In further online video ad consolidation, online ad tech firm Collective is making another acquisition – UK premium video ad network Web TV Enterprise.
The Madison Ave. firm started making in-roads to Britain six months ago.
Collective CEO Joe Apprendi (via release): “Unlike most video networks, Web TV’s revenues come largely from broadcast media budgets versus smaller digital plans.”
Web TV Enterprise does a range of pre-roll ad formats.
Collective bought Oggifinogi recently.
David adds: The deal brings together two of Collective’s main goals. The first involves strengthening its UK arm so as to provide a launch pad to grow a wider pan-European business over the next few months. Collective’s second goal is focused on adding additional layers of targeted video ad distribution”” that doesn’t just increase its online services, but brings both TV ads and the web ads closer together.
“The big idea that’s emerging now is that instead of online video ads being a subset of the overall ad market, the internet is now becoming entwined with marketers’ broadcast ad strategy,” Apprendi told paidContent. Online is now where cable TV was in the 1980s were in advertisers’ minds, he added. It’s not separate; it’s still TV. In the case of video, the distinction between broadcast and broadband is blurring.
Apprendi added that the last statement is even more true in the UK than in the U.S. “Very few independent online video sites are attached to broadcast in a meaningful way in the U.S.,” Apprendi said. “Hulu is one standout, but they have the major broadcast networks backing them. Web TV has found a way to complement all the major broadcasters in the UK. And that is where the space is headed.”