Today, we are proud to introduce a new product aimed at top media companies that want to leverage the upside of real-time bidding without encountering some of the tradeoffs that traditionally keep them away from ad networks and public exchanges. To get our full thinking and the impetus for this launch, download our white paper, now available here.

Currently in private beta and being developed with input from several top broadcasters, this offering is built with several market realities unique to video advertising in mind:

This product changes this calculus by giving publishers unprecedented control, detailed data and insights on how to extract more profits from inventory that is already in high demand or sold out. Since hundreds of leading media companies already use TubeMogul’s video analytics, these insights are often coming from a name they trust.

Real-time bidding opens up hundreds of new possibilities for publishers, such as taking 10% of bundled broadcast inventory that would sell out anyway and putting it on the exchange during peak periods (i.e. “back to school”), inviting several hundred agencies to bid against each other too boost CPMs in real-time as the market dictates.

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In April, we introduced you to the second generation of PlayTime, which combines the branding power of video advertising with the efficiency of real-time media buying.

In internal testing, we recently discovered some publishers classifying videos that automatically play in small video players (with the volume on) as “pre-roll” in order to drive sell-through and price. Often in front of short content, these units are not the central focus of the page and are often inserted below the fold. Not only do these likely violate IAB Guidelines, but every media buyer we showed was (rightfully) mortified at how commonplace this appears to be across the industry.

Today, we put an end to that. Now built into every buy is PlaySafe ad verification, proprietary technology we developed in-house to automatically prevent this by flagging variables like player size and volume. Some stats on PlaySafe so far:

Since our history is video analytics, this was natural for us, letting us leverage years of expertise in tracking video to develop unrivaled ad verification designed specifically for video advertising.

Now, media buyers know that they are getting exactly what they are buying.

Learn more about PlaySafe in our ad serving section here. Release here.

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Today we are proud to report that PlayTime, our brand-focused video advertising platform, now offers targeted, real-time buying of YouTube’s in-stream ad inventory.

What this means to clients: you can now buy in-stream video ads on YouTube in real-time selecting specific publishers from a list of thousands of YouTube Partners, including top media companies, new media outlets and hit shows unique to YouTube.

This opens up new possibilities. For targeting, clients can layer audience segments and third-party data, only displaying ads to relevant viewers. To round out their campaigns, clients can also select from over 90% of comScore 1000 sites, setting campaign-wide frequency targets. Our optimization comes built-in, automatically shifting spending to the audiences and placements where an ad is having the biggest impact, such as moving ads to the highest-performing channels on YouTube. Additionally, you have access to our analytics to compare deduplicated engagement and impact metrics by placement, ad and demographic.

To get started, you have several options:

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Today, we are proud to welcome Max Mead to our team. Max, formerly VP of Business Development and Analytics at TubeMogul partner Pointroll, will serve as SVP of Business Development, with a focus on developing strategic partnerships with agency trading desks and top publishers in harnessing TubeMogul’s video advertising technology to deliver brand advertising at scale. Read more in our full release here.

Max joins a growing team, as we more than doubled staff in the past year leading up to the recent launch of the second generation of PlayTime, our brand-focused video advertising platform. PlayTime combines the branding power of video advertising with the efficiency of automated, real-time media buying and is built from the ground up to be best at delivering brand messages in real-time across placements, audiences, media types and sites.

As PlayTime grows, so do we. We are currently hiring nine positions in advertising operations, engineering, finance and sales. To see our open positions and apply, click here.

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You may notice a different look and feel to the site (we hope you like it). Here is why: we just launched the second generation of PlayTime, our video advertising solution, combining the branding power of of video advertising with the efficiency and scale of real-time media buying. Whether marketers leverage our team of experts or our use new, self-serve interface to promote existing videos, PlayTime now offers:

PlayTime maximizes impact across placements, audiences, media types to ensure your brand message had an impact. Marketers and trading desks learn more here, or try it today by simply logging in or creating an account.

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First off, we want to congratulate PointRoll on the expansion of their Open Insights Initiative and the addition of video and mobile partners to their Included™ program — we are proud to be the only company participating in both.

It is no coincidence that some of the biggest successes in video advertising in the past year have come from increasing viewer interaction, such as pre-roll selectors (where viewers can choose which ad to watch). Like PointRoll, we believe brand advertisers are just beginning to realize the possibilities here, and need to be armed with data to target and quantify results. To that end, we are partnering with PointRoll on several fronts:

We look forward to collaborating with PointRoll in the future, particularly on joint research quantifying brand impact for different types of interactive video advertising.

More here.

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Our joint editorial with YouTube about our proposal before the IAB Digital Video Committee is out! Read about our proposal in detail at AdAge. Some background:

Google AdWords transformed search advertising by only charging an advertiser when someone clicks on a search ad. A similar revolution is beginning to take shape in online video advertising. Viewer-initiated video ads are proliferating across the Web, such as pre-rolls that let viewers choose which ad to watch, in-banner video ads that viewers can click to play and our own video advertising platform’s viewer-initiated units. Google’s latest foray into the medium is TrueView, an in-stream video ad on YouTube that lets viewers choose whether to skip an ad and only charges an advertiser if a viewer chooses to watch.

Pricing and measurement of video advertising, however, has not kept up with these innovations. Given this, we recently proposed – in conjunction with Google – a new, standardized metric for pricing and serving video advertising to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Digital Video Committee: “Cost Per View” (CPV). The framework would distinguish video ads viewers choose to watch (“views”) from ads that automatically load in a video player (“impressions”), making a “view” mean the same thing as it does on YouTube — someone chose to watch a video.

Kantar Video, a division of WPP, endorsed the proposal, and is planning to invest in joint research with us assessing the effectiveness of CPV ads throughout the next year. We think the introduction of CPV pricing would provide additional clarity to advertisers and broaden interest in video advertising for marketers of all types and sizes.

READ MORE in our joint editorial with Baljeet Singh of YouTube explaining the impetus for this proposal on AdAge. To get the latest updates on the proposal’s status, follow us on Twitter (@TubeMogul).

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Adam Cahill, SVP at leading ad agency Hill Holiday, recently began assessing the market for cross-platform advertising and media buying. What he discovered was a marketplace where value existed far beyond what a single platform or exchange could offer, and the results are outlined in this fascinating piece for ClickZ. He highlights several outlets for advertising: futures markets, data, video and TV. We are pleased to be highlighted in the video section:

TubeMogul is probably best known for video seeding and analytics, but now offers a video buying platform as well. Since it’s been partnering directly with publishers for years to provide video analytics, it has access to discrete inventory augmented with a rich history of performance data to inform buying strategies.

We look forward to working with Adam in the future and thank him for the mention.

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