Online advertising company Collective announced the acquisition of Oggifinogi, a rich media technology company. Read the release. (Also, read the Oggifinogi Q&A on AdExchanger.com from last year.)
Collective CEO Joe Apprendi discussed the acquisition and its implications.
AdExchanger.com: Please discuss the difference between the way Collective has sold online video to-date, and the way it will be sold with Oggifinogi in-house?
JA: Collective has been a strategic investor in, and partner with Oggifinogi since 2009. As a result, we are already highly integrated from a platform, sales and services perspective. We’ve delivered billions of Oggifinogi enabled ads across our display ad network since we made this investment. As Collective continues to prioritize in-stream video as a key component of our overall targeting and distribution ecosystem, Oggifinogi will become an even more important technology partner, allowing us to unify audience targeting across both in-banner and in-stream ad formats.
What is the “art” that Oggifinogi addresses for Collective?
Oggifinogi brings creative development, production and technology expertise to Collective that takes full advantage of rich media and video’s amazing potential, including unlimited ad and social interaction features from Facebook to Twitter to any user feedback application to better measure the impact of video within online advertising. There is almost no creative challenge that is outside the reach of what we can now do. This capability will be applied across our current display, video and emerging mobile platform. As a brand advertiser driven platform, all of this is critical to our clients looking to maximize the ad effectiveness of online advertising.
What will happen to the Oggifinogi team?
Oggifinogi will operate as a subsidiary of Collective, servicing its existing agencies, advertisers and publishers. We obviously will further our integration efforts from a platform perspective, including ease-of-use within AMP, our leading media and data management platform for publishers and networks. This platform is already serving over 15 billion ad impressions outside the Collective display and video network.
What was the price of the acquisition? And what will happen to the company name “Oggifinogi”?
The acquisition price will remain undisclosed. Oggifinogi will continue to operate under the Oggifinogi brand. For those curious, Oggifinogi is Italian and means ‘Today we get it done’. This team is absolutely focused on execution and results and the corporate name reflects this commitment.
Can online video advertising move beyond getting the marketer’s digital dollars and start attracting the ad spend dedicated to TV? What will it take for Collective to attract TV dollars?
Absolutely, but this is a combination of comparable ad formats and measurement. The dramatic growth in video viewership over the past three years led to television quality video being more widely distributed online and brand advertisers are revaluating their television advertising budgets, looking to online to complement their broadcast and cable ad spend. Marketers are looking for insight into what factors are boosting brand awareness. Collective is uniquely poised to secure increased online video dollars by providing marketers with measurement programs to help them understand how each impact key brand metrics including lift and awareness, as well as Internet Gross Rating Point (iGRP) reporting for all Collective video, rich media and display campaigns.
By John Ebbert
