One hang-up premium publishers have with digital video – besides producing enough of content – is monetizing it, especially videos distributed off-network. One problem: blocking fraudulent traffic.
In that spirit, IDG, which owns GamePro, TechHive and PC World, also uses an anti-fraud solution called Flashlight, built by video content syndication platform Vidible in partnership with ad-verification specialist Integral Ad Science. Vidible released the solution Monday.
IDG, which worked with Vidible prior to Flashlight’s release, had tried to monetize video more efficiently.
Vidible enabled IDG to automate manual Media RSS feeds and streamline the content syndication process to various publishers, said Tim Mahlman, co-founder and president of Vidible. This lets IDG attach ads to content and perform reach extension.
Yet fraud is a publisher-wide problem, and it is especially rampant in video where CPMs are high.
“Fraud discredits all of us, driving down pricing and slow(ing) adoption,” said IDGTechNetwork CEO Pete Longo. “We built out our platform (and employ) a business intelligence team who spends a great deal of time analyzing where and how our ads appear, and looking at statistics to elicit patterns that may indicate fraud.”
Flashlight is designed to lie on top of publisher systems and detect the percentage of bot traffic and viewability on partner networks and sites. In a one-month beta period, Flashlight tracked 53 million impressions.
In essence, Vidible provides a way for the publisher to measure the quality of the domains in their partner distribution networks. Conversely, it gives buyers reassurance they’re engaging with people, not bots.
Although IDG hasn’t begun to import video from other publishers, “it’s in our near-term plan,” said Longo. “Vidible was a natural choice for us because of the outstanding technology and for the marketplace they create for the distribution of quality video, like ours.”
Vidible says it’s a “complement” to video ad networks and exchanges like Tremor, Yume and BrightRoll/Yahoo, which focus on the monetization piece, while its platform emphasizes content. Mahlman said Vidible acts as a Getty Images for video where publishers get unique access to logins where they can search and discover video content. Vidible says it charges a transaction-based fee rather than operating a network-based model.
Platforms like Matomy are more or less buy-side partners and can access the Vidible marketplace to unlock new video content, input their own ads and work with publishers directly to shore up new inventory.
“We’ve got quite a few of those guys in our system because advertisers are not OK with 300×250 anymore below the fold. It has to be supported by video content,” Mahlman said. “We want to be the enabler for those guys.”
Mahlman, who formerly served as chief revenue officer for demand-side platform Turn and ad network BlueLithium, co-founded Vidible in 2007 and raised $3.35 million in Series A funding last January.
Vidible works with more than 90 content owners (many of which are YouTube multichannel content networks) and serves 1.3 billion video streams per month across private and open exchanges. The Vidible platform clocks about 3,000 new content uploads each day.
