Online video advertising startup Jivox is upgrading its technology to become more interactive and social. Jivox’s online self-serve platform provides video advertising opportunities to clients that allow them create and embed advertisements within their videos.
Advertisers can now add custom interactions to their in-stream and in-banner video ads to try to boost user engagement and response rates. Using Jivox, creative agencies and advertisers can now add their own custom Flash or HTML applets to video ads so that users can interact with the ad without ever leaving the player. Users will now be able to embed Jivox’s “in-stream ad plug-in” into a content player to serve a video ad in-stream, with full interactive and analytic capabilities. Jivox is also making it easier to embed interactive video ads on social networks.
Currently more than thirty media groups, including Gannett, Media News Group, McClatchy and E.W. Scripps are using the Jivox’s online video ad platform. Jivox’s ads get average click through rates that range from .2 percent to .8 percent. This seems low, but we know from Brightroll that click through rates for video ads have decreased. The upside is that total advertising spend is up and Jivox is seeing the results, with the startup’s revenue growing by 600 percent in 2009 and added 3000 more advertisers as well. The startup delivers ad campaigns for a host of big-name companies including General Motors, Nokia, Microsoft, HP, Sony and Samsung. Jivox, which launched in 2007, faces competition from Mixpo and Spotmixer.