Smartclip, the German pan-European video advertising network, currently places ads against “premium” publishers’ videos. Next year, however, it also wants to grab what it thinks is low-hanging fruit from online services that aren’t all about video.
“Going in to 2011, we want to launch sub-brands within Smartclip to utilise the revenue from social applications and gaming applications,” UK MD Sam Kayum tells paidContent:UK.
Individual CPMs will be lower, but additive. “Advertisers view social content very differently from premium content. The average rates we can command (currently) is very much premium. (The move) is about starting to dip in to a different revenue pot.”
Smartclip claims 450 million monthly video views across Spain, the UK, France, Russia, Germany, the Nordics and Benelux, with 100 million of them in Britain.
While many of the sites in its network are those of broadcasters and pro publishers including News International, Dennis, Discovery and Disney (NYSE: DIS), Smartclip also serves ads ahead of streams in visual radio applications hosted by Last.fm and Gaydar. Kayum says Smartclip wants to develop this out in to a “secondary or tertiary revenue stream”.
That could involve adding to the company’s 70-odd continental staff.
Kayum also said he’s talking with services that are planning to aggregate VOD TV for connected-TV platforms, about inserting ads there.