Video ad marketplace Adap.tv announced recently that it is seeing “a 92 percent average monthly growth rate for video ad views within its marketplace since the launch in February 2010”. Read the release.
Adap.tv founder and VP of Product Teg Grenager provided some perspective on recent developments at his company.
AdExchanger.com: Historically, there has been a lot less non-guaranteed video ad inventory available than, say, pc-based graphical display. Do you see this changing? Why or why not?
TG: Premium pre-roll inventory is in very high demand and, currently, there are supply constraints. This is not likely to change. Unlike display advertising, where many publishers designate a portion of their inventory as “remnant,” pre-roll inventory is available as fixed placements and drives higher engagement. What the adap.tv marketplace provides buyers is increased access to a high volume of premium video inventory.
How would you characterize your announced results in comparison to your expectations a year ago? Ahead, behind, in-line?
The rapid growth of the adap.tv marketplace has exceeded even our own bullish expectations. A year ago, we knew there were inefficiencies in the online video advertising space and that buyers and sellers wanted more openness and transparency. We didn’t realize how quickly they would change their behavior and adopt an open platform like the adap.tv marketplace. Just eight months after the launch, adap.tv is the third largest online video property by video ads delivered, according to comScore’s Video Metrix September 2010 report.
How would you say you’re differentiating Adap.tv today in comparison to other video marketplaces and networks?
Inventory, openness and transparency. Adap.tv is the only source of aggregated premium online video inventory based on deep relationships with publishers. The majority of inventory in the marketplace comes from publishers who run their entire businesses on our onesource video ad server. This means that the inventory is “always on,” and we can provide buyers with easy, self-service access to inventory for each campaign. Second, the marketplace is based on an open technology platform with a set of powerful APIs that help buyers and sellers leverage best-of-breed technologies from data providers, rich media vendors, and measurement and analytics companies. Third, the marketplace is completely transparent which means buyers and sellers know exactly who they are transacting with and what they are paying for. Essentially, publishers and advertisers want a more efficient and transparent mechanism for transacting, given the complexities of running pre-roll video campaigns at scale.
Can you talk about the momentum in the use of third-party targeting data through Adap.tv?
In display, third-party targeting tools traditionally have been used for direct response campaigns. Audience targeting is critical for video as well; however, as more TV and brand dollars flow into the marketplace, we frequently see data used to achieve scale and safety.
And, are your clients able to effectively map user cookies between display and video inventory in Adap.tv’s marketplace today, for example?
Yes, online video uses exactly the same cookies as display, so you can buy data once and leverage it across both video and display.
Can you touch on what formats you sell through the marketplace today? And what might be the next formats you add?
Our focus has been in-stream pre-roll video. However, we support any type of ad formats that fit into the linear video ad space and can run them across all of the publishers in the marketplace. We recently added support for interstitials in casual games and Telemetry’s hot spots. Moving forward, we will continue to integrate emerging rich media and work to support the buying and selling of ads across any device that delivers online video.
By John Ebbert
