Kiptronic Expands to Offer Downloadable Video Ad Insertion
Now offering audio and video ad placement, the company lands Condé Nast as its first customer.
Citing the explosion in portable media players capable of downloading video and the difficulties in putting advertisements on them, ad insertion firm Kiptronic is branching out from its audio roots to include video advertising.
The company, which launched last year to provide audio ads for downloadable podcasts, is now offering dynamic ad insertion and campaign management for video content. The company has also signed on with CondéNet, the Internet unit of Condé Nast Publications, to provide ad insertion and campaign management services for its video podcasts for sites including Style.com, Men.style.com, Epicurious.com, Concierge.com, and Wired.com.
With the impending release of Apple’s iPhone, along with numerous other downloadable video devices, Kiptronics move to support video was a natural one, according to Jonathan Cobb, CEO of Kiptronic.
“There is a lot of activity going on in the iPod space, but increasingly as well you’ve got Apple TVs, Sony Playstations… People are saying I love your content, let me put it on whatever I want to put it on,” said Cobb. “In many cases we will have publishers who have content they are making available through iTunes, for example, and they want to start carrying advertising across it. The problem in advertising with downloadable content is it’s traditionally labor intensive.”
The Kiptronic ad insertion acts as a layer between a publisher’s content and Web serving platforms, including Akamai, as well as mobile video players, Cobb said. Its content management system will also allow publishers to update ads based on marketing criteria.
“Typically the way they add ads to the content is going back and manually modifying the file. When they want to run a new campaigns they have to go and crack that file and put another one in and it’s very labor intensive,” said Cobb. “Now when people go and download the static files they will get a dynamic file served to them based on the criteria of whatever you want for a campaign.”
The podcasting public is a small but enthusiastic community, according to a recent study by Edison Media Research entitled “The Infinite Dial: The Podcast Audience Revealed.” The survey, which was conducted via nearly 2,000 phone interviews, found that 11 percent of those surveyed had ever listened to a podcast, and 21 percent of 12- to 17-year olds have done so.
