We are thrilled to announce that Fox News, Glam , IDG Entertainment and Funny or Die have selected YuMe’s ACE video ad platform to manage the monetization of their video inventory. Check out our press release we sent out today announcing this news and highlighting the impressive growth we have achieved with not only the adoption of our video ad platform, but with the growth of our video ad network and advertising sales.

Here’s the quote from Funny or Die, which you will see is in true Funny or Die fashion. “YuMe’s ACE video ad platform is a true end-to-end solution,” said Mitch Galbraith, COO of Funny or Die. “ACE has streamlined our ad operations, improved inventory management, increased revenue, eliminated the common cold from our office, cured my fear of heights, and taught several of our employees to speak Portuguese.”

We also announced today that with the release of comScore’s April Video Metrix Ad Network report, YuMe is now ranked the largest video ad network with over 63 million unique viewers and 560 million video streams per month.

In addition to the great growth we have experienced with publisher adoption of our video ad platform, we have also seen tremendous momentum with video advertising sales. We now have over 100 advertisers running on any given day across our premium video ad network and the number of monthly ad impressions we are serving has increased by over 325% since January!

We are very excited about the advancements we have made in 2009 and congratulations to the YuMe team for all their hard work.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

I will, however, state that being able to change and alter ads (including video) to run A/B tests, to customise to the user watching and make incremental alterations to the advert while the ad campaign is running will by definition provide better results. We are still not seeing the industry take heavy advantage of this in video, which we attribute to the fact that video is a very nascent.

- Jayant Kadambi

We’ve said fairly consistently that scarcity is not the issue. There is plenty of TV and TV-quality content online for advertisers. There needs to be additional work done to target the demographics of people watching the content, and make the available content consistent with the TV demos and buying strategies and plans. And of course, it’d be really nice to know if the online consumer had seen an ad offline. Not easy, but would be great.

- Jayant Kadambi

In the advertising business, data and metrics are key. Ad data, including impressions, unique viewers, ads streamed, ads delivered, click-through-rate, engagement, and a myriad of other metrics are analysed, counter-analysed and then used in hundreds of powerpoint decks to show clients and customers why the advert campaign did or didn’t do well.

One set of data that is often quoted, (and I still can’t figure out what the data really means), is the “potential” reach and “actual” reach in terms of unique viewers and impressions for both display
and video ads.

In general, people and companies like to be at the top of lists, not in the middle or at the end. Go figure. And when the being at the top of the list may feel as if it’s material to the business or the reputation, the data is often manipulated, and if not manipulated on purpose, then by benign neglect. Take video impressions. Reporting agencies have a list of the “top” video ad networks. So, it’s in everyone’s interest to be at the top of the list. One probably should define what a video ad is before we start making statistics about video ad networks.

So, while I pause before the next blog, the question to think about is what is a video ad? Is
it a flash file in a banner, a pre-roll video in a player, a post-roll video in a player, a swf that expands
in a banner slot? There are other choices, but let’s chew on these for a while.

Stay tuned…

- Jayant Kadambi

So, if one’s spending US currency daily, and lots of it and travels to the UK and is required to spend UK Sterling, what’s the immediate reaction? Convert the Pounds Sterling into the native currency and compare. Obvious eh?

Well, a joint study by the 4A’s and the ANA that can be found here, titled Marketers Need Metrics to Understand Digital Media says that on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the biggest problem, the biggest problem is having metrics to properly allocate media spend among traditional and digital media.

At this point, I’d normally lace in some sarcasm, followed by some humour, but I’ll just point you to our iGRP whitepaper on our site.

- Jayant Kadambi

I like the idea. In fact, we do it all the time. We never marketed it as online focus groups though. We regularly ask agencies to give us multiple creatives and then run the one that is more engaging, has more clicks, or generally performs better, whatever the performance metric may be. And we feel, it’s far better to do this on-the-fly or in real-time than after the fact. Save’s money, save’s time and while the ad spend is occurring, you can actually improve the campaign results.

We should all encourage more of this.

- Jayant Kadambi

YuMe has been selected as a finalist for a TiE50 Award for the Internet Infrastructure category. We were selected from among 1,200 nominated companies and now we need your help to win. Go to www.tie50.net/polling to vote for YuMe.

What is TiE50? The TiE50 Awards recognize the hottest emerging startups in five focus segments: Consumer Web, Internet Infrastructure, Cleantech, Wireless and Software. The selection process for TiE50 winners will be based on a combination of a public poll and private judges’ vote. Voting is open to the public beginning Tuesday, April 28, 2009 and closes on Thursday, May 7, 2009.

Vote now!

- Molly Glover Gallatin

The YuMe green logo exits the pre-roll and then drops down into the banner ad below.

Our first client to utilize InSynch was Dove and we have campaigns with Vitamin Water and Kellogg’s launching soon.

Click here to see InSynch in action. Let us know what you think.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

So, according to this data, digital marketing agencies are increasing spending over 74%. If I’m reading this correctly, that’s just in Q1. Metrics and Video seem to be chic at the moment. I have a feeling, it’s not just a fad.

- Jayant Kadambi