In my guest article today in Ad Age, I state that the IAB’s new video ad serving standard (“VAST” for short) has serious implications for video-only ad networks (e.g., Tremor, Brightroll, etc.) for two reasons:
1. A significant portion of the engineering work in which the incumbents have invested enormous time and money will effectively be marked to zero by the market
2. Existing, technically sophisticated display ad networks will enter the video market quickly and effectively.
To be clear, when i say “video”, I’m not talking about in-banner video or overlays, “bugs” etc. I am talking about :15 and :30 second pre-, mid- and post-roll video. This is the video advertising format where the environment is most similar to TV and the creative is directly transferrable from TV. As such, it represents >90% of advertiser demand for online video and will continue to be the lynchpin in moving TV budgets online. VAST effectively hits the “reset” button on this market in 2010 and while many current players will face serious trouble, for some companies this is an enormous opportunity.
Brand.net is one of those companies. Melissa, Elizabeth and I have been astonished how often and emphatically during the past year the top agencies, as well as Top 100 advertisers directly, have asked us to extend our market leading brand display platform capabilities (SafeScreen, SmartScale, etc.) to video. So our sales force is out taking orders for a platform extension that does just that.
Top 100 advertisers want online video to explode as an advertising medium. It’s the obvious, and (to stay in front of their target audiences) necessary, successor to the $60B they spend on sight, sound and motion brand-focused TV buys each year. But today’s video ad networks simply don’t provide the brand-focused capabilities Top 100 advertisers require. What have they told us for the past year they want from online video? The ability to guarantee Quality, Scale and Value.
Music to our ears. Stay tuned.
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