Vdopia announces VDO Labs for video advertising research

Video ad network and platform Vdopia, which  focuses on on South Asians across the globe, today announced launching VDO Labs that will focus exclusively on taking video advertising experience to the next level by creating innovations around video content. VDO Labs is building new ad formats such as 'skin branding', skin branding with product placement, and skin branding with overlay.

Vdopia is a venture-backed company founded by Stanford and IIT graduates with extensive technology and media experience. The company has sales and development offices in San Jose, CA, New York, NY; Gurgaon and Mumbai, India.

It says it uses its proprietary dynamic skin branding technology that allows the video player skin to change dynamically according to the targeting criteria specified by the advertiser.
With this launch, advertisers can now target online video consumers with contextual, interactive advertising for every second of video watched, Vdopia says.

In addition to pre roll ad format, Vdopia's propietary 'dynamic skin branding' ad format is aid to deliver continuous brand visibility, highly measurable viewer engagement and extended call to action opportunity for advertisers, without interrupting the video viewing experience of the user.
These  formats developed by VDO Labs provide interactive display advertising formats delivered in a customisable Flash 'skin' integrated around the video player.

Vdopia says so far it has successfully executed the dynamic skin branding ad format for some of India's biggest brands like Tata Sky, Big TV, Godrej LCD, among others.

Online video advertising in India is set to grow at 300 per cent in 2009, according to Ernst & Young and has an 85-per cent brand recall compared with 54 per cent for the same ad on television. Vdopia  says it is committed to increasing brand recall even further using its technology and innovations.

"We have run controlled tests through certain campaigns on our network and our results indicate several fold increase in the campaign performance when these ad formats are shown together on a video, it is almost as if these formats resonate with each other providing advertisers tremendous value," says Chhavi Upadhyay, COO, Vdopia.

Skin branding is said to deliver more effective monetisation of online video content for publishers. The proprietary integrated ad and media player technology is immune to the negative effects of 'banner blindness' by delivering extended brand visibility and the advertising exposure is measurable for every second of ad viewed. Skin branding advertisements are served each time a new video or application starts and at specified intervals during long-form video content. Vdopia provides complete creative support to deliver the desired campaign objectives.

Saurabh Bhatia, Chief Business Officer of Vdopia added: "The fully customizable 'skin' also presents unlimited creative ability for advertisers to include interactive features and functionality such as promotional videos, animated expansion banners, games, contact forms, product downloads and purchases, plus basic click-throughs."

Vdopia is the first video advertising company that has provided consistent monetization of online video content, which has resulted in massive growth in the amount of online video content across all leading South Asian websites. It says it is able to deliver advertisers and publishers with industry-leading results due to its focus on premium audiences and premium content.