By Tod Sacerdoti
Februray 28, 2010
As Peter Drucker once wrote
, “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it and exploits it as an opportunity.” Put more simply, change is good . . . of course, that’s unless you’re trying to raise capital in these trying times.
After my company BrightRoll recently closed its Series B round of financing, we took a step back to digest the lessons we learned from pitching and negotiating with a handful of VCs over our 6-week fundraising effort.
To say raising money in the current economic environment has been different than it was two years ago is a massive understatement. Saying it’s night and day would be more accurate. As a year that was touched off by Sequoia’s now famous “RIP Good Times” presentation, 2009 was highlighted by massive layoffs, significant cost cutting and many well publicized company failures. As a result, many VC firms, and their portfolios, are now fraught with uncertainty—walking a fine line between licking their wounds thanks to poor fund returns and looking for new opportunities to improve their fortunes as the market recovers.
To read the rest of the post, visit TechCrunch
By Lewis Rothkopf
February 23, 2010
I’ve spoken at length about both the radical and advantageous ways in which video ads can vary from their television counterparts. While some advertisers are embracing the many benefits our medium offers in the areas of targeting, analysis and interactivity, many still are not.
It is, of course, easier and less expensive (in the upfront) to repurpose a 30-second TV spot, but that golden opportunity to talk to your target customers where they live is unfortunately lost.
So what are the options? At the most basic level, advertisers can create a digital-specific component as part of their campaign — and keep it to 15 seconds to achieve the greatest distribution. Interactivity layered on top of the pre-roll is even more interesting. But what if we began to have a true real-time conversation with our consumers — and do it live?
To read the rest of the post, visit MediaPost
By Tod Sacerdoti
January 18, 2009
It seems everyone in the online media business is bullish on the prospects for online video in 2010. This enthusiasm stems from the large market size, aggressive growth, quick rebound from the recession and the large number of profitable businesses that have been created in the category. However, few folks have been willing to put a stake in the ground with their predictions for 2010.
To read Tod’s predictions, visit MediaPost
By Lewis Rothkopf
December 21, 2009
In Silicon Valley, there’s an old adage that says all great internet companies eventually build an e-mail service. Nearly every major player from Google to Comcast, Facebook to MySpace, Yelp to LinkedIn, has some form of user-to-user e-mail within its site or application. Today, I propose a new maxim — all great internet companies eventually build (or buy) an ad network.
The evidence is inescapable: Google, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Fox, CBS, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Cox and many more all have networks of ad placements. In fact, even Forbes.com, the single most vocal publisher about the negative impact of ad networks, launched the Forbes Audience Network in late 2007.
To read the rest of the post, visit MediaPost
By Tod Sacerdoti
November 10, 2009
In Silicon Valley, there’s an old adage that says all great internet companies eventually build an e-mail service. Nearly every major player from Google to Comcast, Facebook to MySpace, Yelp to LinkedIn, has some form of user-to-user e-mail within its site or application. Today, I propose a new maxim — all great internet companies eventually build (or buy) an ad network.
The evidence is inescapable: Google, AOL, Yahoo, MSN, Fox, CBS, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Cox and many more all have networks of ad placements. In fact, even Forbes.com, the single most vocal publisher about the negative impact of ad networks, launched the Forbes Audience Network in late 2007.
For the purpose of this piece, I am defining an ad network as a product that connects advertisers with properties that want to run advertisements (websites, applications, etc.), typically with some form of automation and advanced targeting (site, user or geographic).
To read the rest of the post, visit AdvertisingAge
By Tod Sacerdoti
October 19, 2009
Given the power and success of Google’s CPC search business model, it’s not surprising that the products du jour in online video advertising are performance pricing, CPE, CPV, and CPC. At the same time, advertisers are feeling the effects of the economy and are showing a greater interest in measurable ad spends. However, like all online media tools, the devil is in the details (or in this case, the acronyms).
Let’s take a closer look at the benefits and downfalls of each of these online video advertising pricing units.
To read the rest of the post, visit iMedia
By Tod Sacerdoti
October 5, 2009
I was recently on a panel discussing online video advertising, and a fellow panelist proclaimed “reach is not a problem for us, as we reach 115 million people according to comScore.” This statement is factually incorrect.
To accurately reflect his company’s reach, the panelist should have said, “We can potentially reach 115 million people.” According to comScore’s methodology, in order reach those 115 million people, the network would have to buy every ad impression on every publisher they work with. Furthermore, only those publishers with more than 2% reach are verified to have an actual business relationship with the network.
(full disclosure — comScore began measuring my company on both actual reach and potential in April, 2009)
As with most misleading metrics, potential reach was likely created to help sell something. ComScore wanted to sell large annual subscriptions to video ad networks and video ad networks wanted a big reach number to sell advertising and compete effectively against the large display ad networks. The metric has fundamentally served its purpose – all video networks are paying customers and many video networks’ actual reach is large enough to compete with the large display networks — and as such, it is time to put this metric to rest.
To read the rest of the post, visit MediaPost
By Lewis Rothkopf
September 15, 2009
We’ve become accustomed to the notion of “one-stop shopping”: We can get our socks where we get our soda, and tennis rackets are located just a few aisles away from potato chips. Extremely convenient and often price-advantageous, the superstore phenomenon thrives and successful chains are often the envy of many other businesses.
Another scenario: You’re at the car wash (the kind where you need to get out of your car) and you’re watching the miracle happening on the other side of the glass. As you’re walking, through you think to yourself, “Hey – I could use one of those air fresheners. And maybe a windshield cleaner. They have everything here that I need for my car, all in one place.” And so it goes.
Consumer behaviors, of course, often fail to translate well into B2B strategies. Consider the growing trend of video ad networks that offer a technology solution that promises to aggregate video ad fill from that network and also from other networks — many times at no cost to the publisher. From the publisher’s standpoint it may sound like a panacea – increased fill of unsold video inventory, only one system to manage, and in some cases, the ability to optimize by CPM.
To read the rest of the post, visit MediaPost
By Barry Grant
September 10, 2009
I’ve often found that communicating the value of different types of ad units to clients is almost as challenging as the back end technology work that goes into creating the units themselves.
Each campaign is different, and each targeted audience calls for a new mix in both message and presentation. I like to think of the wide variety of available ad units in terms of sushi: There are lots of different styles, but only a few key families (i.e., sashimi, nigiri, rolls).
This sushi analogy can be useful in helping clients to plan campaigns. Instead of presenting clients that are less familiar with video with a flurry of industry jargon that includes pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll, expandable, overlay, ticker, bumper, bug, interstitial, floating ad, takeover, etc., I find it useful to break things into a few simple families: in-stream, in-banner, and page-level (which includes units like interstitials, floating ads, and page takeovers). This way, you can unclutter your value proposition for potentially timid online video advertising customers, and leave them feeling that they’ve found the optimal ad mix for their marketing spend.
To read the rest of the post, visit MediaPost
By Tod Sacerdoti
July 10, 2009
A common adage in business schools today is that the railroad companies failed because they didn’t realize they were in the transportation business, not the railroad business. I would suggest that today, broadcasters are similarly confused. National broadcasters are in the video-advertising business.
Any TV company that generates more than 50% of its revenue from selling video advertisements is in the video- advertising business. It is not in the content business, as it would like to believe. TV content is simply the delivery mechanism for video advertising.
This is an important distinction. A range of delivery mechanisms have arrived and the ensuing tsunami of available video inventory is going to threaten all broadcasters who don’t recognize this emerging phenomenon and address their customers’ changing viewing habits and needs.
To read the rest of the post, visit AdvertisingAge