Offers Brand Marketers an End to Site List Parity by Indexing the Value of All Video Advertising Inventory Across All Metrics That Drive Brand Performance
REDWOOD CITY, CA – YuMe, a leading provider of digital video brand advertising solutions, today launched an improved Placement Quality Index (PQI) with integrated brand safety metrics. The enhanced PQI ensures that video ad placements that have a history of brand safety violations receive a lower score and consequently will not be valued as highly comparable brand safe video advertising inventory.
YuMe first announced availability of PQI in March 2012 to address not only the industry-wide problem of site list parity but also the problem that digital content and screen fragmentation makes it difficult to build a scalable multi-screen video advertising media plan to reach a brand’s target audience. PQI looks inside each digital publisher and application on the site list to grade the value of all available inventory. The algorithm factors brand lift, driving signals such as player size and location, content type, and past campaign performance metrics so that each campaign secures the best possible inventory based on its objectives across all publishers and applications. PQI drives better brand results for advertisers by reducing wasted or low value video ad placements and impressions.
A review of the experiences of YuMe clients PHD, Digitas and MEC shows that they all have benefited from PQI-optimized video advertising campaigns for the brands they represent, realizing an average 15 percent lift in video completion rates and an average 30 percent lift in interaction rates versus YuMe category benchmarks.
“When building a media plan for our clients we look to ensure the best possible brand performance even before the campaign launches,” said Wade Rifkin, VP, Media Director at Digitas. “Brand campaign KPIs are nuanced and the marketplace doesn’t offer many meaningful levers for optimization. With YuMe’s PQI algorithm we can use signals at the page level that indicate the quality and efficacy of placements.”
How has PQI improved?
YuMe already blocks ads that are in violation of privacy rules. In fact, in Q4 2012, YuMe blocked roughly one percent of ads, for violations such as syndication (blacklist and whitelist) and viewability concerns. With the PQI enhancement being announced today, inventory that has a history of such violations is devalued, making the PQI scores themselves more robust and relevant to brand advertisers.
“By integrating brand safety data into our PQI calculations, we provide advertisers with better brand results,” noted Ayyappan Sankaran, Co-Founder and CTO at YuMe. “Improved PQI quite simply provides a truer value of inventory and thereby helps advertisers find their increasingly fragmented audience in the best possible digital media.”
The importance of brand safety
YuMe’s brand safety standards around digital video advertising ensure that ad impressions do not go unseen — essentially guaranteeing that digital video ad impressions truly extend a brand’s reach and ultimately improve brand awareness. Furthermore, YuMe’s brand safety measures protect video ads from running on blacklisted or unapproved digital publications or applications via syndication. YuMe ensures that ads are associated with brand-safe content, protecting brand equity and preventing brand violations.
With this enhancement to PQI, YuMe’s inventory optimization processes now factor both positive and negative factors that impact brand performance. Media planners must look beyond the site list because of how fragmented media consumption has become. Brand performance is a function of far more than player size alone. For example, medium-sized players that are in prime placements on top tier content might perform better than a larger player that is partially visible on user-generated digital content or auto-play video advertising inventory. Predicting great performance requires processing large amounts of past campaign performance data in concert with environmental factors.
Placement quality is one of YuMe’s 8 Essential Elements of video advertising for brands; for more information, visit yume.com/PQI
About YuMe
YuMe is a leading independent provider of digital video brand advertising solutions. Its proprietary data-science driven technologies and large audience footprint drive inventory monetization and enable advertisers to reach targeted, brand receptive audiences across a wide range of Internet-connected devices. Designed to serve the specific needs of brand advertising, YuMe’s technology platform simplifies the complexities associated with delivering effective digital video advertising campaigns in today’s highly-fragmented market. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with European headquarters in London and eight additional offices worldwide. The company is backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Translink Capital and WestSummit Capital. For more information, visit www.YuMe.com/pr, follow @YuMeVideo and like YuMe on Facebook.
