NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AOL today announced the global expansion of the company’s suite of award-winning premium ad solutions into video with the introduction of five new linear premium video ad formats.
The new video ad formats are available to run across AOL On, a leading premium online video content platform that houses more than one million videos from AOL’s owned and operated properties such as The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and AOL.com and partner publishers. Advertisers can also programmatically access the new video ad formats through the ONE by AOL platform.
“As digital continues to evolve and grow, advertisers are demanding new ways to naturally engage with audiences,” said David Miller, Vice President, Advertising Product Management, AOL. “AOL has been leading the charge to bring premium ad solutions to market, and with the expansion into video, advertisers can combine the power of traditional pre-roll with new interactive experiences that enables consumers to engage directly with a brand’s content and information. This allows for more creative branding and unlocks new audience targeting opportunities through data and automation.”
Havas will be among the first to leverage AOL’s new premium video formats on behalf of their advertising clients.
"We're excited to test these new ad formats. With digital video playing a larger role in reaching our consumers, these new ad formats will allow us to creatively enhance their experience, engage with brands in a disruptive yet non-intrusive way to break through, and ultimately enhance the consumer journey," said Samantha Jahnke, Vice President, Performance Account Director at Havas Media.
These new linear video formats deliver a number of key benefits, including:
- Simplicity: the new video formats are responsive to all video player sizes;
- Intelligence: advertisers are able to gain extensive actionable insights, beyond just clicks and completion rates;
- Open: premium video campaigns can scale across both O&O and programmatic buys.
Further, advertisers can enhance their brand messaging with a wide array of interactive features, including media galleries, a store locator, polls and quizzes, coupons, movie showtimes and more.
The five new interactive linear video formats are:
- Linear Expandable: Delivers an immersive and interactive microsite experience for any linear video placement. By interacting with the banner within the video, an overlay is displayed offering viewers the ability to explore a content-rich, microsite experience containing a wide array of interactive features.
- Linear Modules: Quickly and easily turn any pre-roll video campaign into an interactive and engaging brand experience. While the advertiser's video is playing, a set of interactive icons is presented to the viewer that supports a wide array of modular based features.
- Linear Sequence: Delivers a lean-forward engaging ad experience by displaying an interactive end-frame after the advertiser's video has completed.
- Branded Slate: Offers advertisers an animated 7-second branding opportunity before transitioning to the video content.
- Branded Skip: Offers a unique and well-balanced ad experience for both users and advertisers. Users are presented with the option to continue watching or skipping the advertisers' video. Advertisers are provided a branded opportunity to effectively deliver their message while soliciting feedback from consumers.
The announcement underscores a multi-year commitment by AOL to deliver cross-screen, cross-format premium ad solutions that offer unprecedented reach and scale and are powered by deep audience data and analytics:
- In 2010, the company introduced its first premium display ad format, Devil, for desktop, which delivers nearly double the interaction rate than standard banner ads;
- In 2012, AOL introduced a full-suite of new premium display formats and innovations expanded cross-screen to smartphones and tablets;
- In 2014, AOL expanded its premium formats offering into programmatic, enabling advertising to efficiently scale their branding on a programmatic reserved basis;
- Early in 2015, a programmatic non-reserved option was added, providing additional flexibility for advertisers through the ONE platform;
- Today, AOL continues to add to its cross-screen, premium programmatic offerings with the availability of new premium mobile and video ad formats, and HTML5-based premium display ad formats, all available through ONE.
With the expansion into video, advertisers now have powerful vehicle to achieve true consumer engagement and deepen the relationship they have with audiences on desktop. Later this year, AOL’s will expand its premium video formats into mobile, offering a comprehensive portfolio of premium solutions across all screens and inventory types.
About AOL
AOL is a media technology company with a mission to simplify the internet for consumers and creators by unleashing the world's best builders of culture and code. As one of the largest online properties in the U.S., with approximately 200 million monthly consumers of its premium brands, AOL is at the center of disruption of how content is being produced, distributed, consumed and monetized by connecting publishers with advertisers on its global, programmatic content and advertising platforms. AOL's opportunity lies in shaping the future of the digitally connected world for decades to come.
