LiveRail Unveils Real-Time Bidding for Video Ad Pods

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 21, 2013) - LiveRail, the leading video monetization platform for publishers, today announced the support and availability of the industry's first RTB-based Pod management, giving publishers the ability to traffic more than one video ad in a sequenced group, similar to a TV commercial break, programmatically.

With this game-changing offering, LiveRail is empowering premium publishers with the ability to create more impressions without needing to increase the number of viewers or content streams played. This also creates more pricing and placement options for advertisers.

"Introducing Pods programmatically at scale represents a natural, logical progression for the industry," said Mark Trefgarne, Co-Founder and CEO, LiveRail. "Both publishers and advertisers need proven technology that allows them to measure ad effectiveness as well as adapt to changes in pricing and delivery models and our new Pod feature offers a clear opportunity for both demand and supply-side providers."

Unlike any other Pod technology, LiveRail allows publishers to replicate TV-like ad behavior and ad rates by conducting multiple real-time bidding auctions, across multiple third-party buyers, to fill one single request based on the Pod's time duration (2 minutes) or slots (4 commercials/ads) while also managing brand and sales channel conflicts in the milliseconds before the first ad is served. This is especially important to publishers with long form content.

Recent reports revealed that mid-roll video ads, which are more like a traditional TV commercial break, were the most engaging ad format, easily outperforming completion rates of pre-rolls and post-rolls. With an 87% completion rate, mid-rolls performed close to 30% better than pre-rolls. All of this suggests that viewers are engaged by a more TV-like ad experience.

LiveRail's new RTB-Pod feature will make the most impact on the video advertising ecosystem by allowing publishers to segment and set price floors by pod position. Buyers can bid for each position in the pod depending on if it's the first, last or intermediary slot. As a result, CPM prices will begin to converge on the market rates for pod positions, similar to broadcast TV commercials, bridging the traditional TV ad buying model with the advanced capabilities of programmatic video.

About LiveRail

LiveRail is the leading publisher monetization platform for video with more than 3bn impressions (25% of all online video ads) delivered via its platform each month and more than 1.7bn ads served in April 2013 alone according to comScore. LiveRail provides premium publishers with the technology and services to sell their video inventory smarter and safer, across all devices. Recently recognized by Digiday Publishing Awards as the Best Monetization Technology for a Publisher, LiveRail is used by hundreds of major publishers who benefit from sophisticated analytics, advanced controls and unparalleled transparency ultimately generating maximum yield for every ad impression.

Founded in 2007, LiveRail's senior team is led by its founders, Mark Trefgarne (CEO) and Andrei Dunca (CTO). LiveRail Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, New York, London, England and Cluj-Napoca, Romania. LiveRail is backed by Pond Ventures. For more information visit: www.liverail.com.