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This past Friday, AdAge published an editorial by TubeMogul’s CEO Brett Wilson on “Why Marketers Should Erect a Wall Between Audience Data and Audience Buying.” The editorial was running long, and sadly these (great) reactions from TubeMogul’s data platform partners — top players in the space, who value their independence — could not be included. We thought you might like to see them anyway:

Andy Monfried, CEO of Lotame, comments: “DMPs should be designed for flexible and efficient transfer of data, and should not place artificial limitations on where clients can execute their media buys. Clients are best served when they can easily send their data to whichever platform they choose.”

David Jakubowski, CEO of Aggregate Knowledge, makes a similar point, arguing that “one of the key reasons Fortune 500 brands should work with pure media intelligence or data management providers is neutrality. Neutrality is important for many reasons, such as the ability to integrate with all media and data sources in the digital ecosystem. These integrations give marketers the complete picture across all data sources and inventory providers to make intelligent decisions to more efficiently increase reach and drive sales. When a DMP is also buying and selling media as a business, the motivation to integrate with existing and new inventory sources gets compromised.”

We are proud to report that TubeMogul Japan opens its doors today, propelled by a $1.24 million (¥100m) initial investment by Digital Advertising Consortium (DAC) and Omnibus. TubeMogul Japan hits the ground running with a completely translated site, custom inventory and a lot more. TubeMogul Japan also named its new CEO today, seasoned veteran Masahiro Kano.

To date, little programmatic buying of brand advertising exists in Japan, where display dominates, something TubeMogul’s partners and investors — already leaders in the space — are well-positioned to change. Read more here.

Here’s a fast fact for your Friday: in-stream video ads available for real-time buying is far outpacing inventory growth (or lack thereof) in display. Aggregating daily auction data from the top private and public exchanges for the past four months, TubeMogul found that in-stream video ads available for real-time buying are growing at 17.9% per month, setting all-time records in January, which averaged over one billion ads per day.

TubeMogul is proud to announce that the company’s programmatic brand advertising platform was named a “Preferred Partner” of Lotame today. Whether you are a publisher looking to package your audience and sell it to advertisers or a brand advertiser looking to better use audience data to maximize impact, this partnership simplifies sophisticated use of data in several ways.

First, advertisers can pick from over 140 Lotame-powered audiences, along with the exact sites and geographic regions where an ad will run. Also, existing Lotame Crowd Control™ DMP clients can share custom audience segments directly into their TubeMogul accounts so they can easily target these audiences with their video advertising campaigns. To get started or learn more, please contact us.

The prevailing way video advertising is often measured is clicks and impressions, but what we care about cuts much deeper, like whether someone remembers why our brand is different or plans to purchase in the next month.

Patricia Wilson, Founding Partner of BrandCottage

BrandSights is the world’s first targetable brand survey tool! Clients running programmatic video brand campaigns can now create custom surveys and deploy them in the same way as media.  It’s simple: create one to five questions that align with your branding objectives, apply the desired targeting parameters and launch.

BrandSights surveys allow marketers to measure against brand metrics that matter most including awareness, favorability and purchase intent using a targetable survey built into TubeMogul’s media buying platform. In short, gather consumer insights to maximize ROI.

Recently, TubeMogul won the 2012 Streaming Media Readers’ Choice Award for Best Video Ad Network. This perhaps marks the first time that video ad networks were beaten in their own category by a non-network company. As many of you know, TubeMogul pivoted away from the traditional ad network model in early 2011 – since then, we’ve been working on building the best programmatic branding solution available. As a matter of fact, TubeMogul is the only real-time media buying platform devoted entirely to bringing simple, safe and effective digital video advertising to brand marketers.

You can view the full list of categories and winners here.

We truly appreciate all the support!

In case you missed it, TubeMogul’s CEO Brett Wilson shared his thoughts with the UK publication The Wall (part of Brand Republic) today on lessons learned from being a top resource for media buying of video ads in the 2012 U.S. election. Posted below for clients worldwide.

Of digital ad spending, a good portion went to video ads
This is not surprising given video’s persuasion power and campaigns’ long preference for television advertising. According to the U.S. Federal Elections Commission, $78.2 million was spent on digital advertising for the candidates. Real-time buying by agencies on TubeMogul’s video advertising platform accounted for 8.3% of that total according to our research. Others, like Hulu and YouTube, saw significant shares of spending.

Digital surveys playing a bigger role
Campaigns are leveraging online surveys to inform ad buys in real-time, measuring change in intent of viewers that saw ads. These surveys, typically used to measure lift in things like purchase consideration for brands, may eventually challenge offline surveys as they get more sophisticated. An example: 48 hours leading up to the election we used TubeMogul’s Brandsights survey technology to ask voters in the key state of Ohio who they planned to vote for, successfully predicting the winner within 1.1% of the actual results — all for £155.87 in survey gathering cost.

Voter files meet digital targets
The top agencies are combining real-time surveys, voter files and retargeting people based on previous behavior, customizing messages to reach the right voter with the right message. This level of targeting is rarely done by brand marketers.

Hyper-Customization and retargeting work
While reliable Democrats watch ads that focus on getting out the vote, for instance, swing voters hear a different message. Email campaigns are similarly customized, with organizers getting emails urging them to volunteer, for instance.

Advertising is increasingly real-time 
We obviously bring an agenda to this, but exchange-based buying, particularly in video, saw “significant investment,” according to Targeted Victory. Real-time buying of video is in many ways custom-tailored to political campaigns, who by nature have to shift tactics in minutes. The results let them tweak regions, creative mix, sites and audiences that are seeing an ad based on real-time survey and performance data.

Paid media and earned media mesh
A video designed to be watched organically on YouTube (i.e. a speech) that does well can be turned into an pre-roll ad — and vice versa. Many views for YouTube videos come from featuring the video in a targeted email blast to supporters.

Everything is on the record (and that’s a good thing)
Often a lamented aspect of modern campaigns since it leads to gaffes being recorded; this can be turned to a candidate’s advantage, too. A video splicing lines from a speech that resonated with an audience (or, in the case of an opponent, did poorly) can easily be turned into a digital video ad.

Today, TubeMogul is proud to announce it closed a $20 million Series C round of financing, led by Northgate Capital. The funds will be used to ramp up hiring and expand on TubeMogul’s technological lead in programmatic buying of brand advertising worldwide. First launching in mid-2011 and designed to maximize the branding power of video advertising, the company’s media buying platform is highly in-demand with top brand marketers and trading desks, propelling TubeMogul to become the 141st fastest-growing company in the U.S. in terms of revenue. The company would like to thank its clients and their dedication to powerful brand advertising for making this possible.