VideoEgg

Engagement economics and the evolution of VideoEgg

By blog_editor on Oct. 02 2008

Some 2 years ago, we launched our advertising business with the introduction of the video overlay ad. We were the first to bring a product of this nature to market – an invitation-based video ad that was an alternative to pre-roll, particularly for short video content that was proliferating across the web. “Tickers,” as we called them, were well received by the industry and most major players in the online video space have adopted the approach.

We’ve continued to push our advertising business forward, by exploring extensions to the Ticker concept of invitation-based rich video-driven advertising. AdFrames was our second major advertising product introduction. The vision for the product was much broader than an ad format. AdFrames was designed as a dimensionless ad solution that could live in any size (IAB standard or otherwise) and any environment – pages, flash, video and mobile. AdFrames offered marketers far more functionality than was possible with the video overlay. Its full-screen experience and plug-in features (mapping, localization, movie times, RSS etc) made it a formidable alternative to overlays.

Delivering AdFrames on page-based inventory also opened our eyes to inventory economics and pricing opportunities. We decided early on that engagement based pricing (CPE) made a ton of sense for the product and the ad market and it became core to the offering. As it evolved, AdFrames became a hands-down better product for marketers. More scale, guaranteed engagement, relevant and rich functionality, and all with 2X the performance at half the price. Not surprisingly, we’ve seen demand shift to AdFrames pretty rapidly.

Video is still important to us and for short-form video, Tickers remain a great solution.  We will look to offer a version of AdFrames in the video environment when supply opens up in video and allows for an engagement-based pricing model. In the mean time our publisher partners will see diminished demand for Tickers and increased demand for page inventory to serve AdFrames.

Some things will remain constant. Our mantra “Nice Works” will continue to drive how we approach our consumer relationship. The consistent AdFrames approach and branding, the user-initiated experience, the 3 second countdown to avoid “accidental” engagements, are all examples of “Nice Works” in practice. But expect us to continue to find better ways of creating value for brands, like AdFrames and CPE. The industry needs innovation. We love the challenge.

Posted by Troy Young