video advertising related Press Releases

Turner Broadcasting System and Yahoo! enter historic alliance

Jim O'Neill — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:47:08 -0400

NEW YORK and SUNNYVALE, Calif. - July 10, 2008 - Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) have entered a multi-year strategic alliance that will allow the two companies to collaborate on advertising and sports-related content. Turner will exclusively represent online advertising sales for the NBA, golf and NASCAR pages of Yahoo! Sports. Additionally, Yahoo! Sports will gain access to basketball, golf and NASCAR content from NBA.com, PGATOUR.com, PGA.com and NASCAR.com, league sites managed by Turner. The deal was announced today by David Levy, president of Turner Broadcasting Sales, Inc. and Turner Sports and Todd Teresi, senior vice president of Yahoo!'s Publisher Channel. The deal creates an alliance between one of the leading entities in the sports media industry and the #1 online sports destination, representing the new model for media outlets looking to increase and further engage their audiences.

All display, sponsorship and video advertising opportunities within the NBA, golf and NASCAR pages on Yahoo! Sports will be available exclusively through the Turner Network, which combines the digital resources of 19 Turner Sports, News and Entertainment properties. The agreement also provides Turner with access to advanced targeting technologies that will allow Turner to exclusively sell advertisements based on a consumer's affinity for NASCAR, golf and NBA content, thus creating new advertising opportunities for clients. The agreement underscores Yahoo's ongoing commitment to differentiating verticals online.

"Our relationship with Yahoo! provides tremendous benefits for our online consumers who will receive enhanced coverage of NBA, PGA TOUR, PGA and NASCAR news and events," said Levy. "Aligning with Yahoo! Sports adds another dimension to our digital platforms and enables us to extend the distribution of our content and advertisers' marketing messages by leveraging each company's national audience. We're confident this arrangement will prove very beneficial to our advertising partners." He added, "The strength of Turner content combined with the extensive reach of Yahoo! Sports will make our respective properties the undisputed leader in market share of NBA, golf and NASCAR content on the Web."

"By aligning with Turner and enabling them to extend Yahoo! inventory to sell to advertisers, we will engage the most targeted audience of sports enthusiasts available on the Internet," said Teresi. "This announcement builds on our strategy to be both the starting point for consumers seeking the premier sports content, and to be the choice for leading Internet publishers looking to maximize their revenue potential. With the incomparable sports lineup Yahoo! Sports can now offer, as well as the massive size of our audience, advertisers will be able to deliver the most targeted, relevant marketing messages available at scale on the Web."

Through this relationship, Turner will provide NASCAR, PGA TOUR, PGA and NBA properties to Yahoo! Sports with live and on-demand video, leaderboards and editorial content featuring some of the biggest names in sports. The content will enrich Yahoo! Sports' current racing, golf and professional basketball coverage, which includes original reporting from award-winning journalists such as NBA writer Adrian Wojnarowski, auto racing writer Bob Margolis, and NASCAR analyst Ricky Craven. League sites NASCAR.com, PGATOUR.com, PGA.com, and NBA.com will also reap the benefits of successfully partnering with Turner through this Yahoo! agreement with increased exposure to a new audience of sports fans. The league sites will receive fixed placements on the respective NASCAR, golf, and NBA pages of Yahoo! Sports to promote certain league initiatives, further growing their brand exposure.

Opening the marketplace for Turner to sell advertising on Yahoo! Sports is part of a new publisher strategy that Yahoo! began implementing in October, 2007. The company's goal is to work with publishers that are differentiated in their markets online to build an interdependent reseller network. Through this reseller network, advertisers can reach the audiences they want to communicate with at Yahoo!'s unmatched scale, plus presenting their audiences with relevant messages at the right time.

About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

About Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner company, creates and programs branded news, entertainment, animation and young adult media environments on television and other platforms for consumers around the world.

Storybids Launches Product Placement Auction House for Brand Integrations Into Online Video

Jim O'Neill — Fri, 09 May 2008 05:59:22 -0400

Irvine, CA (PRWEB) May 5, 2008 -- Storybids, Inc. today announced the launch of their product placement marketplace where online video content creators can get paid to feature physical products in pre-production user-generated videos, serial mini-dramas, videoblogs and webisodes. Advertisers may use Storybids searching capabilities to seek out video creators that meet their demographic criterion such as viewership, subscriptions, and ratings or by genre or age demographic. Video creators looking to fund their independent or professional film projects may now seek out product placement advertising opportunities by targeting specific advertisers that complement the storyline of future content. Storybids also works as a social media marketplace for filmmakers by allowing them to connect with other filmmakers for advice and collaboration on film projects.

News Image

Over two years in the making, Founders Joseph Morin and Juan Prado spent considerable time conducting research and development for the most compelling brand entertainment and online video advertising business model. The two have created a complementary means of monetizing user generated and professional video. Storybids secured a Series A round of venture capital financing in August, 2007 from STN Labs of Toronto, Canada and soft launched a beta marketplace in February of 2008. Based on a storyboarding concept where video creators would upload storyboard samples of potential scenes to feature product placement, the website features the capability to accept any form of digital media such as a storyboard, images or video as an example for advertisers to peruse for brand placement opportunities.

A recent research study by Mindshare shows that viewers react negatively to interruptive TV style ads and attempt to skip them whenever possible suggesting that consumers are far more receptive to product placement in online video programming than pre- and post-roll advertising. PQ Media released a study in February, 2007 that showed spending on branded entertainment marketing grew 14.7% to an all time high of $22.3 billion in 2007 and is projected to increase by another 13.9% in 2008 to $25.41 billion driven by product placement, event sponsorship/marketing, and advergaming/webisodes.

Benefits to the Storybids product placement marketplace include a robust transaction processing engine where video creators may upload media available for in-video advertising inventory that is completely searchable by advertisers and visa-versa where media sellers may search for specific advertisers complementary to their own video brand. Storybids also offers distribution and video analytics measurement by optimizing finalized video for search engines and submitting to several video hosting sites such as YouTube, MySpaceTV, Veoh, AOL Video, Metacafe, DailyMotion and others simultaneously allowing dashboard reporting on the videos performance via views, comments and ratings aggregated across the various video sites.

Early in the companys lifecycle the Storybids team had some success in promoting a bloggers attempt to secure a commercial during Superbowl XLI and created a media frenzy with the MySuperProposal project, the end result being a wedding proposal acceptance viral video that was seen over 6 million times worldwide. CEO Joseph Morin stated, "Given the Storybids teams strong background in Internet advertising and social media marketing, we are uniquely poised to capture strong market share in this relatively new yet burgeoning business model. We look forward to serving both video creators and brand advertisers with a unique video advertising opportunity." For more information on Storybids unique advertising model please visit the Storybids site.

About Storybids
Storybids, Inc. is a venture capital funded start up based in Irvine, CA focusing on in-video advertisement via product placement in user generated content as well as professionally scripted webisodes. Storybids offers a new way to monetize video by inserting actual product, services or verbal mentions pre-production before a video goes viral. The videos uploaded via content creators may be uploaded to multiple video hosting sites at once and then tracked via analytics for performance via their dashboard. Advertisers may select video content creators in the marketplace via a search tool that tracks views, comments and ratings across multiple video hosting sites. Online at www.storybids.com.

Panache Solves Major Challenges Facing the Media Industry in the Quest to Monetize the Explosion in Video Consumption

Jim O'Neill — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:43:57 -0400

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Panache, the video advertising delivery-platform pioneer, today announced new technologies being used by industry-leading companies to drive creative and lucrative advertising formats into video.

Panache’s patent-pending technology platform connects video publishers, advertisers, and ad networks through an innovative media mapping technology that enables delivery of all ad formats into video on the Web, television, IPTV, and handheld devices. With one simple solution, Panache simplifies technical and operational complexity and helps monetize video regardless of distribution channel or technology platform.

“The current flux of video distribution and consumption options is challenging networks, publishers and advertisers on how to scale and operationalize new video monetization models,” said Steve Robinson, CEO of Panache. “Our customers have gained a significant competitive advantage by adopting a technology that allows quick and effective ad delivery of all new standard and emerging ad formats to all major video platforms.”

Panache Pure-Play Technology

Panache is an innovative media mapping and delivery technology. Panache makes it simple to create a media map which defines where, when and how advertising should be displayed across the timeline of a video. The specific advertising is determined by external ad serving and targeting systems that communicate seamlessly with Panache’s media maps. Media maps follow the video content to any third-party video player or technology, making it easy to deliver advertising and monetize content no matter how video is distributed or syndicated.

“With Panache, video publishers can now deliver advertising regardless of what technology is being used. Advertisers don’t care if you are watching shows on TV, the Internet, a handheld or a downloaded player,” said Robinson. “What they care about is being able to put their most effective advertising and formats in front of the viewer.”

Panache currently works seamlessly with technologies such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Media Player, Microsoft’s Silverlight, select IPTV platforms and Cable’s tru2way™ set-top boxes.

“Success in online video hinges on the flexibility to follow the consumer,” said Anton Denissov, a video analyst at the Yankee Group. “Consumers can watch video on a TV, a computer, a mobile phone or a portable device. Advertisers need a universal solution to allow their ads to follow the consumer cost-effectively, regardless of the medium.”

Panache in Action

To validate its pivotal role in enabling video publishers, ad networks and advertisers to monetize video consumption, Panache is sharing how several large brands, including Break Media, CPX Interactive, Cypress Consulting, Gorilla Nation and thePlatform, who implemented its technology early have already realized a significant return on investment.
-- Break Media, the leading online media company for men, calls Panache a robust platform to monetize the video content on its site and across its advertiser network.

"Break Media enables advertisers to reach the elusive, young male demographic with an unprecedented combination of quality, scale, and loyalty," said Keith Richman, chief executive officer, Break Media. "With Panache's groundbreaking technology, we are able to further our value proposition to advertisers by offering the flexibility of creating any type of ad experience in a matter of hours, not weeks."

-- "Partnering with hundreds of media companies over the years, we know firsthand that as the market has matured, so too has the demand for highly flexible solutions that remove constraints and embrace different technology paths to online video delivery," said Jordan Friedman, senior business development manager at thePlatform. "With Panache, our customers have even greater choice in implementing a customized solution that connects their video strategy with their advertising needs."

-- Cypress Consulting, with prominent customers such as CBS, Comcast, College Sports Television, Microsoft, Starbucks, New Orleans Saints, and Seattle Supersonics, is sharing the Panache advantage.

"Panache's technology allows Cypress to help customers realize additional revenue opportunities for online advertising," said Nate Thompson, Cypress Consulting's president and CEO. "The overlay, or in-video, advertising model makes possible targeted and rich advertising opportunities. These opportunities are not possible in existing banner and video roll formats."

About Panache

Founded in 2006, Panache is a privately held company headquartered in Los Angeles. The Panache technology enables Internet video sites and networks to dynamically deliver any ad format directly into video content from a third-party ad server or ad network. Ad formats can be generated and delivered to viewers based on profiling and behavioral targeting, resulting in a highly customized experience for the user and a highly scalable model for the video publisher. With Panache, ad formats are completely detached from the video player, allowing publishers to create and deploy new advertising formats in minutes without engineering resources. Panache’s patent-pending solution makes it easy to deliver advanced interactive advertising to all video-distribution channels, including broadband, television, IPTV and other emerging technologies.

For more information, visit http://www.panachetech.com.