In order to quench the online thirst for more video content, Broadband Enterprises have evolved into a major player in the world of online video content and online video advertising. Speaking to AdMarkTech, Broadband Enterprises President, Danny Fishman told us how the company’s evolution has taken place based on satisfying a high demand of scalability, from their clients.

“The company is just over four years old and really is driven by the market place. We had clients like Proctor and Gamble coming to us saying they needed scale in the online video market place due to the market place being so incredibly fragmented. In turn Matt Wasserlauf, founder of the company, reached out to a couple of dozen sites. He basically built a network for pre roll video advertising that is now 2,000 plus sites. The company started as a representative firm for pre roll video advertising working for web properties selling their pre roll inventory in order to provide scale. Less than a year into it another client came to him with a greater challenge. Kelloggs wanted to reach 6 to 11 year old kids and to run advertising in front of cartoons. That was the impetus for us building our syndication business. There were a lot of cartoons and a lot of animation out there, but most of it was not geared towards kids. We went to Warner Brothers. All the cartoons that kids grew up watching, like Bugs Bunny and Tazmanian Devil, had been shelved for the last several years with no real distribution outlet. We took that content and started putting it out to relevant kid and family related websites within our network. We started running pre roll channel ads in front of it and really provided scale. That was the beginning of our syndication business which we’ve really evolved into a major platform.”

With syndication partners including Fox News, iVillage and Associated Press, Broadband Enterprises is able to take the content and push it out to multiple websites. This is one of the benefits of scale. Advertising is then run across the network of syndicated content. In turn, this led brands such as American Express to produce 2 to 4 minute videos around fashion week that Broadband Enterprises would push out to style and fashion sites on the Web.

“We’ve also built a whole new distribution platform on top of the manual syndication platform, with contextual distribution. In the past, we would take 3rd party content, such as iVillage and push it to women’s sites, and cartoons to kids’ sites. What we’re doing now is all of the content that comes into our content library is being tagged with meta data and descriptive keywords.” A practical example of this would be Associated Press profiling a political candidate talking about environmental issues. This content would be dynamically tagged and labeled with meta data. It would then be dynamically matched to the most relevant distribution sites. In turn if a site within the network had an article relating to politics or environmental issues, the AP original content would be shown within these categories, bringing greater relevance to the site and the readers.

“Essentially what we’re doing is turning every text based page on the web into a potential video distribution point. When someone’s reading an article we’re now giving them an opportunity to watch a video that’s contextually relevant to that article and then running pre roll advertising in front of that content, based on the context. It allows us to be that much more targeted, but also allows us to be much more automated in our distribution.”

Filling the final piece of the puzzle, Broadband Enterprises have now begun producing and commissioning the production of branded content.

Based on the Hollywood writer’s strike and the appetite of the consumer, viewers have been forced to spend more time online. “If you look historically at online video it’s been much more repurposed content. The medium is really ripe for fresh content so we’re working with producers to build four to six minute programs and integrating brands into the program. This takes the integration much deeper than you can do on television. On television you see product placement. Online we’re seeing active product integration and the ability to hot spot products in the show using overlays, then distributing the shows in the same way we distribute any of the licensed content. That’s a huge area of growth for us moving forward.”

Acting like a studio and working with outside producers such as Jonas Pate (Bionic Woman and NBC’s Surface) Broadband Enterprises have started producing programs such as ‘Real Mom’, a parental based talk show, and selling the shows to brands who take on the roll of executive producer. “We’ll produce trailers or sizzle reels in advance, or maybe even a pilot, we don’t go into production until the brand is involved.” It also works both ways. Brands approach Broadband Enterprises and tell them how they want to message their audience, in turn, Broadband Enterprises will speak to producers who devise concepts for the show and how to best incorporate the brand.

However, none of this would be possible without the robust proprietary technology that has been built to enable the ads being served to be measured, how the ads are being engaged with original programming, tracking and time spent.

In a recent strategic business partnership with Scan Scout, Broadband Enterprises have added overlay advertising to their already extensive, portfolio. “We’re using overlay to supplement our pre-roll advertising. When we have a show with product placement, we’ll have a pre-roll before the show. Now when the product is actually integrated into the show, we’ll have an overlay on top of the video that really calls out the product placement. It turns product placement and product integration from passive to active.”

The future for Broadband Enterprises involves building on their existing technology foundation and being ready for the forecasted transition from traditional advertising to online video advertising. Concentrating on the deployment of their contextual distribution platform and the behavioral targeting solution later this year, places Broadband Enterprises in an excellent preparatory position within a market that has already seen substantial growth.