Mixpo Now Offering ‘Dynamic Video’ Ads

Video advertising platform Mixpo has partly shifted its business from a focus on local publishers and SMBs to larger advertisers and agencies. I just got finished with an update from Mixpo CEO Anupam Gupta who said that the business is now largely about “dynamic video” advertising, which can include but is not limited to local or geotargeting.

I asked Gupta to elaborate on what “dynamic” means in terms of Mixpo’s platform. He said it can take several forms:

• Dynamic overlays on video creative that can include text, email capture, social media links and so on. Those can correspond to location or other targeting parameters
• Short video add-ons or addenda to uniform or “national” creative (e.g., a short plug for a local dealer following a national car commercial)
• Entirely different creative/video depending on any number of variables, such as demographics or location (e.g., one type of ad creative for women another for men).

“The ads really come together at runtime,” said Gupta.

He also said that in the context of a single ad campaign agencies and advertisers can swap in entirely new ads on a daily or weekly basis, as the advertiser wishes. This is a huge, if somewhat hidden, benefit of the platform. Deal with the “bureaucracy” of the ad buy once and then substitute new or different creative at will.

He used Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Senatorial campaign as an example. Gupta said that within the same media buy the candidate substituted entirely different video ads to respond to changing issues in the campaign over time.

Gupta also told me that the platform can accommodate any form of targeting or multiple layers of targeting, and complements existing systems and technologies. In other words, you don’t do behavioral targeting within Mixpo, but Mixpo can be used to deliver dynamic video ads with third party behavioral targeting tools or data.

Mixpo works with existing display ad networks but doesn’t offer pre-roll. Gupta argued that this was a more cost-effective way of doing video online vs. pre-roll. He said that engagement with these video units is typically very high after a click initiating the ad.

We spoke about the iPad and mobile a bit. Currently Mixpo doesn’t do mobile but will be investigating and likely developing it very soon. One issue: its units are all Flash-based.

I asked Gupta about competitors and he said that the companies that he’s “hearing about” or being compared to are Tumri and Teracent (now part of Google) that offer dynamic display advertising, rather than other video platforms.

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