By Sahil Patel
Digital publisher Evolve Media has launched INgage, a new solution designed to make video ads more viewable on a web page.
The product is pretty simple. It embeds a large video ad player as an expandable unit within an article. However, the video only expands and starts playing once the user scrolls over the section of the article where it’s embedded. If the user continues scrolling and goes “out of view,” the video will stop playing, ensuring that all viewable impressions delivered by the unit are actual views by actual humans. (For a visual example of how it works, click here and start scrolling.)
Developed out of Evolve’s SpringBoard Video platform, INgage provides reporting and analytics on metrics such as video starts, stops, mutes, and quartile viewership; is VAST and VPAID compliant; and is plugged into Nielsen’s OCR module.
The value of such a product is obvious. Instead of advertisers worrying about their ads being delivered on a small video player on the side or corner of a webpage, this unit puts an ad front-and-center while a site visitor is already engaged.
That said, the nature of INgage also begs the question, what’s to stop a visitor from continuing to scroll past the ad Nothing, admits Evolve’s co-founder and president Brian Fitzgerald. And yet, the unit is already delivering an average completion rate of 35-40%, he says.
Where INgage is likely to be more valuable is in the field of branded entertainment, or native video advertising — anytime a piece of branded content isn’t just a commercial. “This way, we are serving up relevant video to users on a site and they are far more likely to view to completion,” says Fitzgerald.
“Imagine a gaming news show created in partnership with Alienware as its sponsor,” he continues. “Now imagine we used INgage to distribute that to only gaming sites or we cookie all visitors to our gaming properties, that is our first party data, and then we retarget them through INgage across our portfolio of sites, across sites in categories beyond gaming.”
INgage is the first in a “long line” of both display and video solutions that will employ Evolve’s viewability technology, according to Fitzgerald. It was developed as a solution for Evolve’s own publishing units, CraveOnline and TotallyHer, to deliver branded and social video programs, in addition to standard pre-rolls.
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