Video ad platform Archives

California, USA – Popular sandbox game Roblox has teamed up with PubMatic to offer immersive programmatic video advertising in its platform. The partnership will allow more brands to seamlessly reach Roblox’s global community of over 71 million daily active users, nearly half of them representing the highly coveted Gen Z demographic, while Roblox will gain scaled access to premium brand advertising demand.

With one of the most robust virtual economies in the world, the expansion of Roblox’s advertising business will enable seamless access to this community and allow brands to activate on the platform without creating custom-built content.

Like all advertising on Roblox, programmatic ads must comply with the platform’s Community Standards and Advertising Standards grounded in principles of making advertising safe, transparent, and respectful of people’s privacy while still creating opportunities for the community to innovate, engage and earn.

This also means Roblox users will know when they are interacting with ad content, and ads will continue to only be served to people ages 13 and up.

Stephanie Latham, VP of global partnerships at Roblox, said, “We are committed to making it easier for brands to foster connections with our highly engaged community on Roblox. Partnering with PubMatic unlocks the opportunity for more advertisers to seamlessly engage this community through preferred content formats, like video, while providing advertiser controls around brand suitability. The ad experience we offer on the platform is built to be immersive instead of disruptive, and true to the Roblox experience that our community of creators, users, and brands know and love.”

Meanwhile, Kyle Dozeman, chief revenue officer for Americas at PubMatic, commented, “We are thrilled to partner with Roblox to deliver a pioneering advertising solution that marries monetization with user experience. Advertising creates significant opportunities for many companies, and it funds and fuels the endless potential of the internet. We look forward to empowering Roblox to maintain full control over its advertising ecosystem while enabling advertisers to reach their target audiences effectively.”

California, USA – Global ad platform Magnite has announced the conclusion of its acquisition of video ad platform SpotX, disclosed at an amount of US$640M in cash and 12,374,315 shares of Magnite stock.

Through the acquisition, both companies have created the largest independent connected TV (CTV) and video advertising platform, and reinforcing the company’s capabilities as linear TV budgets increasingly shift to digital, which works ideally for buyers and sellers that have long wanted a scaled, independent alternative to the giants that currently dominate the CTV marketplace.

Michael Barrett, president and CEO at Magnite, stated that scaling and reaching the largest possible audience is the name of the game when attracting the demand our CTV and video clients need, evident with the scale they have created with the recent acquisition.

“Acquiring SpotX positions us to become the world’s largest, independent source of highly-coveted CTV and video inventory. Two-thirds of our revenue is now concentrated in the fastest-growing segments of the market, and as linear TV dollars move to CTV, the greatest opportunity is still ahead of us,” Barrett stated.

Meanwhile, Mike Shehan, co-founder and CEO at SpotX, commented, “We’re thrilled to become a part of the Magnite family. CTV viewership and the ecosystem around it continues to evolve with new streaming services popping up every day and advertisers hoping to connect with those audiences.”

He added, “SpotX’s CTV business has experienced significant growth over the past year, and we believe our performance will only accelerate through this combination of resources by delivering even more value to our clients.”

Magnite, which now holds a large array of clients including A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Crackle, Discovery, FOX, among others, has also built a new Asia Pacific presence, as it announced last March the establishment of a new data center in Singapore.

Singapore – Global ad platform Unruly has announced the launch of Tr.ly, a digital creative studio aimed at brands and agencies for the creation of video creative solutions.

Through the Tr.ly platform, brands and agencies using the new in-house service will work with Unruly’s team of creative experts, with years of experience creating ads for screen and media strategy, and will also be given access to the company’s proprietary content testing solutions.

Furthermore, the platform allows advertisers to drive consumers toward consideration, conversion and brand loyalty with next-level video formats and features, available programmatically or through managed service.

“Making sure our clients have all the data they need to ensure their creatives are as engaging as possible has always been a key focus at Unruly. We believe our unique emotional data sets us apart within a cluttered ad tech ecosystem and has meant we’ve been able to give our clients meaningful insights on how to drive greater brand connection to their target audience,” said Alex Khan, group managing director international at Unruly.

The platform was developed in collaboration with adtech Tremor International, hence the name Tr.ly, an amalgamation of the names between Unruly and Tremor International.

According to Les Seifer, vice president for creative at Tremor International, the platform allows “brands to capture audience attention by telling engaging, relevant stories across all screens’ which is done through ‘cost-effective video creation and optimization services that range from turnkey to fully custom, aligned to media goals, audiences and placement types”

“The global pandemic and evolving social and political landscape have created widespread uncertainty across the industry, which means only the most agile and in-touch advertisers will remain a step ahead in 2021 and beyond. Unruly gives advertisers access to unique data that puts them right at the heartbeat of shifting consumer opinion and, supported by our incredible, agile creative team, means they will continue to push out engaging, relevant and emotionally intelligent creative in the face of unprecedented change,” Seifer explained.

Singapore – Video advertising solutions Aniview has partnered with global cybersecurity company White Ops to protect its client’s ad inventory through White Ops’ ad verification feature.

Through the partnership, Aniview will integrate the White Ops Advertising Integrity solution to help optimize protection and ensure its customers’ safety from malicious and sophisticated cybersecurity risks. As a result, publishers and advertising networks have another avenue by which they can access White Ops protection for their inventory.

Furthermore, Aniview and its customers can leverage White Ops’ privacy-sensitive detection technology to identify threats and automated fraud attempts, ensuring their advertising inventory can be trusted and fraud-free. This then allows Aniview to provide its clients an effective solution to identify and prevent malicious video-bot traffic. The partnership represents the next step in Aniview’s mission to provide verified traffic and protection against video ad fraud.

“The most common types of video fraud occur when malicious fraudsters misrepresent their display units as video inventory in programmatic exchanges. These sophisticated bots are deployed through malware embedded in software, essentially performing device-hijacking on a mass, organized scale. With the significant dangers ad fraud poses to the video supply chain, safety has become an increasingly critical issue and, as such, dangers are being met with innovative solutions,” White Ops said in a press statement.

White Ops operates two key features for video advertisers to use: White Ops Advertising Integrity, where platforms can tap into comprehensive pre-bid prevention and post-bid detection capabilities to verify the validity of advertising efforts across all channels, and the White Ops Fraud Mitigation Platform, which spots and stop sophisticated bots and fraud by using technical evidence, continuous adaptation, machine learning, and threat intelligence.

“We’re excited to join together with Aniview in the optimization of fraud-free video advertising solutions. This partnership strengthens our presence in digital video while providing easier access to our platform for publishers and networks. The more partners that we have in this fight, the bigger our knowledge base grows and the better we can optimize our tactics against potential new threats from bad actors,” said Ellie Windle, vice president, global strategic partnerships and alliances at White Ops.

Meanwhile, Roy Cohen, CTO of Aniview commented that the recent partnership with White Ops responds to the greater need for protection against ad fraud as online video content is booming.

“Working with White Ops and our internal fraud detection tools, we will develop greater application integrity by identifying and blocking bot traffic with the highest degree of accuracy and speed to stay ahead of adversaries,” Cohen added.

Sydney, Australia – International-wide video advertising platform Unruly has announced that it has appointed former CEO of media agency IPG Mediabrands David Haddad as its newest CEO for the APAC division.

Unruly connects advertisers and publishers through its omnichannel marketplace UnrulyX to distribute video ads across a range of screen formats including CTV, mobile and desktop.

Haddad will be responsible for accelerating the company’s growth in the key Australian and New Zealand markets, working closely with the company’s key strategic partner News Corp Australia with which Unruly boasts its video distribution access to 50 publishing titles.

Haddad brings with him over 17 years’ experience of working in the advertising industry having serviced in functions of trading, planning, and client management as well as strategy and agency management.

Aside from his leadership in IPG Mediabrands which he ran in Singapore, he oversaw media agencies UM Australia as general manager and also assumed a directorial position for agency Bellamy Hayden.

Haddad will be based in Unruly’s Sydney office and will report to Alex Khan, the company’s managing director for international affairs.

Commenting on the appointment, Khan said, “The Australian and New Zealand markets are key growth territories for us, so having David’s incredible leadership skills, vast knowledge, and industry know-how will be crucial as we continue to roll out our exciting all-screen capabilities to our clients.”

Meanwhile, Haddad said, “I’m delighted to be joining Unruly, one of the most well-known, innovative companies in the global video advertising ecosystem. Bolstered by Tremor’s enhanced capabilities, I’m excited to unleash Unruly’s multi-screen, market-leading proposition across Australia and New Zealand.”

Unruly one of the business divisions of global advertising technology firm Tremor International, alongside Tremor Video and Rythmone.