Mixpo Signs Local Publisher Deals

Video platform provider Mixpo said it had signed a number of local publisher deals, including: “Crosscut, Sun Valley Online and Pegasus News; ITZ Publishing, an online publishing consultant for newspapers across the US, and KGORadio.com, the Web site for KGO Newstalk AM 810, the most listened-to radio station in northern California.”

These publishers will be selling video to their advertisers using the Mixpo platform.  My belief is that almost all display advertising will become video advertising or include video in the not-too-distant future. Various stuides have shown higher CTRs and response rates to video. Video is more engaging (or can be more obnoxious, depending on the ad).

Mixpo also published (in the release) some performance results of existing campaigns:

For a local winery client, Crosscut deployed a Mixpo in-banner video ad to drive people to visit the winery for a wine tasting. Direct response overlays drove users to a special coupon they could print out and redeem at the winery. The campaign garnered a .8% click-to-views rate (equivalent metric to click-through-rates (CTR), in which the industry average is .1%). In addition, 67% of viewers who clicked on the ad watched the video, showing a high level of engagement by Crosscut viewers.

Meanwhile, a KGORadio.com client, a homebuilder selling a luxury development in Northern California, wanted to drive potential buyers to the physical property by using online video advertising. Using the Mixpo platform, the company launched a video ad during a recent weekend with a special $50 gas card promotional offer for those who would visit the development. The company promptly received hundreds of leads. As was the case with the Crosscut campaign, this online video ad yielded an approximate .8% click-to-views rate, while 70% of users who clicked on the ad viewed the video.

(my emphasis)

Here are some figures from a yet-to-be published SMB online ad survey (n=1882), conducted by Opus Research and AllBusiness.com, on video adoption among SMB online advertisers:

Are you currently doing any video advertising?

• Yes: 19.1% (if one segments for “0-4 employees” the number goes down to 11.8%)
• No: 80.9%

Who created your video?

• Friend or relative:  21.9%  (if one segments for “0-4 employees” the number goes up to just over 40%)
• Professional service (e.g., TurnHere, Comcast, yellow pages, Spot Runner, local videographer): 57.4%
• Online tools (Spotmixer, Jivox, Mixpo): 9.4%
• Other:  11.4%

“Other” turns out most often to be in-house personnel.