Rocket Fuel Launches Data-Driven Audience Targeting for Online Video

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., Jan. 19, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Rocket Fuel Inc., the company bringing rocket science to digital advertising, today launched Video Booster™, an advanced video targeting and optimization solution that delivers the intelligence and accuracy of highly targeted, data-driven ads with the impact of video. Video Booster allows brands to engage audiences and reach campaign objectives with unparalleled precision and efficiency.

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The solution, which offers 15- or 30-second duration in-stream pre-roll ads with companion display placements, is directly integrated with The BrightRoll Exchange (BRX) and the Adap.tv Marketplace to ensure access to the highest-quality audience.

Online video is growing fast. Break Media's Digital Video Advertising Trends: 2011 study found that 70 percent of advertisers plan to increase video ad budgets in the next 12 months, and eMarketer estimates spending will reach $5.5 billion in 2014. Break Media also found that targeting was the most important criteria both agencies and marketers use to determine where to spend video ad budgets. Whereas video has been primarily used to reach broad demographics, now Rocket Fuel has extended its display technology to make more efficient video ad targeting and optimization decisions in real time.

Video Booster identifies high-quality, in-stream pre-roll inventory, giving marketers a simple yet sophisticated way to manage, run and evaluate successful online video campaigns. As a result, brand marketers can put high-quality video in front of a much higher composition audience at a fraction of the cost of television media. The result is targeted video optimized to deliver against any of a brand marketer's goals – from awareness to conversion. Video Booster helps brand marketers pinpoint the right audience and engage them anywhere on the Web.

"There's an enormous amount of data that can make delivering digital video campaigns easier and less costly – the trick is having the technology horsepower to harness, analyze and act on it," said Richard Frankel, president of Rocket Fuel Inc. "Nearly 15 years into the Web era we're finally delivering on the promise of the right ad to the right audience in the right medium. Our core technology in Video Booster focuses on finding desirable audience characteristics rather than serving mere impressions. The result is immersive video combined with extremely high audience composition to drive campaign efficiency and lift in a marketer's most valuable brand metrics. Indeed, seamlessly integrated, highly targeted video and traditional display campaigns are now possible."

"Giving advertisers in the Adap.tv Marketplace access to next-generation targeting and optimization tools is critical in enabling them to effectively buy online video," says Toby Gabriner, president of Adap.tv. "When you combine the scale of the Marketplace with Video Booster's advanced ability to accurately identify the most relevant users, you give advertisers a powerful way to connect with the right audience and exceed their campaign objectives."

Rocket Fuel applies data gathered from billions of ad impressions to inform and guide video impression decisions and optimizations. The company's modeling and optimization technology identifies the users that respond best to online ads and then serves video ads to more users just like them. The Progressive Optimization™ built into Video Booster delivers innovative ad targeting capabilities that enable marketers to capitalize on every dollar of marketing budget, find customers at scale, and deliver on the promise of more meaningful engagement with their brands.

"New technologies incorporated into the BrightRoll Exchange have taken video advertising to the next level through advanced targeting and optimization, which makes buying video advertising as efficient as buying display inventory," says Lewis Rothkopf, senior vice president, network and exchange for BrightRoll. "Rocket Fuel's technology will help BrightRoll continue to advance video as a powerful option for advertisers looking to execute brand-safe video campaigns and to increase reach and accuracy."

Video Booster customers also benefit from Rocket Fuel's different levels of analyses that identify the key drivers of a campaign's success – content, creative, demographics, geography and more. These reports ensure a consistent and reliable view of core data, helping marketers understand what's working and why, and the quality, composition and characteristics of the audience being reached in each discrete online channel.

About Rocket Fuel Inc.

Rocket Fuel Inc. is the company bringing rocket science to digital advertising. With its advanced technology, the company is helping marketers reach their brand goals quickly and easily, anywhere in the purchase funnel.  Over 150-million people a month see ads from its Rocket Fuel Network, which combines behavioral, contextual, geographic, demographic, and many other techniques to yield results far more powerful than any method could on its own. Rocket Fuel automatically adapts advertisers' campaigns in real-time to optimize towards their goals – whether brand-oriented or performance driven. If you can measure it, Rocket Fuel can optimize it. The Silicon Valley-based company was founded by veterans from NASA, Yahoo! and DoubleClick. Rocket Fuel was named Best Startup of 2010 by the San Francisco Business Times. In addition to its headquarters in Redwood Shores, Rocket Fuel now employs more than 75 people in seven cities including New York, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The company plans to open additional offices in the US, and expand into international markets in 2011. For more information visit www.rocketfuel.com.

©2011 Rocket Fuel Inc. All rights reserved. Rocket Fuel Inc., Progressive Optimization and Video Booster are trademarks or registered trademarks of Rocket Fuel Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.  

SOURCE Rocket Fuel Inc.