietary RTB Technology: Platform 161

ClickDistrict, a real-time and targeting company that delivers performance display advertising, launched Platform 161 last week. Described as a “versatile technology solution”, it aims to significantly increase efficiency in media buying and campaign traffic volume.

In a joint case study with the DoubleClick AdExchange, ClickDistrict highlights the main benefits of Platform 161:

• Increased Clickthrough Rates by 250% from August 2011 to April 2012
• Scalability and almost instant media presence in new markets
• Increased campaign traffic volume and reach across regions

The development for Platform 161 was driven by the desire to provide a premium solution for advertisers and enhance the efficiency in an increasingly crowded market place for all players involved.

The aim was to achieve greater value on behalf of advertisers and agency clients. The bespoke platform draws together bidders and ad exchanges from a host of providers. The DoubleClick Ad Exchange (AdX) was adopted for RTB Media and integrated into the platform. Working with Google, ClickDistrict hopes this opportunity will help them operate seamlessly on a global level.

Platform 161 aims to bring advantages to media operations. These include a flexible user interface, as well as a campaign logic layer that brings the complexity of RTB into an intuitive toolset. The latter optimises workflow and creates operational efficiencies for the user.

According to Marco Kloots, CEO ClickDistrict, the company wanted to harvest the benefits provided
by RTB: “One of the benefits of RTB is the enormity of its scale. We run four new countries with the
same staff in our publishing team because of the ease of making changes at scale. In addition, working together with Google really provided world-class material for us to build our system. We would not have come to the same results without the dedicated service and know-how of the Google team.“

ClickDistrict worked together with IPONWEB, a leader in the development and operation of online advertising and real-time media trading technology, who has integrated Platform 161 into the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.

Online Video Platform Provider Kaltura Nabs Groupon Deal, Also Announces European Expansion

Originally reported on TechCrunch by Ryan Lawler

Video platform provider Kaltura might pitch itself as providing an open-source video distribution offering, which would allow anyone to build their own enterprise video site for free. But increasingly, it’s winning the business of big paying customers, who are choosing its software and using additional paid features — which is how Kaltura makes its money. The latest to do so is Groupon, which has chosen Kaltura for an enterprise video portal.

Surprisingly enough, Groupon isn’t using Kaltura for customer-facing marketing videos: Instead it’s decided to build an internal video platform to be used for communications with its employees. That includes more than 12,000 workers throughout various field offices, which is kind of a monumental task for an organization. Instead of relying on company-wide emails, Groupon has decided to handle internal communications with video.

Use cases for the new Groupon video platform can include corporate messaging from executives to the broader employee base, as well as training videos and on-demand communications between various team members to one another. Groupon is essentially building an internal YouTube-type video portal, using Kaltura’s MediaSpace software.

Kaltura can do this because it offers a flexible video distribution platform that can be used as a hosted solution in the cloud, or installed at the customer’s premises. While Brightcove and Ooyala have built SaaS-based platforms for managing videos online, Kaltura has taken a bit of a different approach. It too has hosted offerings, but it also allows customers to deploy its software in their own data centers behind the firewall.

In addition to the Groupon win, Kaltura is announcing this morning that it is making a big push into Europe, with the opening of a London sales office and the appointment of a general manager just for that market. The startup is promoting its former VP of strategy, Leah Belsky, to the European GM position. It’s also been hiring for European expansion, with about 20 employees now on the ground to sell and support its product in that region.

While Kaltura is just now announcing the European initiative in earnest, it’s already been operating there and has won a few decent deals. Customers in Europe include AstraZeneca, SAP, AkzoNobel, Nestle, Groovy Gecko, PinkTV, Glam Media, Durham University, Copenhagen Business School, Danish State University and Library, and Siemens.