Independent ad tech company AppNexus has announced the launch of its open marketplace for video inventory and introduced its extensive supply of outstream inventory, both proprietary and third-party.
With supply from multiple outstream and native video providers, including AppNexus, Teads, and StickyADS.tv, the marketplace will provide one of the industry’s largest pools of programmatic outstream units. Through its outstream supply, AppNexus’ marketplace empowers all publishers — not just video publishers — to auction video inventory with customization and control across desktop, mobile, and native.
“Programmatic video is a growing and critical component of digital advertising,” said Eric Hoffert, senior vice president video technology, AppNexus. “With in-stream supply under compression, outstream offers all publishers the ability to monetize through video across multiple screens. While other platforms have erected walled gardens around their video supply, we’ve created an open market driven by choice, competition, and innovation. Just as AppNexus emerged as the independent alternative to Google and Facebook in the display market, we intend to make AppNexus the independent leader in programmatic video.”
Google’s recent decision to limit open access to YouTube inventory and the wind-down of LiveRail’s ad serving business have compressed the supply of programmatic pre-roll inventory. At the same time, Twitter’s launch of First View — a mobile video unit similar to mobile outstream — presents an opportunity to non-video publishers, as campaign dollars are apt to follow quality video supply.
The AppNexus outstream marketplace offers publishers a monetization alternative across multiple screens and marketers a new and abundant supply of video inventory. Whether through AppNexus’ proprietary outstream unit or inventory from Teads and StickyADS.tv, advertisers can use the AppNexus outstream marketplace to access a highly viewable and engaging video advertising format.
AppNexus’ outstream video technology for publishers runs on both desktop and mobile web, supporting VAST, VPAID JavaScript, and VPAID Flash, and is available using RTB, mediation, deals, and direct video ad serving. It comes with three video players: HTML5, Flash, and a specialized inline mobile player supporting autoplay video, providing a Facebook-like in-feed experience for users on iOS and Android. Publishers can activate outstream selling through the unique AppNexus Seller Tag, which allows publishers to comprehensively monetize across display, outstream video, native, and mobile via a single streamlined tag while customizing outstream settings to accommodate business and editorial preferences. For advertisers and agencies, AppNexus added a new user interface for targeting Outstream video along with pre-, mid-, and post-roll inventory.
“AppNexus brings critical scale and flexibility to the growing outstream video market,” Hoffert continued. “We are taking an approach to promote innovation and creativity and fuel a choice-driven marketplace. We encourage sellers to bring their outstream inventory to our platform to build a diverse and vibrant pool of outstream supply. Unlike the walled gardens, our platform is built to foster choice, competition, and flexibility. AppNexus outstream platform allows publishers on the open Internet to monetize their own brands and sites directly, putting them in full control of their video strategies.”
“We are thrilled to partner with AppNexus, in order to provide a robust pool of inventory to meet buyers’ growing demand for video inventory. Our client list includes many of the leading premium publishers in the world, numbering more than 500 clients and growing,” said Todd Tran, Teads Global Managing Director, Mobile and Programmatic at Teads.
“Using AppNexus’ unique solution combining outstream video, creative video hosting, viewability metrics and ad serving, we were able to exceed our partners’ business needs,” said Michel Vrancken from Bannerconnect, Europe’s leading data and advertising technology company delivering optimal digital experiences. “The outstream video technology is easily customizable and prevents disrupting the users’ website experience while still achieving video monetization via direct or programmatic campaigns.”
AppNexus’ outstream offering is in general availability for buyers and closed testing for publisher clients in the U.S. and Europe with general availability targeted for Q2.
