Revver for video advertising
The other week Revver came into the offices and walked us through their services. After I’d checked they were Ok with me blogging it, here’s as summary of their offering to an advertiser.
User Generated Content is all over the place, it’s the new Grail, the favourite of software companies and the users, with new services opening every day, all after some of the revenue stream either from the users or from the advertisers, eMarketer expect a 600% increase in spending over the next 5 years, from $350MM in 06, $865MM in 07 up to $2.1B in ‘10. But many brands are scared at playing in this space, they control and moderate if doing it themselves, they worry about the type of commentary and content their brand messages sit next to if they are advertising in the space. In a previous talk I attended from MySpace, this was the biggest concern they were attempting to address with the advertiser audience. But Revver are working in a niche, they look to ‘provide a slice of sanity’ and work in an ‘ultra-brand centric environment’. They are not looking for the mass market of YouTube but rather the niches, the opportunities to support young film-makers and artists; to go out on influential sites and as a brand you can advertise on their network, either pre-or post-roll. Ads are dynamically served, so you are not restricted to current inventory but can apply it across historical content as well. Their click through rates run between 2-6%, driven by the contectual advertising, which is far higher than your average banner ads.
They look for original content and police heavily for copyrighted video or music and do not accept adult material or hate speech. They do this by checking everything, around 5k clips per week. Each video is reviewed and verified before being pushed out to their own site and into the syndication network where they run videos. They also add IAB tags to the video, to supplement the users own tags; this helps advertisers get their content onto appropriate videos.You can pair with content either by genre, through keywords, featured collections ot by picking particular creators. One further check is also done on sites where the content is syndicated – they check the page content and if it is deemed risky, they will not show the advertisement, if the brand wants to be protected. The content can be pushed out to more than just other websites, but can be used across multiple platforms, including mobile. At the moment they have over 40k syndicators, with over 80% of the distribution through offsite channels. The core site itself is growing well, with traffic more than doubling over the last 6 months of 2006, up to 1.8MM uniques in Dec 06 according to ComScore. Many of the top vlogs are hosted by Revver, including ZeFank, when his show was running, LonelyGirl15, Ask a Ninja and AcceptableTV. And if you as a brand don’t want to be on Revver’s site and want to do your own UGC offering, they also offer APIs to allow you to white-label their technology and get your own system up and running.
So should you as a brand take a look at advertising on such a network? Absolutely, but don;t expect mass. This is niche advertising, this is contextual. And this is a savvy audience; the last thing you want to do is offer up a cut down tv ad or a boring static. As with all good stuff, be relevant to the content and the site you are on, look for ways to entice them in with something fun or interesting. With flash technology available with the videos it should be possible to do something interactive with your available time. And Revver definitely offer you the tools and service to be safe if that is your concern. Use it as part of your marketing mix, a place to experiment and try new things.
