Mobile video advertising is growing with the introduction of new formats and platforms from industry tech companies, including Nexage/Fremont, CA, which just introduced click to play video. Dev Gandhi, Nexage’s CEO, discusses the introduction of click to play video. This week’s iChat also includes a conversation with Bryon Morrison, president of isph!/San Francisco, the mobile advertising agency that is partnering with Nexage on campaigns for major entertainment marketers.
iChat with Dev Gandhi Nexage CEO:
iSPOT: Do advertisers start by creating a mobile web page?
Gandhi: We have publishing tools that allow them to build their own mobile web pages, which we call click to video landing pages. They do their own branding and upload their video content in the format they have. They’re ready to bring traffic to this landing page.
iSPOT: Once they have a mobile web page, how do they play the video?
Gandhi: From the mobile web page, we pick up requests from the users when they want to watch video. We detect the phone and the video capability and launch the media player and play the videos. We do the hard work of taking it from the mobile web page to the media player. There are many ways of doing it based on the phone’s capability, the limitations of the wireless operator network and those kinds of configurations that we recognize and make work to play mobile video.
iSPOT: What kinds of video can be played?
Gandhi: It could come to us in any existing format. We take all formats and we take care of moving it into the target device. There are multiple forms and capability whether it’s Windows mobile phones or standard featured phones or iPhones or other versions. We take video in any format. Media companies love it, because once they create a video, they just upload it for the target device.
iSPOT: You launched click to play video recently?
Gandhi: We developed the platform more than three-and-a-half years ago initially in Europe. We launched our beta platform 18 months ago in January, 2006 and in February of this year we took the platform and launched it direct to consumers, a free mobile video service called MyCorner, which is an ad supported mobile video service.
iSPOT: Click to play video came up after that?
Gandhi: We launched it about two months ago.
iSPOT: What kind of advertisers have used it?
Gandhi: We’ve already run quite a few campaigns. One was for Lionsgate for the launch of their movie War which went into theaters August 29. We ran a campaign for Fox’s The Simpsons Movie and another campaign for broadcasters that the ad agencies won’t allow us to disclose. HBO is launching a show in the fall and we’re getting that campaign up and running with exclusive video. It’s a reality show.
iSPOT: Why are entertainment companies the major advertisers?
Gandhi: One reason is we are getting started and we’re a small company, so we don’t reach the large conglomerates like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Adidas, which are quite aggressive in mobile marketing campaigns. Also, entertainment companies are niche with interesting content that has to be deployed very rapidly. They have a four week time period before a launch and they want to build hype and reach the maximum number of people. This is the best way to reach a younger audience. Plus they get excited when we show them that our platform is capable of reaching any phone with any operator, without the operator’s permission.
iSPOT: As far as mobile advertising goes, video wasn’t the first platform, text was. How do you see mobile video advertising developing?
Gandhi: It’s going to become pretty interesting. We are releasing our pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll video stitching technology soon and we are working with partners to integrate with mobile ad networks or online networks like Yume or Ad Infuse. They are going to be delivering real time videos based on user requests and dynamic service of video that can be stitched together, including a 10 second pre-roll and the video the user requests.
iSPOT: Who will see the video ads you play?
Gandhi: We offer our platform as a white label solution used by a lot of media companies. Disney Mobile might offer free video services to users and monetize it with advertising. Users will watch clips with ads and we can offer the service and capabilities for them to play the ads, depending on the service provider
iSPOT: How do you make the ads available on all phones and do you need carrier approval?
Gandhi: We work closely with carriers to understand their standards but we don’t need any agreement with them because these are off portal, off deck solutions so it works on most phones and operators worldwide. There are a few carriers who restrict and block the content. Customers don’t need any agreements either. When it’s off deck you have no relation with the operator. The user needs a data plan for Internet browsing, a browser and a media player.
iChat with Bryon Morrision isph! President:
iSPOT: How are you working with Nexage on click to video ads?
Morrison: They transcode, host and deliver video content. We’ve used them on several clients ranging from movie studios to cable networks.
iSPOT: Can you describe how one campaign worked?
Morrison: In general, I can’t disclose what I work on, but a cable network we’re working with is running a video intensive camp and you transfer it to handset. It only makes sense for video to be a hero in that situation. So we really work with Nexage as a turnkey solution for us to include them in our wireless campaigns that are presented on a WAP site. When we develop a site, we can use Nexage to host and deliver the content. We provide them with video files, they do the transcoding, host the files and do auto detection for hand sets. They go through and decide if the handset allows you to stream video or do you have to do it as a download–or if it can’t receive videos at all, they will provide a wall paper in its place.
iSPOT: How do you think mobile video advertising is developing?
Morrison: We’re partnering with other folks in the video space, like MobiTV and other developers. Now the reason people are doing it is there’s a novelty to it, it’s new to the medium and mobile users who are interacting with it. The advent of iPhone and the tie in with YouTube is a natural first step. I think it will become more important as people figure out how to use it in more effective ways. The challenge I’ve seen is it’s like the net when everyone said let’s play our :30 ad and run it on the net. But it became more important when they figured out how they could do other things more effectively. Once you identify how the consumer wants to consume the medium, that’s when video will find its sweet spot. We’ve had better success when we’ve gone in and created unique content that’s specific to the handset. It works better for the way they consume the media. With MobiTV, people don’t plant themselves in front of the screen for an hour, they do it in 10 or 15 minute increments.
iSPOT: What kind of specialty video do you do for mobile?
Morrison: We’ve targeted Bluetooth delivery, they come into the venue for events and we shoot videos that are close up with less movement which we know works better on handsets. It’s specific to Bluetooth delivery, that’s where we’ve used it the most for original content.
