Keeping Online Video Ads on Target

JUNE 22, 2007

ScanScout's take on the business of online video advertising.

Doug McFarland, CEO of ScanScout, has been in the media business for 22 years. Nearly half of these have been in executive positions in the field of interactive media. Before ScanScout, he was EVP/GM of Eyeblaster, North America, and EVP/GM at Advertising.com. Before that he was president of Jupiter/Media Metrix.

ScanScout, two years in the making, now serves targeted video ads around online video content.

eMarketer: What does ScanScout offer?

Doug McFarland: We target video ads to relevant content and to targeted users.

eMarketer: What's your business model?

Mr. McFarland: It's pay-per-view. The advertiser doesn't pay until the user has chosen to see the ad.

eMarketer: Sounds familiar?

Mr. McFarland: We do for video pretty much what Google does for AdSense, except they only look at the contents of the page, we look at the contents of the video. If the viewer is reading a review about new autos, and the review mentions a Porsche 911 or Porsche Boxster, we can serve a Porsche ad.

eMarketer: How "targeted" can you get?

Mr. McFarland: Eventually, we'll use cookies. Now the targeting is contextually based. Whatever type of content is playing, the ad will relate to that. I call it "video by invitation."

eMarketer: You place ads around user-generated content. Isn't that risky for some brands?

Mr. McFarland: No. We are able to protect our advertisers from content they don't want to be associated with because of our brand-protection technology.

eMarketer: How does that work?

Mr. McFarland: Advertisers go through our pick list and choose the content and keywords they don't want to be associated with, like violence or sexual content or content that is just dumb. We use three different types of filtering: one type that identifies contextualization within a page, an audio analysis and, finally, music, like the background theme, coloration and other visual-detection technology. Based on what is input, we classify it as acceptable or not acceptable.

eMarketer: It sounds like most of the content on the Internet wouldn't pass muster.

Mr. McFarland: For one of the user-generated content publishers we're running on, about half of the content is not acceptable.

eMarketer: Does that worry you?

Mr. McFarland: A large portion of the video out there is like that TV show featuring stupid home videos. But most of that video was good for advertising because it had a big audience and the videos were humorous in most cases.

eMarketer: Are you looking forward to the appearance of more professionally produced online video content?

Mr. McFarland: The number of streams is constantly increasing. Every major publisher we've talked to has video now or has a plan to have it by the end of the year. TV advertisers have always had a big propensity to video.

eMarketer: What content is the big seller?

Mr. McFarland: Movie trailers, entertainment news. It's difficult to talk about because if you do a search on Google, there's video on every subject.

Kris Oser, Director of Strategic Communications at eMarketer, was a business reporter for 15 years, most recently covering digital marketing at Advertising Age.