When people think video they think YouTube, and since Google attained YouTube as a web property of its own, it has gained a spot at the top of yet another platform market. Some would say that Google is the master of web marketing, covering all bases and creating success in each of them. YouTube as a company is not new to video advertising, and has always been the go to answer for marketing looking to start video campaigns. However, according to comScore and Bloomberg, another company has come up as a pretty worthy competitor, successfully showing YouTube and Google that they are not the only ones that can play the video game well.
In reporting results from comScore research, Bloomberg states that Brightroll Inc., a company that assists marketers in placing ads on websites across the internet, has taken Google’s place in the video market. That is of course, only when ranked by number of online videos served, but for a small company such as this to compete so closely with Google is a feat.
Google makes money from selling slots for commercials that run before users view clips on YouTube, which it owns and operates. BrightRoll matches marketers to competing websites, and takes a cut. That has helped it to siphon advertisers away from Google in a market that, according to AccuStream Research, jumped 52 percent last year as more people watch television and movie programming online.
The online video market is a $7.6 billion market that has gotten larger and larger over the past few years, and marketers know that video marketing is a very important part of a successful digital advertising campaign.
Perhaps the reason for BrightRoll Inc.’s incredible success over Google comes from the methods that each company offers for marketers. As we see time and time again, Google’s video marketing focuses almost entirely on YouTube, and the sale of advertising spots on the video sharing network. This has worked impressively well for Google, but BrightRoll Inc.’s methods seem to be preferred. This company offers marketers more traditional techniques. They find a website looking to run ads, then find companies looking for websites to run ads on, and match them with one another. BrightRoll Inc.’s revenue comes from a cut of the deal made between the two.
For two out of these last three months, BrightRoll Inc. has trumped Google’s numbers as far as video ads served.
After trailing BrightRoll in October and November, Google took back the lead in December by serving 2 billion video ads on personal computers in the U.S., versus 1.83 billion for BrightRoll, ComScore said. While Google delivered more ads, BrightRoll’s network of video providers reached a larger part of the population, at 43 percent, compared with Google’s 32 percent in December. ComScore’s data excludes some video ads that reach Google’s sites from third-party networks, including BrightRoll.
I think it is obvious that this lead may not be lasting very long, but I think we can expect a close race for some time to come. BrightRoll Inc. has been relatively well known for a while now, but now that it is neck-and-neck with Google, it may just gain a bit more notoriety among video marketers.
