TubeMogul links to a conversation MediaPost's Online Video Insider had with the Senior Vice President of Publicis Tim Hanlon. The piece touches on a lot of interesting points within the business of online video, but TubeMogul highlights one quote in particular.
…technology allows traditional programmers and ad sellers to offer advertising in a more sophisticated manner. This unbundling has historically been a tightly wrapped packaged of availability, buttressed by a less than elegant measurement system (example, Nielson) that has given us a relatively crude measurement device called ratings, and demographically oriented at that. We are now able to measure more granularly. That brings an increased sophistication of audience definition that goes far beyond a generic grouping.
I know the quote is a bit obtuse, but essentially what's being said is that what Google did for text content with AdWords, other video companies are doing for video finally. The opportunity is real, for advertisers, and thanks to the increased ROIs and resulting higher CPMs in the video world, it provides a better opportunity for the smaller producers to make an actual living doing their work.
As someone who has blogged for sites both big and small, I can say that it is quite difficult to get ahead growing a brand using the type of network independent advertising described by Hanlon, as applied to the text medium. Thankfully, the viral elements inherent to the world of online video lend themselves better to promotion of the work of the independent content producer in a way that not only lends the credit to the producers, but also the advertising dollars.
TubeMogul asks if media buyers will agree with this assessment, and will the higher quality audiences through better targeting translate into higher CPMs (and when)?
The time is now, actually. We're starting to see in small pockets of the online video community places where incredible CPMs are turning up:
I was floored, though, when I read the summary of an interview Andy Plesser at Beet.TV had with the folks at Blinkx, the video search engine and advertising network (whom we've covered quite extensively). He spoke with Suranga Chandratillake, the CEO of Blinkx, who said that some videos are fetching "north of $60" CPM with their overlay ads.
We're also in other areas of rich media, we're seeing major media buys on certified downloads:
Wizzard Media has announced that they've signed the U.S. Navy as a client for a far reaching advertising campaign running until the end of January. The campaign will include twenty shows on the podcasting network and more than 3,000 ad placements. Total downloads for this campaign are expected to exceed 6.5 million.
The massive ad buy is most likely a result of the recent partnership with Nielsen NetRatings Wizzard announced last month. With the certification of their downloads by a respectable media metrics provider such as Nielsen, I predicted that they would start to see positive results as soon as the next NABC. Seeing results coming this soon truly surprised me.