Localstars

Miles 33 and Localstars sign strategic partnership to offer global digital advertising solution

admin — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:22:39 +0000

Partnership will help publishers grow revenue from online video and rich media advertising.

February, 2012, Bracknell, UK – Global software solutions provider Miles 33 and Localstars, the leading provider of digital advertising technologies in the UK, are pleased to announce a global partnership. The agreement allows Miles 33 to sell the Localstars digital ad production tools integrated into the FutureProof advertising system to publishers world-wide. The integrated solution will help publishers grow their digital advertising revenues by simplifying the end-to-end sales, ad creation and ad delivery process for high quality rich media and video ads.

Localstars, which is the leading provider of cloud-based rich media and video advertising solutions in the UK, has a customer base that includes many of the country’s top publishers . Rich media ads in multiple formats, video MPUs (Multiple Purpose Units), HTLM5 widescreen videos and bespoke video ads are all part of Localstars’ offerings which are now available integrated into the FutureProof advertising solution from Miles 33.

Miles 33 provides advertising and financial management solutions to a global customer base and has offices in the UK, the US, Brazil, Malaysia and Italy. Under this partnership Miles 33 will provide publishers world-wide with a digital ad solution that lets them create video and rich media ads quickly and without any need for external production processes.

Create a digital ad in minutes

The Localstars digital advertising tools are integrated into the FutureProof system. Not only does this allow video and rich media ads to be sold as easily as static online and print ads, they can also be part of multi-channel ad packages.

Video and rich media advert creation literally takes a few minutes as users can take advantage of the 1000s of templated ads within the Localstars system. Covering many categories, the templates provide pre-designed ads that can be personalized by adding or changing images, text, fonts, colours and other ad components. The easy-to-use user interface allows anyone to create professional rich media and video ads. As no design skills are required, the solution can be added to online sales and self service portals – as well as driving huge productivity gains in ad creation departments.

The ad creation process is fully web-based and the resulting ads are Flash/HTML5 compatible. Multiple formats, such as Leaderboards, MPU, Skyscraper, Banner and Video formats are all supported and are of high quality. Ad serving is accomplished through integration with common ad servers.

Full ad usage data is recorded providing insight into the number of impressions, clickthroughs, unique users, etc. Sales statistics are also recorded with reports available on “ads sold by rep”, “by website”, “by region”, etc.

“Localstars and Miles 33 have many common customers and integration already existed between the two systems. It made sense to productise this solution and leverage Miles 33’s global footprint to bring sophisticated video and rich media ad sales to publishers around the world” said John Skarin, Development and Business Systems Director for Miles 33.

Chris Bunyan, Managing Director at Localstars said: “Our technology is already helping a host of UK publishers to build their digital ad revenues. Partnering with Miles 33 represents a huge opportunity for us to expand our reach globally at a time when there is immense excitement and interest in the power of online video and rich media advertising.”

About Localstars

Established in 2008, Localstars is a digital technology business headquartered in the ‘Silicon Roundabout’ area of London, UK. It has developed an online advertising syndication network consisting of 2000 local media and directory publisher sites. This is supported by the UK’s largest, high quality video advertising library and simple to use campaign management technology.

Localstars’ mission is to deliver high quality, geographically targeted digital advertising campaigns at affordable prices. The company helps publishers achieve online advertising income without major investment or risk and makes affordable online advertising campaigns accessible to small businesses as well as large brands who want to target local audiences. Its rich media ad builder software enables regional publishers and directory sites to cost-effectively offer compelling rich media display ad campaigns to advertisers of all sizes.

Visit Localstars at: www.localstars.com

About Miles 33

Miles 33 is a global software and solutions provider for the Publishing and Media markets. With over 30 years of experience, Miles 33 is one of the largest and longest serving providers to these industries. The current generation of solutions are designed to manage multi-media content and cover all aspects of Advertising, Editorial, Internet and Digital Asset Management to help publishers increase their revenues whilst lowering costs and improving productivity. Miles 33 has an innovative sales model that offers its customers exceptional return on their Investment. Miles 33 is backed by European Capital, the European affiliate of American Capital a publicly traded private equity firm and global asset manager with $14 billion in capital resources under management. Miles 33 has offices in Berkshire, England; Connecticut & California, USA; Victoria, Australia; Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Milan, Italy and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Visit Miles 33 at: www.miles33.com

Technical Director’s Christmas Update

admin — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:59:56 +0000

The Christmas Update

For the Localstars technical team, the past six months have been fairly intense to say the least. We have rebuilt from scratch our core application, as well as adding in a number of exciting and powerful features to enable new formats, more intuitive advert and campaign building, mobile, and strong integration capabilities.

A lot of our customers have been asking us to support new ad unit shapes, new formats (including print), an ever-growing list of booking / ad-server integrations and new campaign targeting points including, but certainly not limited to, the Localstars network, YouTube, social media sites and mobile applications. We realised that whilst we had a working platform it would not give us the foundations that we would need to support such a comprehensive set of features, so we tore everything up and re-designed from scratch by asking ourselves “what would we have built from day one knowing what we now know?”

It was important that we took a fresh look at everything in our product feature set, adopting outside-in thinking – consider first how the user is going to interact, then make that happen in code rather than trying to graft a user experience after the internals have been built. Also, over the past few years, we have had the opportunity of listening to much customer feedback, which has allowed us to see things more from a user’s perspective, and I am pleased to say that our application has really improved as a result. Out of all of this came a new Localstars advertising platform, Localstars Advance, including a new advert builder with image library and asset vault capable of building video, mobile, display, directory and print ads in a single simple interface.

How did we do all this? Good technology comes second to good people – without the right team in place I knew we would have a limited chance of making Localstars as good as it could be; it was critical to ensure that we hired and promoted the best talent we could, as well as restructuring our development operation. Great –we now had the right people, next we had to choose and develop the best technologies in order that we could provide a great user experience with a rich feature set and a stable, scalable and secure platform. We have always made use of the best-in-class open source technologies and our new application would be no different.

We bravely decided to ride the noSQL wave using 10Gen’s MongoDB to power our advert delivery network, later having our decision validated by 10Gen themselves. It turned out that the CEO and CTO of 10Gen are Dwight Merriman and Eliot Horowitz (of DoubleClick fame), and they built MongoDB to be the database they would have used if they founded DoubleClick again! We couldn’t be happier – each node in our cluster can deliver 3000 ad impressions per second whereas our previous total capacity was 25, and we can keep adding capacity by plugging in more and more machines, meaning we can easily scale to grow and support our domestic and international customers. Other new Open Source technologies we introduced include redis, node.js and the nginx web server.

One area in which we decided against the available Open Source projects was the core MVC application framework called ‘Brunel’, pioneered by Application Architect Peter Hall. We wanted so much out of our new framework including, but not limited to, scalability, rapid development, templating, i18n, l10n, security and shared enterprise data models, that we decided the only way was to build our own.

Localstars are still on the look out for exceptional talent, especially because 2012 is going to be our most exciting year to date. Our roadmap includes better adverts, formats and tools across the board (digital display, mobile, print, directory), integrations with all booking platforms, CRMs and ad-servers, network growth and more tools to help out publisher clients effectively monetise advertising.

I am also committed to listening to our customers even more in 2012. I want to involve all of our clients in the development and shaping of our roadmap, and I’d like to make sure we meet frequently so I can hear your thoughts, ideas and concerns and share our vision with you in order that we can work even closer together to make local digital and print advertising better.

Nick Lester
Technical Director

Localstars announces major expansion and move to Silicon Roundabout

admin — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:13:45 +0000

New HQ aids recruitment and sales for online video startup

Digital and video advertising business, Localstars today announced the opening of its new London HQ in the Silicon Roundabout tech and media cluster. The new office underpins the company’s ambitious expansion plans, driven by the success of its online video and rich media advertising creation platform and delivery network for publishers.

Over the last 20 months Localstars’ has grown its client base substantially and in H1 2011, its technologies were running eight times more adverts than in the corresponding period in 2010. Staff numbers have grown from 5 to 30 employees, including the appointment of ex-Trinity Mirror digital director Chris Bunyan as managing director in January 2011.

The need to create space for additional staff and the desire to access the deep talent pool around Silicon Roundabout are central to the opening of the new office.

Localstars works with major regional publishers and directory web sites to provide a simple, straightforward way fortheir ad sales teams to plan, create and manage geographically targeted video and rich media ad campaigns. Salespeople can log on and create an ad for each advertiser by customising content from Localstars’ integrated video and rich media library. Ads are personalised with individual business contact information, images and logos.

These ads are then targeted and played out over Localstar’s video ad syndication network, which currently includes around 2,000 web sites and delivers over 340 million page impressions per month across the UK.

“As a fast growth company that is built on innovation Silicon Roundabout was the natural choice for our new London HQ as it provides us with access to a vibrant and exciting ecosystem that will help us expand even faster. We have ambitious plans for our online advertising technology in the UK – as well as pursuing several overseas expansion opportunities. Our new HQ will help us attract the right people to move us forward quickly,” says Chris Bunyan, MD of Localstars.

About Localstars

Established in 2008, Localstars, the digital and video advertising specialist, has a simple vision – to deliver high quality, geographically targeted online video and digital advertising campaigns at affordable prices. The company helps publishers achieve online video advertising income without major investment or risk and makes affordable online video advertising campaigns accessible to small businesses as well as large brands who want to target local audiences. Its rich media ad builder software enables regional publishers and directory sites to cost-effectively offer compelling rich media display ad campaigns to advertisers of all sizes.

Localstars is a media software business headquartered in London. It has developed an online video advertising syndication network consisting of 2000 local media and directory publisher sites. This is supported by the UK’s largest, high quality video advertising library and simple to use campaign management technology. The company is privately funded. For further information visit www.localstars.com

Johnston Press signs three year contract for Localstars’ automated online video and rich media advertising technologies

admin — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:02:45 +0000

Regional publisher delivers automated online video and rich media ads across 273 local newspaper websites

Leading regional publisher, Johnston Press, has signed a new three year contract to use online video and rich media advertising services from Localstars, a provider of online technology that helps publishers grow digital advertising sales while reducing operating costs.

As part of the agreement, Johnston Press will use Localstars’ platform to automate the creation and management of video and rich media ad campaigns for advertisers on its 273 local web sites. The publisher is also outsourcing the shooting of bespoke video ads to Localstars’ nationwide network of video film makers.

“The Localstars partnership is already playing an important role in helping us increase digital advertising sales. Its technology allows us to create, manage and sell compelling video and rich media adverts quickly and efficiently – and it lets us do this economically and at prices that will be attractive to the small business advertisers that want to target local audiences using our web sites,” explained Henry Faure Walker, Digital and Business Development Director at Johnston Press, which is one of the top three largest UK local newspaper publishers.

Johnston Press started piloting Localstars’ video advertising solution in specific regions during 2009, rolling it out nationwide in 2010 when it helped the publisher sell nearly 4000 video ads. This new contract means Johnston Press is also now using Localstars’ technology for automatically generating rich media ads, as well as its digital advertising sales tools.

The deal follows a project to tightly integrate Localstars’ advertising platform with Johnston Press’s booking system and ad server – a move designed to streamline processes and deliver time savings.

The Localstars’ platform lets Johnston Press’ sales teams and design studios create, upload and manage video and rich media ads for advertisers. An operator can create and distribute a rich media or video ad in minutes by logging on to the system, customising content from the in-built libraries and adding individual business contact information, images and logos.

“Overall the process of producing a professional, high quality, customised video or rich media advert is substantially streamlined for Johnston Press,” said Chris Bunyan, MD of Localstars. “They are now using the full range of advertising features one our platform and since we’ve worked together to integrate our technology into the core Johnston Press booking systems, we’ve created a highly automated ad sales to order fulfilment process. The ‘aim of the game’ is to help Johnston Press sell more high quality digital ads at a significantly lower cost base,” concluded Bunyan.

About Localstars

Established in 2008, Localstars, the digital and video advertising specialist, has a simple vision – to deliver high quality, geographically targeted online video and digital advertising campaigns at affordable prices. The company helps publishers achieve online video advertising income without major investment or risk and makes affordable online video advertising campaigns accessible to small businesses as well as large brands who want to target local audiences. Its rich media ad builder software enables regional publishers and directory sites to cost-effectively offer compelling rich media display ad campaigns to advertisers of all sizes.

Localstars is a media software business headquartered in London. It has developed an online video advertising syndication network consisting of 2000 local media and directory publisher sites. This is supported by the UK’s largest, high quality video advertising library and simple to use campaign management technology. The company is privately funded. For further information visit www.localstars.com

Online Video Ad Spend Doubles According To New Study

admin — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:20:10 +0000

UK online video display ad spend doubled in size year on year to £45 million, giving it a 9% share of total online display advertising (up from 5% in first half of 2010) according to the latest PwC IAB report.

The rise in video advertising is thought to be partly due to a significant increase in advertisers using video to deliver brand messages.

Chris Bunyan, MD of online video and digital advertising company, Localstars, said:

“It’s no big surprise that spend on online video advertising is showing huge increases. As well as delivering brand messages, video is great for driving engagement – we’ve seen average click-through rates for digital video ads tending to be over three times higher than traditional online advertising. And it’s not just about major brands supporting their big budget TV ad campaigns with digital video executions. We work with lots of smaller businesses who’re showing a big appetite for video. The increasing spend on this area will fuel greater innovation, with new ways of making digital video more interactive, as well as more sophisticated measurement systems.”

The IAB, which collates the data with PwC, the professional services firm, and Warc, the advertising research body, is reported to have said that the study reflected a period in which the marketing industry had discovered the power of online video.

Localstars nominated for National Innovation Award

admin — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 10:12:10 +0000

Digital advertising company shortlisted for the Orange Innovation gong at the National Business Awards

Digital advertising company Localstars has been shortlisted for the coveted Orange Innovation Award in the 10th annual National Business Awards.

The firm has been shortlisted because its technology has helped websites and regional newspaper publishers to increase substantially the efficiency of their digital ad creation and management processes. Its systems have been adopted by many of the UK’s leading publishing groups and online directories to simply and quickly provide online video and display advertising campaigns to Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and thus rapidly increase their digital advertising sales.

The Orange Innovation Award recognises businesses that have gone beyond the ordinary in their development and implemented cutting edge innovation in terms of products, services or company culture. Localstars will now prepare to make its presentation in person before an independent, expert judging panel in October before the winners are announced at an awards ceremony in November.

Chris Bunyan, MD of Localstars said:

“We are absolutely delighted at being shortlisted for Orange’s Innovation Award. Localstars’ key innovation is an online platform that helps website owners and regional publishers automate the creation and management of digital advertising campaigns for small business advertisers. Our technology has helped our partners to achieve exponential online sales growth – one recently used it to sell over 2,000 online video ads in one day. Our innovation process is driven by truly understanding the digital advertising challenges faced by media owners wanting to service small advertisers – who may have limited budgets but nevertheless want to deliver great advertising that produces results,”

Announcing the Orange Innovation finalists, Martin Stiven, Vice President of Business at Orange, part of Everything Everywhere, said: “Orange believes that innovation is central to all business growth and we support businesses to achieve this goal. If the UK is to regain its role as a world leader of innovation, we firmly believe that British companies must embrace a new way of thinking and invest time and resource into doing this. This year’s finalists demonstrate exceptional innovation and are a testament to pioneering UK business.”

Sherry Coutu, Investment Committee, NESTA, who sat on this year’s National Business Awards shorlisting panel, said: “The ability of Local Stars to transform regional newspaper publishers’ efficiency nine-fold is fascinating.”

The National Business Awards are organised by UBM plc. Winners will be honoured at the National Business Awards gala dinner at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, Tuesday 8th November, where George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver this year’s welcome address. Visit www.nationalbusinessawards.co.uk for a full list of all 2011 finalists.

Innovation key to regional media success

admin — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:23:18 +0000

The declining circulations and tumbling ad revenues of UK regional publishers have led to a turbulent ride for the whole sector in recent years

Through necessity, regional publishers are adapting fast, with new technologies and operating models – and when it comes to digital media, we are now seeing increasing experimentation and innovation as these publishers seek to leverage their trusted relationships with local businesses.

Driven by a growing interest in local web content, the online audience for regional papers grew by nearly 25 per cent over the second half of 2010, and is further increasing in 2011.

Digital revenues are also up – in the case of Northcliffe by over 10%, but that only tells half the story.

Regional publishers clearly realise that innovation and new services are the keys to digital success, which is why they are experimenting with a raft of new ideas to attract and retain consumers and drive revenues.

Many are looking to tap into the phenomenal success of localised offers and deals site Groupon. Earlier in 2011, Archant Media bought half of Tickles, a Norwich-based group buying site and is rolling it out across East Anglia. Other publishers have launched their own deals sections on their sites to capitalise on their local strengths.

The appetite for local news and information persists and Johnston Press is supporting this with user generated content, integrating Qype’s digital directory within its regional media sites. This provides user-powered reviews and databases of local events to site visitors, increasing traffic and length of visits. From a partnership perspective, it’s a win-win: Qype benefits from Johnston Press’s large sales team, while the publisher gets to generate online revenues with minimal development outlay.

The need to increase revenues has triggered new business models. Britain’s best-selling regional daily, the Express & Star, based in Wolverhampton, has introduced a bundling deal involving paywall-protected content aimed at boosting print circulations.

With so many more people now watching video on their PCs and smartphones, many regionals have seen the light and are offering video ad formats in partnership with specialist providers and content creators.

And in a move designed to provide more value add to advertisers, Trinity Mirror is now offering marketing services such as web design, SEO and social media strategy, through Ripple Effect, a Liverpool-based agency it acquired.

The key thing about the majority of these ideas is that publishers are turning to best of breed digital partners to implement them, rather than building them internally. This openness allows publishers to benefit from emerging digital innovation and gives new media companies the chance to work with major brands, showcasing their innovation on a regional and national scale. And in turn, this enables the regional publishers to play to their strengths and focus on what they do well – customer relationships, trusted local content, and packaging of local advertising solutions.

This is just a snapshot of the wide range of digital services that regional media are exploring. But overall it bodes well for the future of regional publishers. Like any business, if they are to prosper long term, they need to be able to manage core operations more efficiently than ever while absorbing new ideas and opportunities at pace. In the case of new digital ideas, their doors are now firmly open.

Iliffe News and Media introduces new automated online video ad offering through Localstars

admin — Fri, 27 May 2011 14:01:40 +0000

Top ten regional publisher aims to grow digital revenues with new video and rich media services

Iliffe News and Media, one of the top ten UK regional publishers and the owner of the Cambridge News, is offering new automated online video and rich media advertising services to its digital advertisers through a partnership with Localstars, the geo-targeted online video advertising company.

The publisher, whose digital portfolio of 24 web sites attracts a monthly audience of more than 850,000 unique visitors and generates over 6 million page impressions, wants to offer a greater choice of online marketing options and build its digital ad sales revenues through this major new initiative. Andy Gough, MD of Iliffe Digital, the company’s digital publishing arm, comments:

“The new Localstars’ solution lets us automate the creation of powerful video advertising. It gives advertisers on our leading web sites an exciting new format that really resonates with their target audiences, and provides us with a way of increasing digital revenue by capitalising on the growing interest in online video. We’re also using the Localstars’ rich media ad builder to give us more capacity to cost effectively produce high quality rich media ads.”

Localstars’ ad platform provides a simple, straightforward way for Iliffe News and Media’s sales teams to deliver video advertising. They can log on and create a 15 second video ad for each advertiser by customising content from Localstars’ integrated video library, which is probably the largest of its kind in the world. Ads are personalised with individual business contact information, images and logos.

After the video ads have been uploaded to the Localstars’ system, sales people can target them to a specific local site. Overall the process of producing a professional, high quality, customised video can take as little as three minutes.

Similarly, Iliffe’s sales teams can use Localstars’ rich media ad builder to create compelling display ads within minutes. The ads, which incorporate interactive motion and sound, are generated using a multimedia content library maintained by Localstars. The ease of use and simplicity of the system lets the publisher generate a substantially higher volume of rich media ads without increasing design studio resources.

“Advertisers are starting to recognise that video and rich media can add an edge to their advertising campaigns. Localstars’ technology lets us deliver them cost effectively and at prices that small and medium sized local advertisers can afford,” said Mr Gough.

Chris Bunyan, Managing Director of Localstars explains: “The cost of video advertising has typically been prohibitive to small companies, as they need to pay a production company to produce a video, then a media partner to find an audience. Iliffe News and Media is inverting this model – as it doesn’t charge separately for video creation. The advertiser simply pays a small premium on the cost of buying space on the Iliffe websites. This model means that all types of businesses can now benefit from the impact of video advertising, including small and medium sized companies.”

Iliffe News & Media publishes three evening newspapers, seven paid-for weekly newspapers, 22 free newspapers plus 6 Sunday free newspapers, 1 quarterly & 4 monthly glossy magazines and 24 related websites together with a number of specialist niche titles. With a combined circulation and distribution of almost 1.2 million copies per week, the portfolio of titles extends throughout Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Warwickshire.

How to harness the power of online video, without breaking the bank

admin — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:43:36 +0000

By Chris Bunyan, Managing Director, Localstars

While it may still be in its infancy, online video advertising is one of the fastest growing areas of digital marketing spend – nearly doubling during 2010 according to the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). Given the power that video has to engage audiences and show off a brand to best effect, this growth can only continue.

Not just for TV advertisers

Much of the activity in online video advertising is coming from the big TV advertisers who are using the web to extend the reach of their existing TV ad campaigns. But video can be a lot less costly to create and deliver than a big budget TV campaign, which means there are opportunities for smaller businesses and those without such deep pockets to harness its power without breaking the bank.

If you don’t already have the content for your digital video ad, there are a growing number of video production companies that can shoot and edit content at affordable rates, well within the reach of small to medium sized businesses. And digital advertising agencies are now increasingly familiar with developing campaigns involving video.

Available video ad formats

While the formats for video adverts are still evolving, it is useful to understand that there are essentially two main groups; ads that run inside other video content – called in-stream ads – and standalone ads (also known as in-page ads).

In-stream ads, can be divided further into pre-, mid- or post-roll, depending on whether they are placed before, during or after the actual video content you may be watching – from catch-up TV services, to videos on news sites and, of course, YouTube. These ads are akin to TV ads in that they ‘interrupt’ whatever the viewer is watching. In page ads are different in that they appear in a fixed size and placement on a web page. They are commonly designed to fit IAB standard ad sizes, such as rectangles, skyscrapers and leaderboards. Most video adverts tend to be 15 seconds long, which is quickly starting to become an industry standard. This is considered long enough to get the advertiser’s message across while being brief enough to keep web site visitors engaged right to the end.

Automated creation services

Video is no longer the preserve of the big advertisers. For those who want to gain the benefits of video while keeping spend to a minimum, new automated video creation services are emerging that can create a 15 second ad for your business using professionally shot library footage. This type of service is often specifically targeted at smaller businesses. So whether the advertiser is a skip hire company, a car dealer or a florist they can select an appropriate short video and personalise it with logo and contact details – without having to invest in shooting any original video footage.

As local newspaper sites grow in popularity, many local publishers now offer video advertising. More often than not, these online publishers roll up the fee for producing the advert into the cost of delivering it to an online audience, which can be a very cost effective method of getting involved with video.

Another way of getting into video based advertising without having to shoot your own video content is to buy overlay advertising. These ads come in the form of clickable graphics or text that appears on top of video content that audiences are watching.

Most video ads are sold on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis, meaning you pay based on a rate for a thousand impressions or opportunities to view your advert. However there are some publishers who may be open to payment based on other models, such as cost per click.

Cost control through accurate targeting

Getting the targeting right is obviously essential to controlling costs, and there are numerous factors that can come into play. Demographic, contextual (related to the content on the page in which the ad appears), behavioural (based upon content a user has looked at recently) and geographic (country, county and city) variables can be used for targeting, as well as specific keywords/tags or simply deciding to place your in-stream ad within specific videos.

You might be able to approach specific publishers directly, but another option is to work with video ad networks which act as aggregators, bringing ad ‘inventory’ together from a number of sites. They include publishers amalgamating space across their own sites, display advertising networks seeking to expand into video, and specialist niche networks capitalising on the opportunities offered by video within specific sectors or types of online publication.

To help advertisers manage costs and ensure accountability the good news is that most publishers and networks will be able provide data to help track your video campaign including the number of impressions, completed plays and the volume of click-throughs.

Get more ‘bang for your buck’

Wherever you decide to place your video advert, you should aim to maximise the ‘bang for your buck’ by using the content in other ways. You can upload it to YouTube, host it on your company web site, send it to customers via email and share it on your blog, Twitter or Facebook. There are plenty of opportunities to reach others and expand your visibility.

Overall online video advertising is growing fast and, unlike its TV cousin, can achieve measurable results on a budget.

Targeting and video platforms revive regional publishers

admin — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:38:33 +0000

Two flagging regional publishers have reported boosts to their digital ad revenues after introducing an automated video ad platform and contextual targeting.

Johnston Press reported a 300% rise in click-through rates after implementing Grapeshot contextual targeting, which marries ads to the most relevant content in real time. Head of ad technology at Johnston Press Andy Overall said, “It has been significantly improving results the ads that DoubleClick serves.”

Meanwhile, Iliffe News & Media is also poised to introduce contextual targeting, plus video ad platform Localstars, which it’s using to bolster its online classified offering.

The video ad platform lets the publisher create bespoke ads using a library of existing content, and has already had “striking success”, according to Iliffe MD Andy Gough. “It’s becoming easier to attract online revenue through a variety of platforms,” he said, “We’re looking to serve ads by behaviour and interest. From this we’ll be able to improve the visitor experience and ensure ads are targeted at an audience that has the potential of being more receptive.”

Online is augmenting Iliffe’s print ad revenue rather than replacing it. The publisher’s sales team is selling “more sophisticated cross-platform “packages”, with local advertisers interested in the “brand recognition of print” and the search capabilities online, according to Gough.

Chris Bunyan, MD of Localstars and former digital director of Trinity Mirror Regionals, said that the trend in online advertising is towards rich media production costs have been prohibitive for regional publishers.

“They need to pay a production company to produce a video, then a media partner to find an audience,” he said. “Iliffe News & Media is inverting this model because it doesn’t change separately for video creation. The advertiser pays a small premium on the cost of buying space the Iliffe websites. This model means that all types of businesses can benefit from the impact of video advertising, including small and medium-sized companies.”