Blog

 
21
May
2013

Auto-play and Viewability

Although the idea of viewability is fairly new to the digital advertising industry, the issue is a standard concern for advertisers, networks, and publishers.  According to comScore, 31% of digital ads are being reported as non-viewable.  This means that roughly 31% of any marketer’s digital advertising budget is potentially wasted on fraudulent impressions. With such [...]

 
22
Apr
2013

Fixing the Decline in RTB CPMs

Media Post recently outlined the findings of Accordant Media’s ‘Q1 Market Pulse.’ RTB trading increased 98% since the fourth quarter and 184% over the past year.  Good news for digital ad tech, right?  Well not necessarily.  This expansion, in effect, is pushing the average costs of inventory down.  According to Accordant, the average CPMs (cost-per-thousand) paid [...]

 
15
Mar
2013

Introducing Veenome Viewability

Usually, this blog focuses on ad targeting techniques, specifically the difference in the strategy and success of user-targeting vs content-targeting.  Yet, there is one feature that affects the success of an impression even more than proper targeting: viewability. The reality is simply that there are many ad impressions which run and get paid for that [...]

 
20
Feb
2013

Social Media Week and DC

Chances are if you’re reading this, you are already aware that  Social Media Week #SMW2013 is already in full swing. In case you are hearing about this for the first time, SMW is exactly what it sounds like, a full week dedicated to the newest trends and uses of social media for consumers and business, both [...]

 
14
Feb
2013

Veenome Behind the Scenes: XXXL Instance Up

A little behind the scenes action from the Veenome dev tunnel.

 
08
Feb
2013

Data Plays Cupid: Video and RTB ARE Ready For Each Other.

Two weeks ago MediaPost published “Are Video And RTB Ready For Each Other? Well, Sort Of” by Tyler Loechner.  The piece was a response to the final panel at January’s OMMA RTB looking at the relationship between video and RTB. According to Loechner, “The panelists all believe that video and RTB are ready for each [...]

 
28
Jan
2013

The Real Reason Behind Social Media’s Porn Problem: Data

As anyone who reads the news or has a twitter can tell you, Twitter’s new video sharing app Vine has a pornography problem which, as CNN so casually pointed out, is not actually surprising.  The reality of 2013 is that where there is video, there will be porn. So if the mere existence of porn [...]

 
24
Jan
2013

Super Bowl XLVII: CBS and Advertisers Pull Out All the Digital Stops

Well football fans, Super Bowl XLVII is just 10 days away.  While the Ravens and the 49ers are finishing up last minute preparations for the biggest US sporting event, CBS and advertisers have already called their plays for the biggest US advertising event.  Not surprisingly, everyone has pulled out all the stops. According to Aaron [...]

 
09
Jan
2013

CES Reactions: 2013 Is the Year of T-Commerce

This time last year, Scott Dunlap, then VP of Emerging Opportunities at PayPal, stated that 2012 would be the year of T-Commerce, that is television commerce.  Well, 2012 has come and gone and the truth is T-Commerce is still just an idea that we’re excited about.  While it does exist, I wouldn’t call it very [...]

 
21
Dec
2012

2013 International CES: The Future of Enhanced Advertising

With the holidays just around the corner, we here at Veenome would like to give you all a few last minute gifts.  First, for all of you who wish there was a GoToMeeting integration for Gmail, here it is. Our second gift is the fourth preview of the 2013 International Consumer Electronic Show (CES). Today, [...]

 
12
Dec
2012

2013 International CES: Facing the Policy Issues of Facial Recognition

Four weeks and counting until the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES).  That said, it is time to cover another session.  Unlike my other CES blogs, this session has implications that are far wider reaching than just the advertising industry.  The session this week is Facing the Policy Issues of Facial Recognition Technology (Jan 9th, 930-1030am, N254). This [...]

 
04
Dec
2012

2013 International CES: Video Anytime Anywhere

The countdown to the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is at 5 weeks and counting.  As such, it is time to report on yet another advertising-specific session that I am looking forward to with much anticipation.  This week I will be looking at Video Anytime Anywhere: Video Across Platforms – Television, Internet and Mobile- Understanding the Value [...]

27
Nov
2012

2013 International CES: Contextual Media and Advertising

With six weeks until the 2013 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the schedule is finalized and the hype is growing. This is the event that first showcased the VCR in 1970, the CD in 1981, and the HDTV in 1998.  Obviously, the major appeal for most techies is the introduction of new consumer electronics.  However, [...]

14
Nov
2012

Digital Advertising: An Industry Built Upon Partnerships, Part 3 of 3

In Part 2 of this series, I described various companies in the industry, what their original offering was, and how they supplemented their technologies through partnerships.  Now I will explain why the prevalence of partnerships has increased the overall innovation and success of the digital advertising company. Let us return to DataXu.  As I said [...]

12
Nov
2012

Digital Advertising: An Industry Built Upon Partnerships, Part 2 of 3

In Part 1 of this series, I described the overall process of developing a digital ad campaign, with a focus on the utilization of partnerships.  In this section, I will describe specific companies in the industry, each of which has very successfully developed partnerships. Adconion Media Group(AMG) is a Digital Distribution Platform (DDP) powered by [...]

09
Nov
2012

Digital Advertising: An Industry Built Upon Partnerships, Part 1 of 3

The digital advertising world we see today is made up of many moving pieces. Compounding this reality is the speed at which innovations are being invented, commercialized, and capitalized. The overall effect is an ever-growing network of relationships between organizations providing distinct functions. Traditionally when a company needs to fill a gap in the services [...]

05
Nov
2012

Ad:Tech New York City, What I’m Looking Forward To

This Wednesday and Thursday is Ad:Tech NYC, the #1 event for interactive marketing.  Some in the tech community see the timing as a counter to the much-hyped DC Week, as both cities vie to become the “Silicon Valley of the East”.  However, the truth is that Ad:Tech is the place to be for those in [...]

25
Oct
2012

The Future of the Mobile Advertising Space: Real Time Bidding

Over the past four years, online advertising has seen a rise in Real-Time Bidding (RTB).  In fact, Forrester Research predicts US online video RTB spending will be $387 million in 2012 and $665 million in 2013, an increase of 72%.  Yet, the mobile ad sector, which eMarketer estimates will reach a total US spending of [...]

24
Oct
2012

In Digital Media, Changing Metrics Is Only the Beginning…

In a recent interview Brett Wilson, CEO of TubeMogul, sat down with Beet.tv to discuss how online GRPs could change the digital ad business. For those of you not in the know, GRPs stands for Gross Rating Points i.e. Reach times Frequency.  According to Brett, “Right now there’s a lot of selection criteria when you [...]

22
Oct
2012

Do Not Track (DNT) Calls for Content Based Video Targeting

In two weeks, Microsoft will be rolling out Internet Explorer 10.  While there are many reasons to be excited about the new and improved browser, the online advertising industry is up-in-arms.  Why is that, you say?  I am so glad you asked. The reason for the malcontent is IE 10 will include a default “Do [...]

28
Sep
2012

Veenome Live at Advertising Week Streaming Monday @4:00pm ET

Watch  Veenome talk about the importance of metadata live on the Advertising Week Experience Stage on Huffington Post and DailyMotion on Monday, October 1st at 4pm: Advertising Week – AWE by advertisingweek

17
Aug
2012

VIDEO: Beet.tv on Video Metadata and Veenome

Great video on Beet.tv/Blip.tv about the massive lack of video meta-data and the importance of Veenome (we’re at 5:24) From: Commentary: Video Metadata Critical for Online Video Advertising, Analyst Swartz

10
Jul
2012

Netflix Keeps the Herd Moving

It was recently announced that over 1 billion hours of video were streamed on Netflix in the month of June. Is that good? Bad? 1 billion is a difficult number to grasp. 1,000,000,000. That’s a lot of zeros. Let’s break it down. 1 billion hours of streaming on Netflix equates to roughly 2,388 minutes per [...]

06
Jul
2012

Meditations on Metadata

What’s in a video? There are a lot of ways to answer this, but I’ll take a novel approach. To be painfully basic, let’s think of videos as moving images (hence the term “motion pictures”). They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If so, that would make a relatively short 2 minute video [...]

27
Jun
2012

Advertisers Pay the Price for Unmoderated Content

Gut check. Scene: An advertiser pays a major online video platform for an ad spot, hoping to get some good exposure. All is going well, the ads are being viewed, but then some strange information is revealed. The company’s ads were placed next to neo-nazi propaganda videos. The uploader of the content is a neo-nazi [...]

20
Jun
2012

Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks?

Although much brouhaha has been made about the decline of traditional print publishers and their slowness to innovate and adopt new models, relatively small news houses are now embracing the cutting edge of digital advertising: behavioral targeting. To begin with, the newspaper industry has the highest average ad CPM of all online publishers – nearly [...]

14
Jun
2012

Online Video Advertising on the Rise? Survey Says…..

Yes! BrightRoll’s Digital Video 2012 Report is out, and it revealed several apparent trends. The survey pointed to the increasing prevalence of digital video as well as its growing utility as an advertising medium. The targeting and reach capabilities of digital video are exciting to advertisers, with over 70% of them citing these two factors [...]

08
Jun
2012

WSJ: TV Needs to Change

People don’t like paying for things if they don’t have to. This is a basic law of economics; one that TV companies like to ignore. But video sources on the internet are creeping into the spotlight, making people question that $50/month they’re paying for TV. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran an article on Dish [...]

05
Jun
2012

Feeling Targeted? Staying Out of Your Brain

To effectively sell your product or service, you might want to take a closer look at who you’re selling to. A salesman might have some top notch ice, but he would have a heck of a time selling it to a polar bear. Targeted advertising is the solution. By narrowing the audience of advertisements to [...]

08
May
2012

Now Serving: 1000s of Videos a Day

We are thrilled to announce Videofy.me as an enterprise customer. We’re indexing thousands of videos a day for them.  More specifically, we are automatically flagging the pesky video spammers and also removing copyrighted and objectionable content. In addition to that we are also adding categorical taxonomy to each video. This additional data helps create a safe and [...]

27
Apr
2012

More Suggestive Video Spam: Youtube “Reply Girls” via NPR

Some great video analyics info from NPR via Jamey Jeff (Founder of Remarkable Hire) today.  NPR highlights the huge problem with a story and then a response directly from YouTube   AUDIO: NPR: Attack of the Reply Girls AUDIO:  YouTube’s Response to NPR’s Story on ”Attach of the Reply Girls”   Just more qualitative data on the [...]

26
Apr
2012

Digital Hollywood and “Suggestive” Video Spam

I’m heading out to Digital Hollywood in Los Angeles on Monday to drop in on a few budding customers and take in southern California heat.  While I’m out there, I’m meeting with a few folks about automated video content moderation and categorization.  There is a ton of need in this area as mobile video becomes [...]

20
Apr
2012

Veenome Wins BB&T Entrepreneurship Invitational

A couple of weeks ago Veenome took part in the BB&T Entrepreneurship Invitational at UMD in College Park.  As usual we smoked the regional competition like 2k worth of fresh lox. In all seriousness we love UMD and The Dingman Center Angels folks. This one was for our Dingman supporters: Elana Fine, Jason Shrensky, Cal [...]

06
Apr
2012

Google Project Glass, The Data Abides

Reference: Google Project Glass Video

11
Feb
2012

Veenome Wins “Next Big Thing” at the Paley Center

The Paley Center for Media hosted a panel presentation last evening as a part of their ‘Next Big Thing’ series. During this event (held once per quarter) companies get to pitch, field questions, debate, and wrap with prominent members of the media who ask questions and learn about…well, the next big things. As luck would have it, Kevin [...]

19
Dec
2011

Context and Discovery

One of the things I love the most about Veenome is how we take advantage of context and relationship amongst objects in video. We like to think of all objects as related to one another and the idea is to use the objects and things that we know the most about, and have the most [...]

06
Dec
2011

Raising Money (in D.C.)

This is my first real blog post as CEO of Veenome, which is obviously exciting. We just closed our 500k seed round and are really hitting the pavement hard now building out the product and working with some very early (and awesome) customers. Now that I’ve finished fundraising, and while it’s still fresh in my [...]

Copyright: Veenome 2012