AditAll isn’t the first company to offer customizable low-cost video ads, but it may be the first to offer them exclusively for the Internet with a website where advertisers can go to actually create the ads. AditAll launched yesterday and Rodger Wells Jr., its VP of marketing and business development, explains how AditAll can be used and how it will help small to mid-size businesses create professional quality video ads for a surprisingly low cost.
iSPOT: Provide some background on AditAll and how it was developed.
Wells: We came up with the idea of making video ads available to a much broader small-midsize business market, lower end brand and large brand inventory companies that don’t have big marketing budgets. The idea is to bring the cost of creation of video ads down to a level that’s manageable. The cost of creating a video ad could be from several thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on what’s put into filming, shooting, editing and copyright purchase and that’s before you even start distributing the ad. The concept behind the platform is to utilize stock video clips, commercial music clips and sound effects and create a mixer where you can combine these components, add in text overlay, logo inlays or narration and create what is ultimately a professional quality video ad at a cost that will average around $300 to $700, based on the component inventory we’re putting on the site. If you get the most expensive clips and sound tracks, it might get to the $1,500 to $2,000 range but generally it will be $300-$700. In the launch with carry through you can distribute the ad through Google AdSense. We expect to use other ad servers shortly, but we decided we’d rather launch before we pick the ad servers that will best fit the businesses that use the site.
iSPOT: Can you tell us how advertisers will use it?
Wells: There are two sides to the site: the advertiser side and the producer side. The producers are content owners that feed new content into the site. The advertiser comes into the site and is presented with an inventory of featured footage. There are two kinds of ads: a pre-packaged ad and a start from scratch ad. On a pre-packaged ad you have a clip combined with a sound track, so with minimal effort you can create your ad and get it up quickly. With a start from scratch ad, you pick the raw footage and take it forward and develop the ad yourself. We offer a proprietary mixer where advertisers can convert the video clips into the ad they want. The video clips sit in the mixer and you add slides or logos or upload other material. You can add a background or change a font or colors. You can add text overlays, such as a phone number. And you can add a soundtrack. We’ll have 7,000 different soundtracks to chose from our licensing deal with Orchard, the largest independent music catalog that provides global Internet distribution rights. So you can drop a soundtrack into a video or narrate your own by recording it with a microphone on your computer.
iSPOT: Where does the content come from?
Wells: For our initial launch we did a deal with RevoStock that will offer 20,000 video clips and we’re close to a deal with Thought Equity Motion, which has the largest video clip library online. Also more importantly, we’ve been nurturing a small community of producers who range from kids in film school to hobbyists who like to shoot video. The producers can upload clips they have to the site and advertisers can shop and find relevant content for purchase. We have a small number of producers involved now and plan to bring in some well known producers from the film and TV world. If an advertiser is browsing through footage, they can go to a request board to put up a request for the content they need and producers will see that they’re looking to buy it right now. We’ll have a list of platinum producers who will see it first, so if they have a clip or want to shoot it, they can make a fast sale.
iSPOT: What kind of rights do advertisers have when they buy a spot?
Wells: They have rights to the completed ad, but not the individual components. It is six-month, global Internet-only distribution rights. They’re not purchasing rights for TV, but if they took the ads and tried to play them on TV, they wouldn’t look that good.
iSPOT: Is it a unique offering? We’ve covered Spotzer, which offers a similar service.
Wells: Spotzer is competing with SpotRunner. The biggest difference between us, besides the fact that we’re focusing on Internet distribution, is you have to fill out a number of questionnaires about what you’re looking for and then they get back to you with a video ad. SpotRunner is making most of their money on the placement. Our model doesn’t hinge on the media buy, we’re on a revenue share basis with the content owners.
iSPOT: You don’t place the ads?
Wells: On our initial launch we offer placement on Google through AdSense and we anticipate a few other ad servers in time. Or you have the option of downloading the ad and placing it yourself on your own site or you can go to Yahoo and do a media buy.
iSPOT: So it’s primarily for small and mid-size businesses?
Wells: I think our sweet spot is for small and mid-size businesses. We give them the ability to create professional quality video ads at a cost significantly lower than traditional production methods.
