IAB Updates Video Standards; Mixpo's Lanctot On Ad Tech

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Standardizing Ads

The IAB is seeking comment on an update of its “Digital Video In-Stream Ad Metric Definitions.” New metrics include “Ad expand/collapse” and the ever-popular “Skip,” which “describes when a user intentionally skips a linear video ad by clicking a button or other control mechanism.” Read more. Download the definitions. The hope is that standardization of video ads leads to increased efficiency.

Wheat Tech

In Ad Age, Mixpo CEO Jeff Lanctot takes a look at what he sees as a crowded field in ad tech in an op-ed. He advises the various silos of the ad ecosystem on how to select the ad tech wheat from the chaff. For marketers, he writes, “Your job will continue to get harder, and the industry more complicated. Your challenge is to understand what’s a commodity and what’s an innovation.” Read more.

TV And Video Are Not Colliding

Addressable TV company Visible World’s blog takes last week’s AdExchanger comic to task. The author writes, “As TV and web video become increasingly similar and entangled, there’s no reason to fear a collision and every reason to work towards a smooth blending of the two. Wouldn’t we all prefer to have the above cartoon end with a bigger, faster, more maneuverable truck labeled ‘Video’?” Read more.

Fire Away

Appsfire is getting into the mobile native ad business with its new service called Sashimi Ads. Mmmm. The premise, like other companies doing native, is to blend ads in seamlessly with content on multiple platforms. According to the blog post, some highlights to this new service are automation and targeting. Read the post.

Cross-Channel Complexities

Ecommerce cloud company ChannelAdvisor launched a new digital marketing platform to guide retailers and manufacturers through the complexities of marketing products online. According to VP Link Walls (fav name!), “we wanted to bring together some of the disparate parts of our platform in one place for our customers, whether it’s understanding how they’re doing on Google Shopping or how they’re doing on mobile vs. desktop or Pinterest.” One of Google Shopping’s early launch partners, Walls told AdExchanger that Channel Advisor is tackling the problem of applying inventory and product data into advertising media. Read the release.