blinkx article in wal street journal
Denuo and Blinkx Link Up To Improve Online Video Ads »
26 February 2008
By Emily Steel
Denuo Group, a unit of Publicis Groupe that explores new marketing technologies, plans to announce today a partnership with online video-search engine blinkx. The companies will experiment to try to find the most effective ways to advertise through Web video. The deal gives Denuo access to data about online video viewing habits and gives blinkx an inroad with advertisers.
San Francisco-based blinkx, founded in 2004, doesn't host videos itself. Instead, it is a video search engine that works with more than 250 media companies, from small independent film producers to big media companies such as CBS and the BBC. Blinkx uses visual- and speech-recognition technology that scans videos to figure out their content -- a tool some advertisers already use to place ads next to relevant videos. In January, Blinkx attracted 448,000 unique U.S. visitors who watched 13.1 million streams of video, according to Nielsen Online.
The news comes as ad spending on online video has been growing more slowly than projected earlier. Marketers have been hesitant to ramp up advertising on Web videos; many say it's hard to find quality videos next to which they would be comfortable running ads.
AMBITIOUS AD RESEARCH scrapped despite big backers. Ratings giants Arbitron and Nielsen Co. said yesterday they would scrap Project Apollo, a new research service that merged purchasing data from Nielsen with Arbitron's portable people meters, which track TV-watching and radio-listening habits.
"Despite a promising level of interest, we did not secure sufficient client commitments to make Project Apollo a sustainable venture for our two companies," they said in a statement. The companies launched Project Apollo in 2005 to develop a new service that could help advertisers understand how different kinds of advertising affected sales.
Seven advertisers, including consumer-goods companies such as Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, helped fund the project. By January 2006, Project Apollo had created a test panel that included more than 11,000 people in 5,000 U.S. households.
BRIEF: Paul Tilley, DDB Chicago's managing director for creative, died Friday. During his 11 years with the company, Mr. Tilley, 40 years old, worked on campaigns for clients such as General Mills, McDonald's and Anheuser-Busch. In September 2006 he was named to the top creative post at DDB Chicago, part of Omnicom Group.
