Larry Kless' Weblog: Mixpo Launches Xspot, Local Online Video Advertising Solution for Agencies

Friday, September 18, 2009

Mixpo Launches Xspot, Local Online Video Advertising Solution for Agencies

Mixpo has announced an expansion of their local online video advertising solution to now include advertising agencies and marketers. The Seattle-based online video advertising technology platform has been steadily focused on extending local TV advertising to the Web. With a redesigned website and new product, Mixpo for Agencies, the company is building on its success with media companies, including Comcast Spotlight, NBC Local Media and Tribune, to bring local, video display advertising capabilities to advertisers.

I spoke with Anupam Gupta, president and CEO of Mixpo last week about his company's new offering and he provided some background on the online video advertising space and the opportunities available to agencies. According to Anupam, there's a gap in the market, online video advertising continues to grow, but is stunted at the local level. He cited two sources to describe the growth opportunities in the two intersecting markets. According to eMarketer, online video advertising will grow from $505 million in 2008 to $5.8 billion by 2013. While the Kelsey Group says local online advertising will grow from $14 billion in 2008 to $32 billion by 2013, but it's quite separated from the $24.7 billion Local TV market. Mixpo's own data showed that year-over-year, monthly campaigns run by advertisers and agencies through Mixpo's local media partners have grown by more than 300 percent.

Mixpo sees the Web as an extension of local TV advertising strategy, not a separate strategy. Mixpo sees the promise of helping advertisers, their agencies and media companies bridge the gap from TV to the Web.

As Anupam states,

“There is a tremendous opportunity for TV advertisers to extend their local spot and cable strategies, and creative to the Web. Our hope through our offerings for both sides of the local TV ecosystem is to facilitate a faster growth of the emerging local TV to the Web process.”

X Marks the Spot
The solution that Mixpo has created is called the Xspot, a specialized online ad unit that is

defined by a unique combination of video, interactivity and localization delivered through standard display ads. The power of this solution is the economy of scale, in that agencies can reuse existing TV spots as online advertising, and for agencies that offers huge cost savings by reducing production and creative expenses by leveraging existing assets. Within the Mixpo platform agencies can start with an existing local or national TV commercial and enhance it for the web by adding interactive images and calls to action.

Xspots can be easily edited and customized for local markets. The general specs are 300x250 display ad units which Mixpo makes interactive through overlays, dynamic through real-time editing, targeted by zip code and compatible with Ad servers, including Open AdStream, DART (Doubleclick), APT (Yahoo), and AdBrite. Every aspect of Xspot performance is tracked and measured, and provides real-time data on local market engagement.

Mixpo focuses on online display inventory for delivering local video ad campaigns rather than in-stream pre-roll video. Anupam points out that,

"Pre-roll ads are not the right solution for local advertising. They're expensive and have limited availability, interactivity and targeting, to drive effective local promotion. Video display ads are more affordable, can be targeted to the right customer, and allow viewers to interact as they wish, rather than being forced to watch an ad. This new ad unit -- takes the static banner to the next level with higher engagement and local response."

Anupam spoke with Beet.TV in this video, which he describes their new offering.

Mixpo for Agencies
For Mixpo, clear themes emerged out of the needs of publishers and advertisers starting the challenges that advertisers and agencies face every day which mainly stem from the high cost of producing new content, brand control, local flexibility, campaign complexity, cost, limited video inventory and high CPMs. Agencies want to know how to localize those TV assets for different markets and how to run campaigns that are not too expensive.

Their answer, Mixpo for Agencies, grown out their solution for media companies gives TV agencies a flexible tool to cut through the complexity and apply existing brand assets into targeted online video advertising for local response. Mixpo emphasizes that you don't have to be an expert to use their platform. They have focused on simplicity and to Anupam Gupta, at the end of the day it's not about the technology but what it does.

About Mixpo

Mixpo is an online video advertising technology company focused on extending local TV advertising to the Web. Through a simple and powerful combination of production, campaign management and reporting tools, Mixpo enables media companies and advertising agencies to deliver interactive video campaigns via standard display ad units. To find out more about Mixpo, please visit www.mixpo.com.

Updated 9/19/09: Added growth data from http://tinyurl.com/kokcdz