By Ken Liebeskind
CAMBRIDGE, MA --Maven Networks isn’t exactly recreating online video advertising, but the Internet TV Advertising Platform it launched last week offers a number of innovations that will open some new doors for the publishers who use it.
The five-year-old company, which launched a media player in March, started focusing on video advertising, “so our customers could monetize video on their own sites,” said Maven’s VP of marketing Kristen Fergason.
The new platform offers three features that will help publishers and advertisers run effective video campaigns–a variety of new ad formats; an insertion engine that will enable ads to be placed in the best position in the videos; and a series of inventory management and prediction tools.
The new formats include versions of overlays, videos and sponsored skins that aren’t unique to Maven but offer some novel features, such as an interactive fulfillment panel that plays at the end of a video that enables the user to play an additional video or request information, such as the address of a local dealer or a brochure that will be sent by e-mail. After users go to a video ad from an overlay, they can be offered additional videos, which appear in a separate box on the right side of the media player.
The new insertion engine is based on a variety of metrics that enable publishers to play ads at different times while the video plays. Everything from the user session time to the video clip length to the average view time and the popularity of the video clip are factored in to provide a “cue point insertion,” which is the best time to insert an ad while the video plays.
The cue point insertion tool is part of the inventory management system that will govern the frequency and type of ads that are played with the videos.
The ability to play an ad at different times during the video creates a wealth of new inventory, as much as three times more, Fergason said. “When the user is playing a video, 15 seconds in you have an opportunity to play an ad, it’s a second ad in a stream. Those placements didn’t exist before, so it offers a new opportunity with a higher CPM.”
Maven has been testing the new ad platform with publishers in closed trials. This week, it will test it with consumers who will be asked to comment on the new ad formats. The results of the tests will be published in November, Fergason said.
The company has also created a forum of publishers, agencies and tech providers who will collaborate on developing the platform. The publishers are Financial Times, TV Guide, Fox News, Scripps and 4 Kids Entertainment; the agencies are Ogilvy and Digitas; the tech providers are DoubleClick and Atlas.
The goal of the platform is to help Maven’s publishing partners upgrade their video advertising. “We want the publishers to use the new forms of advertising,” Fergason said. “The industry is so stagnant. We want to help people kick it into gear. There hasn’t been much innovation during the last five years, but we hope to increase video advertising inventory and revenue.”
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More