As Vibrant Media grows its network, so grows the video ad model.
While video is arguably the hottest segment of our industry, nearly all the buzz about video has focused on how best it can be used to monetize video content. While insiders debate if 70 percent or maybe as much as 90 percent of all video content online is user-generated content (UGC), and how much of that can be monetized, Vibrant Media has built a business that disregards monetizing that video content with video ads in favor of monetizing the good old fashioned words on the page -- but with video.
"With our reach now more than 104 million unique users in 10 languages, including more than 36 percent of US users, we have the capacity to stream more than 300 million ads a month," said Paul Joachim SVP Sales for Vibrant Media. Joachim spoke in the sponsored breakout session Tuesday at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coronado. The session, titled "The User Revolution," introduced this newer video model to the majority of the session's attendees, making for some lively questions.
Known by most in our industry as the company that underlines selected words and phrases in the copy of news articles, making creating hyperlinks that, when clicked, send a user to a marketer's landing page, Vibrant Media added video capabilities to their product set in June 2006 and has grown its reach by more than 70 percent since that timeframe. Today, when a user clicks on words that are double-underlined, instead of being sent directly to a marketer's website, they may be shown a video ad unit first.
As user-initiated models have begun to proliferate in the wake of search's success, here's a twist offered by Vibrant Media: they don't charge for the video; only for the clickthrough to the marketer's landing page.
"We're beginning to see some marketers, especially in entertainment, who want to use more traditional CPM models," said Joachim. "By and large however, marketers are very pleased with the Pay-per-click model we have been employing."
During his presentation, Joachim presented a case study from a campaign the company had executed for Suzuki. Suzuki wanted to create awareness of the new XL 7 as it launched and to generate qualified traffic and conversions.
The three-month flight, which concluded January of this year, boasted a clickthrough rate of nine percent to Suzuki's landing page, with more than 11.25 percent of all users interacting with the video interface's tabs (e.g., "Build your own; Quick Quote; Request a Brochure; Locate a Dealer"), which the company terms a conversion.
Despite the campaign's relatively short flight, Subaru was able to harvest more than 100,000 "Brand Introductions," or instances of users initiating the video stream.
"Instead of leveraging hundreds or even thousands of keyword terms, marketers might select only a dozen or so," said Joachim. "What results is a far simpler solution for them -- one that enables them to leverage existing broadcast assets while targeting users more contextually than any other solution."
Headquartered today in New York, with offices in eight countries, the company's continued global expansion and success of its contextually targeted in-text and video advertising solutions has led to a three-year sales growth rate of 708 percent. The company leverages multiple types of rich media when users click on the links. But video is its fast growing segment. With more than 1 billion keywords and phrases in its targeting portfolio, they anticipate more growth along these lines.
"We have achieved our scale by delivering value to publishers and advertisers through relevant user-controlled video advertising," said Doug Stevenson, president and CEO of Vibrant Media in a statement. "By combining the brand impact of television advertising with the contextual relevance and measurability that only the internet can deliver, Vibrant Media offers marketers an accountable and powerful brand experience."
Mark Naples is managing partner at WIT Strategy. Read full bio.
