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Predictions for Video and Ad Operations in 2020 & Beyond

By Jacob Simkovich | January 14, 2020

Technology evolves fast, and with it comes a rapidly changing ad tech industry. To perform ad operations properly, publishers have to stay on top of these trends – keep up with technological advances and stay in tune with what consumers want.

2019 was an exciting and eventful year for the industry – privacy regulations, CTV and contextual targeting were some of the big headlines. Will 2020 see the video advertising take an even bigger share of the market? How will American consumers react to the CCPA? And is “cookiegeddon” avoidable or inevitable?

We asked a cross-section of industry leaders to make some predictions about the future of video content, advertising and ad operations in general. Here are their thought-provoking answers that every publisher should take to heart.

The Importance of Universal ID

Inventory fragmentation is growing and we see the issue evolving into a mounting challenge in 2020.

With new ad-supported streaming services popping up on what feels like a monthly basis, media buyers are often confused as to where they can purchase inventory while also leveraging data for audience targeting, managing frequency, and measuring the performance of their campaigns holistically across all screens.

Any of these concerns can be curtailed if the industry shifted to a universal identifier so buyers and investment arms could better manage all of these issues.

The Blurring Lines of Media

The lines between traditional and online media are continuing to blur. In the years to come we’ll see those lines disappear entirely, with major players in the entertainment and publishing business venturing into online media. This will make the destination of the content effectively obsolete.

This won’t just be the blurring between television and laptop. We will see live sports on mobile, YouTube celebrities on the big screen and trusted media outlets reporting breaking news on OTTs.

The More Things Change…

The online publishing market will have the same characteristics it has had since I started 25 years ago. It will be like sailing on the seas with waves cresting and falling in various size. The magical question isn’t what specifically will be those changes but what will we do when we encounter them. These waves come quickly and the market constantly moves. Maybe we’re looking at a cookie-less world or JSON or CCPA.

Maybe we’ll see a new social medium or the demise of an existing one. The real story will lie in how we deal with these changes, not what the specific changes will be.

Video Will Continue to Boom

We see video is becoming even more important to our business in 2020, because it is a favoured medium for certain content types: reviews and how-to tutorials. The reader/viewer really decides how he or she wants to consume our content.

Video with audio is not always going to be convenient, and words and pictures certainly still have their place in publishing. Most content types are enhanced with video, rather than being entirely supplanted by it. If the visitor wants video, we should include it.

Cost remains a major factor for publishers, with high-quality video content more editorial labour intensive than traditional articles. Hosting video is also expensive, and delivering it can add latency to content pages, and therefore affect search visibility. It is certainly more monetizable, but less so on certain growing platforms (often run by Google), such as YouTube and AMP.

Highly Targeting Video Content

I predict that buyers and marketers will start targeting and buying specific video content that they want their brands to be associated with.

Think of an era where you bid on the right user, at the right domain, and at the right moment. Imagine placing an iPhone ad as a midroll, at the precise moment when the user is watching a video on an iPhone or, better yet, a Samsung.

What Publishers Will Need to Find Success with Video

Engagement with video content will become the dominant way users consume publisher content in 2020, and by 2025, fueled by 5G, I predict video content consumption will surpass 90% of a user’s time spent with publisher content.

In order to meet the daily demand for new video content publishers will need to adopt a hybrid production model that includes in-house & outsourced production capability, as well as licensing syndicated content. This means publishers will need embrace syndication partnerships as well as leveraging low-cost, high-quality video production partnerships with several platforms (e.g. VidMob and QuickFrame), which will, in turn, require a change in thinking by editorial and ad ops teams that are generally resistant to “not produced here” video content.

Publishers will need to license video content recommendation technology similar to what users experience at the “walled gardens.”

Publishers will need to become experts at assembling scaleable programmatic demand in order to effectively monetize all of the great video content on their sites. These changes will require a radically evolved publisher ad ops function with more focus on video demand management across O&O and syndicated content.

Avoiding “Video Blindness”

Video will continue to establish itself as the best way to reach audiences, cross-channel video will take a bigger role in planning advertising strategy, and advertisers will allocate more budgets towards video.

With video being so common, “Video Blindness” will become a huge risk, which means that in order to keep your users engaged, publishers, advertisers and video product companies will need to enhance video experience and give users great user experience with relevant, user-centric videos.

Demand for OTT and CTV

I believe that more and more video will be consumed via OTT platforms and demand for CTV and OTT will be bigger than ever in the next couple of years.

This means Google is going to try and crack down on CTV landscape as they did for standard desktop/mobile (ads.txt) which will be an issue for many publishers and advertisers.

Video and Ad Operations in 2020

The new year brings with it a whole new decade and different ways to monetize your website. From the increasing importance of contextual to revenue stream diversification, new solutions for the increasingly complicated landscape are making themselves known in 2020. Every publisher should take the opportunity to double down on what works.

The Ideal Video Unit Placement

By Toar Mekaiten | December 19, 2019

When it comes to deciding where to place a video unit on your website’s page, there are many aspects to consider. However, the objectives are clear. We want to give users a good and engaging experience with the content we’re presenting, but we are also looking to create high impact video inventory that will achieve the best monetization results. Both of these goals are very much influenced by location and function on page. So, how should you decide where to place your video unit, and how should it function?

There are 3 major factors to consider.

Video Viewability

You already know the importance of ad viewability and how much it impacts your resulting revenue. However, in video advertising, the most important term today is viewable duration.That is the period of time that the player stays in view, providing the highest rates of profit. The longer the unit is viewable, the more opportunity to fill an ad. Think of it this way, time is for video ads what website real estate is for display ads.

The best way to achieve high viewable duration in a way that is respectful of user experience (and even complements it) is with the collapsing unit. You can see it used by all of the top publishers and social platforms. This tactic simply enables the user to keep scrolling and watch the video at the same time.

Size Considerations

Obviously, a bigger video unit promotes user involvement and advertiser revenue. However, if it’s made too big, or too big for its placement, it can harm the user experience.

It is a game of balances, where the optimal size according to Primis research is around 500-550px. Our numbers clearly show that less than 400px hurts monetization, and on the other hand a player larger than 600px is capturing too much of the grid. The uptick for players over 600px is virtually nonexistent, and in some cases even hurts monetization due to reduced viewability, because it’s hard to get over 50% of the pixels in view.

For the same reasons, it usually is not advised to place the unit on the side rail. Placing the video unit on the side rail limits the possible size of the unit, as the side rail is usually limited to 300px. An additional reason to avoid side bars is that they are usually considered places for ads, which is why users may apply ad blindness, and you will miss out on a great opportunity to engage your users and keep them on the site longer.

Content-Related Considerations

When deciding on the placement and function of the video unit you have to take the content into account. If you have a video that expands on the content of the text, then the best placement is usually as high in the body of text as possible. Placing it right after the title will serve both your objectives in the best way; it is the most viewable placement for advertisers, and gives users the exact content that they are looking for at that moment.

If the content is not created for the specific article, but is instead promoting videos you want the user to discover, then it is better to let the audience start by focusing on the text, and then give them recommendations for more related videos afterwards. That will help avoid any increase in the bounce rate. When he is well on his way, you can politely suggest content that is related to the user’s interests, and the context of the page.

Video: A Strategic Growth Engine

It all comes down to the way you regard video on your site. If you consider it as just another ad unit that will make you a few bucks, you are really missing out on the power of video to engage your users, deliver them true value, and subsequently deliver advertisers a quality high impact advertising opportunity. On the other hand, placing video at the core of your growth and revenue diversification strategy, understanding that online users demand it, and that it offers advertisers one of the most engaging ad placements, will truly transform your website.

What Publishers Need to Know About Privacy in 2020 & Beyond

By Jacob Simkovich | December 16, 2019

As we enter 2020, the internet is at an historic crossroads with several enormous shifts happening in the digital publishing industry.

Some of these trends are quite alarming. Internet browsers are initiating ITPs that will effectively kill the 3rd party cookie, a long time crutch for the ad tech industry. Also, federal and state regulations like GDPR and CCPA are forcing publishers to invest in costly operational changes. On the other hand, there are some very promising trends on the horizon. Contextual technology has advanced encouragingly and ID solutions are popping up to fill the void that 3rd party cookies have left behind.

What Can We Do About Privacy in 2020?

We did the research and put together a complete breakdown on every aspect of the the coming changes to the industry and how they will effect publishers, especially when it comes to video. If you want to learn everything publishers need to know about privacy in 2020 and beyond, then download the guide here.

In 2021, we predict it’s still going to be a bit of a mess with a patchwork of laws and regulations. By 2025, we believe regulators, consumers, and the industry must settle on an acceptable global framework to protect privacy and industry.

Eyal Betzalel

Co-CEO, Primis

In this white paper, you will gain insights into the future of:

Privacy regulations like GDPR, CCPA and others that are yet to come.
The most influential and growing ID solutions.
How publishers will mitigate the effects of the phasing out of 3rd party cookies.
Contextual content and advertising, the publisher’s secret weapon.
And other recent privacy trends that will evolve over the coming decade.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to best prepare your ad ops strategy for these impending shifts, then download our comprehensive guide here.

Holiday Digital Advertising on Cooking Sites

By Rinat Avrina | November 27, 2019

Everyone knows that advertising budgets reach peak spend during the holidays. Impressions, fill rates, revenue and more – all increase in the days leading up to the holidays. End of the year holiday spend has another factor involved. The end of Q4 is when all of the businesses need to reach their target goals, and so do the marketers who are looking to direct the consumer demand towards their brands.

We at Primis know publishers and how their users consume content, especially on video. Our research shows that one site category is influenced disproportionately over the holidays; cooking. Cooking sites see a very large increase in the days leading up to both Thanksgiving and Christmas, and for good reason.

Cooking Up Some Ad Spend

The fact that the cooking category takes the lead makes sense for several reasons. First of all, many people are having family and friends over for the holidays, and are expected to provide a delicious and festive meal. People need special recipes and a lot of them. This impacts one of the most important metrics in video advertising, video duration. The longer video content is viewed, the more ad slots there are. You can think of it as the display equivalent of article length.

These ingredients come together to form a very tasty recipe; more quality traffic to the website, users watching videos for longer, and ad budgets looking to be spent. No wonder cooking sites are the best performing category to close out the year. For example, during the end of the year holidays* in 2018 we saw a 80.7% increase in video traffic and a 24.6% increase in video duration.

These changes on regular days may not raise scale so significantly. On an average day, advertisers may have a set maximum number of video ads they want and, even if they do surpass it, they will pay lower rates. However, with the strong advertising demand during the holidays and the end of Q4, ad impressions went up 233.5% and ad avails were up 251%. This resulted in a jump of ad spend by 238.8%!

Thanksgiving Day vs Christmas Eve

One important difference between Thanksgiving and Christmas is when the campaigns end. While on Thanksgiving Day the advertising spend is still high, on Christmas the drop starts, on the 24th of December. It lasts longer on Thanksgiving weekend probably due to the preparation for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

When planning for Thanksgiving, you will want to concentrate on the day itself, in addition to the days preceding. This will be when many of your target audience will be at home and looking to spend some quality “family” time on their phones looking for good deals. When planning for Christmas, if your campaigns aren’t holiday sensitive, you may want to allocate some budget to the days preceding New Year’s, as you can get great media for very reduced prices with low competition.

Get Ready to Deck the Halls

Wondering how this holiday season will affect ad spend? We’ll be releasing our results after the holidays, so be sure to sign up for our newsletter below. Also, feel free to ask us about what sites perform best and what works best for your specific campaigns. Check out all our advertising solutions and reach out to us for a consultancy.

*November 21-22 + December 23 – 24. US and Canada only

The Importance of Optimizing Your Website for Speed

By Jonathan Amit Kohn | November 25, 2019

There’s been a lot of talk about website speed over the last few years. In this article, we’re going to go over why it’s important to optimize your website for speed, common misconceptions, and how you can check your site today for potential website speed problems.

Why is Website Speed So Important?

With the proliferation of high bandwidth internet and the reduction in bandwidth cost, website speed has taken a backseat in terms of priority when designing new websites or applications. However, site speed is still a very important factor to include in your website strategy, and here are four reasons why.

User Experience

Users are demanding that their information and content be faster than ever, that coupled with shortening attention spans, page load times can be the difference between making or losing a potential follower. A recent study conducted by Google shows that any site that takes 3 seconds or more to load will lose over half (53%) of their visitors.

SEO

Google’s core update on March 12th, 2019 (dubbed, rather uncreatively, “Google’s March 2019 Update”), focused, among other things, on user signals. This includes factors like Time on Site, Page Views Per Visit, and Bounce Rate. Historically, user signals have been one of the most valuable ranking factors for SEO, and increasing website speed can dramatically improve the above three measurements. More importantly, Google has announced that page speed is going to factor directly into how they rank pages in their search algorithms, especially on mobile devices.

Monetization

In a world where most ads are programmatic and every user has multiple advertisers bidding for each impression, page speed can be the deciding factor in winning the programmatic game. The fact is, a few milliseconds can make a huge difference in a site’s RPM (Revenue Per Thousand). On a test we ran with a large site in the gaming industry, a few small changes we made to increase speed saw the site RPM increase 4.5 times!

Serving Costs

While not directly impacted by page speed, implementing best practices for page speed can have a drastic effect on your server loads. For example, lazy loading content, smart caching policies and using next-gen image formats can allow you to do a lot more with the resources you have and reduce your site’s serving fees.

Common Mistakes Publishers Make That Affect Website Speed

Using Too Many Ad Units

Too many ad units can counter-intuitively hurt revenue, due to the decrease in page speed that they cause. You need to find the magic number of ad units (and the right partners) that will maximize your ad revenue.

Not Lazy Loading Content

Having your site try and load the entire page all at once, especially if you have ad units and large image files, can really slow down a website. The practice of lazy loading content, which involves only loading content when the user demands it, greatly improves performance and page speed.

Incorrect Cache Policy

An accurate cache policy, which involves providing instructions to the browser on which content to keep, is one of the easiest ways to increase website speed. A major mistake many websites make, is not caching, or caching incorrectly. The good news is all you need to do is let the browser know what it can cache and let it do all the work for you.

Wrongly Scaling Images

Unoptimized images for the web increase the amount of resources needed to load your pages. We especially see this with icon files that are served in much larger sizes than needed.

See Where You Stand

The first and most important step is to know exactly what problems you have right now. Luckily, the Chrome browser comes natively equipped with an Audit Tool that can tell you a list of page speed problems you can work on.

While you’re on your website’s home page, press F12 to open the Chrome Developer Tool window. You’ll default to the “Console” window, and once you’re there click the “>>” then click the “Audits” tab. Choose either “Desktop” or “Mobile”, leave the rest of the settings as is, and scroll down to the bottom and click “Run Audits”. You’ll then have a baseline of how your site is currently performing with recommendations and opportunities on what to improve.

Plenty of publishers think that improving website speed is difficult, expensive, and (especially during Q4) not a priority. If you know what to look for and what exactly you need to improve, it’s actually quite easy to do it yourself, without having to hire outside help.

Video Advertising Glossary

By Simcha Weil | November 21, 2019

Like any industry, digital video advertising has plenty of jargon. It’s a great form of shorthand between experts but can be intimidating to those not in the know. In the interest of making video monetization terms more accessible, we present to you our video advertising glossary.

VAST (Video Ad Serving Template)

VAST is an XML script, A standard format for ad servers to send an ad to a video player. As well as delivering the ad, VAST sends associated metadata.

Learn more: https://www.iab.com/guidelines/digital-video-ad-serving-template-vast/

VPAID (Video Player Ad-Serving Interface Definition)

A similar concept to VAST, but specifically dealing with interactive video ads. These could let users click or hover over a button to choose one more extra clip to watch for more information. VPAID also collects a wider range of metrics such as how many people watch the ad in full.

Learn more: https://digiday.com/media/what-is-vpaid/

Impression

An impression is simply the ad appearing when a user visits a page. It is used for counting how many ads were displayed, and is the basis for deeper analysis into advertising results.

Learn more: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2375431?hl=en-GB

CPM (Cost per Mille)

Among the most common pricing set-ups for video ads, the ‘M’ comes from French word ‘mille’ meaning a thousand. Basing rates on a thousand events comes from early web advertising where a single page view would only command a payment of a fraction of a cent.

Learn more: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cpm.asp

RPM (Revenue per Mille)

A way of measuring ad revenues across one event that needs tracking – be it one page, or ad unit. It’s calculated by taking the total revenue received by publishers, divided by the number of impressions on a given placement or page, then multiplied by a thousand. This gives the actual monetary value of the asset being tracked; web page or ad placement.

Learn more: https://techterms.com/definition/rpm

DSP (Demand Side Platform)

A technology that lets an advertiser access multiple publishers – and multiple ad networks – in one place. Advertisers can set preferences such as user location or known interests and then set their budget. The DSP then bids on ad slots to try to get the most effective purchase for the advertiser’s needs.

Learn more: https://digiday.com/media/wtf-demand-side-platform/

SSP (Supply Side Platform)

A technology that lets a publisher access multiple advertisers – and multiple ad networks – in one place. Compared to relying solely on direct sales or using a single ad exchange, an SSP aims to maximize revenue while minimizing cases where an advertiser gets a slot for less than they’d have been willing to pay.

Learn more: https://clearcode.cc/blog/what-is-supply-side-platform/

PMP (Private Marketplace)

A set-up where specific advertisers get the first opportunity to bid on a specific slot before it goes on to the Open Market. Another variant has a small group of select advertisers taking part in a closed auction. A PMP can work well for publishers who want more control over what brands appear in ads on their site.

Learn more: https://video-guide.iab.com/video-automation-or-programmatic

Audience Segments

In advertising, the marketer is always looking to target the most relevant audience. In video advertising, this usually means going beyond simple demographic targeting such as “18-24 males”. Instead it can cover particular interests, buying habits or even attitudes and values.

Learn more: https://www.iab.it/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/iab_guide_to_digital_video_advertising.pdf

Viewability

This is one of today’s main KPIs for video campaigns. It is defined as an impression that is being watched by a user; while in display ads it is defined by being viewed for one second with 50% of pixels displayed. On video it is defined as 2 seconds displayed and 50% of pixels displayed. Understandably, advertisers are only interested in targeting ads that are actually being viewed by users.

Learn more: http://localhost/primis-temp/insights/increase-video-viewability-and-why-its-so-important/

ads.txt (Authorized Digital Sellers)

A method for publishers to confirm who (if anyone) is authorized to sell digital advertising slots on their behalf. It’s designed to counter scammers fraudulently selling slots they don’t really have access to. Not publishing an ads.txt file can cause problems in getting revenue through some major programmatic channels.

Learn more: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/7532444?hl=en-GB

sellers.json & SupplyChain object

Two initiatives introduced by the IAB, in an attempt to increase transparency in the industry. These enables buyers to verify the entities that are selling the inventory and their part in the supply chain; who are either direct sellers or intermediaries in the selected digital advertising opportunity for purchase. Advertisers can get a full transparent look on their campaign journey, where their money is being spent and make better decisions on how to spread the budgets.

Learn more: https://iabtechlab.com/sellers-json/

SPO (Supply Path Optimization)

As a concept, SPO is the idea of reducing the number of steps between publishers and advertisers, in order to reduce unnecessary fees from intermediaries. It can go both ways. Either it can start from the advertiser, who can decide on the best supply sources to bid on, or it can originate with the publisher deciding who will be the best demand partners that are most likely to bid.

Learn more: https://www.exchangewire.com/blog/2017/07/17/spo-everybody-talking/

3rd Party Cookie

A script that is dropped on a user’s browser by a 3rd party vendor rather than by the website that the user entered. For example, a cookie placed by an ad platform could use information about a viewer’s activity on one website to decide which video ad they see when visiting another website. Third party cookies can be very effective for delivering relevant ads but can raise privacy concerns, and are therefore being heavily restricted lately.

Learn more: http://www.audiencepartners.com/blog/2018/2/9/where-digital-targeting-goes-from-here

Revenue Stream Diversification for Digital Publishers

By Yoad Shloosh | November 13, 2019

Digital publishers who rely solely on advertising revenue have it rough; more and more of their revenue is being gobbled up by the tech giants. What’s worse, many of the users are spending more of their time on platforms associated with those same giants. The result is a daily war to capture users’ attention, and then when they are on site, there is a constant need to maximize yield from each user.

Moreover, many publishers’ business models are built around promoting themselves on big platforms, so they are even more reliant on any decision that the platforms make. Add to that the legal and technological aspects retaining to privacy, GDPR, CCPA or the removal of the 3rd party cookie- all cause instability and the need for extreme agility.

Naturally, publishers are frantically looking to diversify their revenue streams, in a quest to decrease their reliance on any one method. Here are three aspects that you need to learn very well in order to find the right revenue mix for you.

Understanding your Audience

First you must gain a really strong knowledge of your audience. What do they like and dislike; what are their demographics; are they likely to pay for the content they consume online; will they agree to a lot of advertisements; etc. Knowledge is power, but with your customers or audience, knowing them well is nothing short of necessary.

Understanding your Capabilities

Then you should take inventory of yourself, your strengths and weaknesses. Do you create unique quality original content; do you have strong technical skills; strong ad ops skills; good sales team etc. There is no one revenue balance that fits all, and if you choose an option without the skills to implement it well, it can cause a devastating blow to your digital business.

Understanding the Alternatives (and which ones are right for you)

This is the relatively easy part- after conducting some core research, it is pretty clear what the main options are out there. Focus on what is really driving revenue growth, and where consumer trends are headed.

Finally, If you’ve done the first two steps right, then deciding what revenue streams to add to your mix should be straightforward. Here is a short list of the main ones, and which fit what kind of publishers:

Subscription

If you have a loyal following with disposable income and you produce a lot of good and original content, then subscription may be the way to go.

Video advertising

Definitely one of the main revenue drivers online. Today, many publishers are going for video discovery solutions that give so much value in terms of revenue and engagement, and at little effort due to discovery automation.

Display advertising

If your audience is ls looking for free content, and are willing to accept advertising, this is the classic decision- and it is part of most publishers’ revenue mix.

Native advertising

From sponsored posts to banners that have the look of content, this is definitely a strong contender for almost any publisher with ok ad-ops (if going programmatic) skills, or a very good sales team.

Affiliate

Many publishers that specialize in a niche category or audience could capitalize on this opportunity. Simple links to products your audience would like, together with good reviews about them, and you can create a strong additional revenue stream.

The Key to Diversification

Publishers must learn how to find the right balance between the channels that they do choose. Constant learning of changes in the industry, together with the courage for intelligent trial and error practices will keep you one step ahead of the rest. And, with this daunting influx of ideas, don’t forget to do what is right for you, and most importantly, what is right for your users.

5 Tips on How to Maximize Your Video Distribution

By Omri Polak | November 11, 2019

It’s happened to all of us. You’ve crafted a great video, posted it online, and… nothing happens. It doesn’t go viral and it doesn’t make the splash you thought it would.

When you spend a lot of time and resources producing great video content, you can’t afford to let it go to waste!

Whether you’re looking to connect with people on a broad scale or targeting a niche audience, your goal is to get in front of the right people. Here are five tips to optimize the impact of your video and maximize your video distribution.

1. Have A Game Plan

Before you shoot the first piece of video, you need to have a game plan in mind for both content creation and distribution.

Start with the end goal in mind. Is it to drive viewers to your landing page or website? Is it to get them to pick up the phone and call? Is the goal to increase social sharing or engagement? Whatever your goal, tailor your placement and presentation to meet it.

If you are driving people from your video to your online resources, make sure you’ve set up the right landing spots. Also, make sure you’ve set up your analytics to measure performance.

Investigate distribution channels, line up your promotion and marketing approaches, and set your budget.

2. Know Your Audience

Effective content distribution is about getting your video content to the right audience. To do that, you’ve got to know who they are, what they want, and where they go online.

Gather as much data as possible and create target personas. These personas represent the target viewer that you’re trying to reach.

3. Be Original

The amount of video being produced is staggering:

YouTube has more than a billion users.
Nearly half the global population watch an hour or more of online videos every week.
More video content is uploaded in 30 days than the major TV networks created in the past 30 years.
87% of online marketers are creating video content.

With all of that content floating around online, it can be difficult to stand out. Originality is key.

Context plays a pivotal role as well. Videos that have better relevancy to the environment where they are displayed have higher engagement.

4. Diversify Your Distribution

Don’t limit your distribution channels. You want to include as many channels as possible in your distribution strategy.

Map your potential available assets: owned site(s), mailing lists, video discovery platforms, and relevant blogs. Social channels can be highly effective using a combination of free and paid placements. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube, and others are built around sharing engaging content. Social sites and users love video.

5. Be Agile

The better you can tailor your videos to your target audience and present them in the medium’s preferred format, the more successful you will be. Consider publishing different versions of the same video that fit the behavior and audience tendencies of each distribution channel.

Marketers call this segmenting. Using different versions of the same messaging targeted to different groups can more effectively maximize your ROI.

Maximize Your Distribution

When you’re producing your videos, it starts with crafting content that provides value for the viewer. Whether it’s informational, educational, or entertaining, you must deliver quality.

It’s just as important that you maximize your distribution. After all, it doesn’t matter how good it is if nobody sees it. Creation is just the first step. It’s the promotion, platform, and distribution that will make it effective.

Header Bidding Made Simple

By Dan Sharon | October 28, 2019

Digital advertising’s true potential has yet to be reached because the process of programmatic selling remains inefficient. Publishers face a trade-off between adding more advertising partners in the interest of raising fill rates, and assigning inventory quickly and efficiently. This is where Header Bidding comes in.

What is Header Bidding?

Header bidding is an automated way for publishers to offer ad inventory to multiple sources simultaneously. This allows publishers to pitch multiple buyers against one another without the delays and inefficiencies this would normally involve through VAST tags using a Waterfall approach.

To understand the benefits of header bidding, consider the most common approach to selling digital inventory. First, the site reaches out to its ad server. After the site connects to its ad server, it will usually try to assign the inventory through a waterfall approach, meaning it offers it to the (theoretically) most profitable source first, then the next most profitable source, and so on. The key is that it sells the inventory as soon as it finds a matching source. If there’s any inventory that wasn’t sold, the site can pass it on to another ad exchange, and the process begins again.

Header bidding adds a new step before this process. It’s triggered by a simple javascript code in the header section of the page, hence the name. When a page is loaded, it reaches out to multiple SSPs and ad exchanges and lets them compete against one another, creating a programmatic auction. Depending on the chosen set-up, the highest bid can be accepted or held back to compare with other sources such as direct sales by the site.

Why Publishers Should Use Header Bidding

The traditional Waterfall approach’s biggest flaw is that it’s very possible an ad will sell at one price to a “historically more profitable” source when it would actually have attained a higher price from a “historically less profitable” source further down the waterfall. That’s largely because different sources are ranked by past average performance, which can be crude and inaccurate for predicting a specific sale for any given impression.

Waterfall also has a big problem that’s particularly relevant to video publishers. Even if everything works smoothly, checking in with multiple exchanges and sources in sequence can take hundreds of extra milliseconds until an ad is finally delivered. In addition, if any one source glitches or times out, the entire process can slow down or even stall.

Both problems create delays that may seem minor for a web page as a whole, but are particularly noticeable when the code is embedded in a video player. This can cause an irritating delay in playback, a lag that is quite noticeable to the user waiting for the ad.

How is Video Header Bidding Implemented?

Most ways of using header bidding fall into two main categories: client-side and server-side.

Client-Side Video Header Bidding

As the name suggests, the client-side approach means the code in the page header does all the work. The main advantage is that the publisher can set the code up to contact a precise range of ad exchanges and other sources, with minimum technical barriers. It’s widely supported so an ad exchange or SSP that supports header bidding, also supports client-side header bidding.

The main disadvantage is that the precise control offered by client-side may require more complex coding and maintenance. Some ways around this are to use pre-made open source “wrappers” such as Prebid.js to handle the code, or to use video players which have built-in client-side header bidding functionality that can simplify the implementation. At Primis we have this capability implemented onto our proprietary video player.

Server-Side Video Header Bidding

Server-Side (also called S2S) means the header code for the bidding does nothing more than pass on the relevant details to an external server, which then does the heavy lifting of contacting all the SSPs\exchanges and finding the highest bid.

As soon as the header code sends the request, the page itself can begin loading without any noticeable lag for the user. That works particularly well for publishers who want to offer inventory to a wide range of sources and exchanges. Doing it this way avoids the situation with client-side bidding where publishers face a trade-off between waiting for more bid responses and imposing a time-out limit to avoid lag on page loading.

Important to mention, the S2S integration approach will have additional costs, since you will have to use an external provider for this solution. Although, with this approach you will be able to parallel call more partners compared to Client Side integration, but the additional costs may harm your overall profit.

Another possible approach for S2S video header bidding is Google’s Exchange Bidding (EBDA). In most cases, publishers are using Google Ad Manager as their ad server, which is already integrated into all of the major SSPs\exchanges in the industry. The advantage of this approach is that there is no need for additional on-page implementation since the site is already connected to the ad server, hence to Google’s demand partners.

The main differences between these two types of implementation is the way ad requests are being sent and handheld. Through a client-side header bidding, separate requests are sent to the SSPs/ad exchanges from the video player, while with server-side header bidding, a single request is sent to a single server ,which in turn sends requests to SSPs/ad exchanges.

What Our Numbers Say

After numerous case studies we’ve conducted at Primis, when pre bid integration is an option, we came to the conclusion that Client Side approach is preferred.

This whole process might seem overwhelming, but with the Primis video unit it’s all integrated and automated. Our product takes the benefits of header bidding that the industry has found valuable for other types of advertising for years and seamlessly integrates it into the video medium.

Contextual Targeting Is Not Only for Advertising

By Omri Polak | October 10, 2019

Following our recent insights into how contextual targeting is making a comeback, it became apparent that when ad tech professionals think about contextual, they think about advertising. While contextual advertising can be extremely effective, it’s time to realize that using a similar strategy on the content and editorial side can also pay huge dividends.

Growing Privacy Concerns

Contextual targeting owes it’s return to center stage to the growing privacy movement these days. The European Union’s General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR); California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CPPA); Pending legislation in states and countries worldwide; Google Chrome and Apple Safari browsers have instituted tighter control of third-party cookies and beefed up ad blocking options; Facebook has stopped third-party cookie ads.

This has put privacy at front and center, and opened the door to other solutions. Contextual advertising and in-context videos are GDPR compliant since they don’t rely on personally identifiable information from users but focus rather on semantic data. Content analysis and keyword matching are solutions that work and do not target individual users. They simply don’t violate privacy rules.

Ads that are relevant to the content being consumed are more likely to be of interest. If you’re reading a review of a particular software, you’ll probably be interested in an offer for that software. This contextual placement works regardless of your online profile used for tracking.

How Tech Enables Contextual Content

Good editors know a lot about their content, great editors also know a lot about their audience. They can match a few recommended videos to an article to increase relevance. This is a viable method for small sites with only a few articles and videos. Larger sites, ones with an abundance of content (text and video), should harness tech and automation tools available today. By scanning articles and leveraging layers of data metrics, automation can serve relevant videos to enhance and extend the user experience.

Sites can be analyzed for words and images, then cross-referenced against video content using algorithms to place relevant videos on the page. On top of that, machine learning understands users and content to serve up the most relevant (and engaging) videos. In the background, automatic optimization is constantly testing and monitoring the performance of the contextual placements, ensuring that the best performing videos are served against content for maximum value.

Breaking Through The Clutter

Today, with the vast amounts of content offered online, editorial content must strive to stand out and be highly relevant to each consumer. It makes sense. If you’re interested in a particular piece of content, you’re just more likely to engage with additional relevant content.

Contextual content breaks through this clutter, and video is even more successful – visitors pay more attention to video than any other form of content. 62% of users say they consume videos thoroughly and visitors spend 2.6 more time on websites with video. When videos are placed in context of the content on the page, engagement rises significantly. It becomes an extension of the content instead of an intrusion.

It’s All About Relevancy

We love the idea of contextual advertising, we invite advertisers to utilize contextual advertising on our platform. At the same time, we emphasize the importance of contextual content targeting and the value and impact of relevancy. It makes for a better user experience and can help shape editorial decisions.

Context is all about relevancy. It delivers the right content to the right person at the right time. This improves engagement and enhances the user experience.