PointRoll Delivers Video

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PointRoll has formalized a video offering that lets advertisers easily incorporate their TV assets into the rich media provider's formats, and said a bevy of entertainment industry clients are on board with the new product.

The company has offered video capabilities for approximately a year, but they haven't been as easy to use as the video component released today. The new offering comes with extensive reporting and incorporates interactivity through the use of floating layers that let the user engage with the video or with the ad. But its main selling point is that it's technology and format agnostic.

"We don't require that clients use any particular design tools," said chief operating officer Chris Saridakis. "They can design in any format and upload into our system, which will serve into different formats. The ad doesn't have to be designed for a QT [QuickTime], Windows or Flash format. It takes out the complexity around video [that designers] still complain about."

The company's early discussion of its new video capabilities was geared mainly toward the motion picture industry -- a vertical in which PointRoll said it's finding considerable traction. Entertainment industry heavies New Line Cinema, Warner Brothers and Disney are among the early clients to use video in their PointRoll ads. Saridakis promised the company will continue to push its products to Hollywood studios. These clients, he notes, are particularly obsessed with online video because of the critical importance of trailers in promoting new films.

To that end, the company has hired Chip Russo away from competitor Eyeblaster to lead Western region sales. "The poaching of Chip Russo from Eyeblaster was a critical move," said Saridakis. "We have enough business, enough clientele that it warrants building up the team in that region."

The video offering comes on the heels of other new video products from the likes of Unicast, Eyeblaster, EyeWonder and Klipmart. Unlike a number of the other rich media firms to launch new online video capabilities this year, PointRoll's video product is not being marketed as a new ad unit, but rather as an add-on that works with its Fat Boy, Tom Boy and other units.