Leading Digital Video Companies Partner to Solve Video Viewability

EMERYVILLE, Calif., May 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- A consortium of digital video companies today announced a viewability solution for in-stream video ads called OpenVV, or Open VideoView.  OpenVV is open source and will be freely available to the entire industry. The goal of this approach is to encourage open usage, conversation and contribution by the industry to create a single standard around the measurement of online video viewability. The code was developed with the ANA-4A's-IAB Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) principles in mind and is being submitted to the 3MS leadership and the Media Rating Council (MRC) as an open reference template for the viewability standard for digital video. 

OpenVV is a simple solution for video viewability that can be easily adopted across the digital video ecosystem. It measures the portion of a video ad that is in view and the amount of time the ad is in view.  The system has been successfully tested across hundreds of millions of video ad impressions and thousands of publisher sites.  The OpenVV partner companies have agreed to share data and support the 3MS and the IAB/MRC Emerging Innovations Task Force in defining and supporting an industry-wide viewability standard.  While the current code base supports the display advertising viewability guidelines proposed by 3MS – 50 percent of the video player in view on the user's screen for the first second of the video – it can be updated to support the industry standard once it is fully defined.

The OpenVV code base was developed by TubeMogul and will be released with the most relaxed open source license available allowing anyone to copy, edit or use the code. The Flash and JavaScript open source code is available on GitHub for industry review. A demo of how OpenVV works can be viewed here: http://playtime.tubemogul.com/demo/viewability/index.html

OpenVV solves several challenges unique to digital video, including:

• It requires no changes to a publisher's site
• It works in any VPAID unit and is not specific to a certain exchange, network or marketplace
• It is tested across all major browsers and thousands of sites
• It detects whether the browser containing the video ad is the active window on a user's screen
• It detects and accounts for the browser's scroll bars
• It can be used in the publisher's ad server Flash code to provide viewability for non-VPAID units
• It can fire other third-party measurement services that measure viewability at the same time

The contributors to OpenVV strongly believe that the industry needs to collaborate on an open standard and reach an agreement on the technical specifications in a timely manner. In the next several weeks, they will be soliciting feedback on OpenVV from industry partners performing additional tests in support of the MRC and IAB EITF efforts.  Companies interested in joining the OpenVV community should contact Jason Lopatecki, Chief Strategy Officer, TubeMogul.

Media Rating Council
"We appreciate the insights and cooperation this group has committed to bring to the Viewable Impression dialogue," said George Ivie, CEO and Executive Director of the Media Rating Council. "We hope others will follow the consortium's lead and add to the data we can assess."

Interactive Advertising Bureau
"The leadership of 3MS appreciates the collaboration with the industry, particularly, the MRC and the knowledge sharing that the companies involved in open VV have displayed," said Sherrill Mane, Senior Vice President, Research, Analytics and Measurement of the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

TubeMogul
"Our industry cannot adopt a viewability solution that is not viewable by everyone. Our hope is that with an open approach the industry can move toward a standard," said Brett Wilson, CEO of TubeMogul.

BrightRoll
"BrightRoll supports OpenVV and the industry-wide effort to develop common measurement standards for video advertising viewability. We believe an open and transparent approach to viewability provides advertisers confidence to continue expanding their investment in online video," said Tim Avila, vice president of product marketing at BrightRoll.

Innovid
"As digital video is increasingly used to deliver compelling campaigns, the need for viewability measurement standards has reached a tipping point," said Tal Chalozin, CTO and co-founder of Innovid."Advertisers and agencies using our platform are constantly looking for better ways to ensure higher brand awareness, recall, and effectiveness, beyond a served impression. This joint initiative is a first step to deliver a great proxy for that, leveraging the expertise of the consortium to advance the industry as a whole."

LiveRail
"As more premium publishers make their video inventory available programmatically, it's important that buyers recognize premium viewer experiences and pay appropriate rates," said Mark Trefgarne, CEO of LiveRail. "The OpenVV standard will ensure that publishers with the most valuable, most engaged audiences get the recognition, and pricing, they deserve. We believe this standard will help drive the next phase of growth for programmatic video advertising; enabling brands to reach engaged audiences efficiently and measurably, and allowing publishers to generate maximum revenue from their premium viewer experiences."

SpotXchange
"We fully support an industry-wide measurement technology and metric that is understood by both buyers and sellers. SpotXchange publishers recognize buyers' need for greater transparency, and that increased transparency leads to increased buyer confidence, demand and spend," said SpotXchange CEO Mike Shehan.

About TubeMogul

TubeMogul is the leader in programmatic brand marketing. The world's largest brands and agencies centralize their video advertising on TubeMogul's enterprise platform. Created specifically for brand marketers, TubeMogul's platform enables the execution of scalable digital video campaigns, while providing the measurability and accountability marketers demand. Founded in 2006, TubeMogul is based in Emeryville, CA with offices in New York, London, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney, Toronto, Chicago, Detroit, Austin and Los Angeles.

About Brightroll

BrightRoll is the largest independent video advertising platform for reaching audiences across web, mobile and connected TV. The company powers digital video advertising for the world's largest brands including 90 percent of the top 50 US advertisers and 17 of the top 20 advertising technology companies. The platform enables advertisers to reach 4 in 5 video viewers online and consistently ranks among the top two video ad platforms in ads served. As a result, BrightRoll technology collects and analyzes hundreds of billions of data points monthly enabling real-time decisions that drive ROI for advertisers. To learn more, visit www.brightroll.com.

About Innovid

Innovid delivers immersive advertising anywhere. Founded in 2007, Innovid provides visionary marketers with the tools to create, deliver and measure video campaigns, in any format, on any screen, publisher or ad network. Innovid's Ad Server was developed to address the issues specific to video ad serving and simplify the process for agencies and marketers.  Bringing a new dimension to online video, Innovid's iRoll reimagines the possibilities for interactive engagement across multiple screens.  For more information, visit http://www.Innovid.com.

About LiveRail

LiveRail is the leading publisher monetization platform for video. With over 3bn impressions (25% of all online video ads) delivered via our platform each month, LiveRail sets the standard for innovative video advertising technology solutions. Our mission is to provide premium publishers with the technology to sell their video inventory smarter and safer, across all devices. Our technology is used by hundreds of major publishers who benefit from sophisticated analytics, advanced controls and unparalleled transparency ultimately generating maximum yield for every ad impression.

About SpotXchange

With more than 400 million auctions per day, SpotXchange is the largest global marketplace of video ad inventory reaching 110 million unique visitors in more than 50 countries each month. The leader in video real-time bidding, SpotXchange connects thousands of online publishers with advertisers, agencies, trading desks and ad networks running top brand campaigns through its IAB-certified marketplace. SpotXchange shows premium publishers and more than 500 world class advertisers that there is a better way to buy and sell digital video -- with solutions that guarantee total transparency, control, and the best targeting and real-time optimization tools available in a premium video exchange environment.

SOURCE TubeMogul