ScanScout says it can offer much more
By Vivek | August 22nd, 2007 at 03:00 pm ET
The Youtube advertising announcement from yesterday doesn’t sounds right, right? In case you haven’t gone through it, Youtube will be adding CPM based adds to videos of it’s top content partners. Criteria for delivering the ads is location, demographics, time of day, and genre of video, and Youtube is working with six advertisers as of now. Rates are $20 on CPM basis. I would say that is pretty steep given the limited analytics done behind targeting the ads.
Since the news is out, competitors are bound to speak up. Earlier today I heard from ScanScount as to what they think about the new deal. According to them, ScanScout technology supports CPM, CPA, and CPC models. Since ScanScout can analyze audio, video, and meta-data, it can target ads to an infinite number of criteria based entirely on what marketers choose and stream them in any kind of player available on the web. As I have talked about before, both these points provide a big lead Youtube/Google’s offering. Additionally, ScanScout offers something called Brand Protector? technology. While I am not sure how exactly that part works, it would still be an advantage of Youtube’s plain technology.
ScanScout is claiming that dozens of agencies and publishers are already working with their advertising solution, all within four months after its launch. And for almost all these advertisers, attraction seems to be more on the side of CPC based ads, which are clearly performance oriented as compared to CPM ads.
While all the tech talk sounds great, reality of the day is that Youtube is Google’s shop. Even if the content partners or advertisers want, it is going to be next to impossible to cut a deal and bring ScanScount tech onboard. Still, this can be big opportunity for Youtube competitors who can partner with ScanScout to deliver highly targeted ads, more ad-bucks, and in lure away top content makers from Youtube.
