MIAMI – It is best known for popularizing the “outstream” ads that allow online publishers to break out of the need to have video content against which to place video ads. But now Teads wants to break out of another box – its own.
Whilst the ad-tech vendor famously allowed publishers to place video ads between text paragraphs, it now also wants to allow them to place display ads in the same space..
“We own the space between paragraphs, and we’ve been using that space to deliver video, and we’ve been very successful at it,” says Teads’ Latin America SVP Eric Tourtel, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “So we thought, ‘Why don’t we try to also fill it with display?’
“Right now, we are bringing (clients) video budgets. We would love to bring them display budgets now.”
If that sounds like winding the clock back to a more conventional format, well, maybe – but Teads doesn’t just want to slap up standard static inventory.
The company wants to use features from Brainient, the firm it acquired in September 2016, to make those spots interactive.
Brainient lets advertisers assemble interactive ad units from the multiple distinct creative assets supplied by creative agencies. And Tourtel thinks those pieces add up to more ad engagement.
“We grew so much because we’ve been delivering viewable-only ads, and we’re going to do the same with viewable-only display ad,” Tourtel adds.
He says Teads will guarantee that the ads sold will be viewable for three or five seconds, compared with the mere 9% of industry-wide impressions that he says are viewable for more than a second.
“I’m going to build a display format that is going to be engaging,” he says. “And by doing that, we are going to get this viewability that we don’t usually get in display.”
Is winter coming for auto-playing video? Browser makers have announced a clamp-down on the format which has fuelled much video ad spending in the last two years. With this strategy, Teads may be hoping to put another horse in the format race.
All of these ads are designed to be in-view whilst users are reading the stories around them. Tourtel is hoping the ability to interact with a new-style display ad is what will entice them to click.
Note: This interview took place at the Festival of Media/LATAM this week in Miami. Beet.TV was on location to tape our series STAND WITH PUERTO RICO. Teads is one of the founding partners of the project and we are grateful.
