Vizu CEO: Accountability in Brand Advertising Will Bring the Real Ad Dollars Online

http://www.beet.tv/2008/12/vizu-ceo-accoun.html
Advertisers spend seven to eight percent of their budgets online, but only a tiny percentage of that goes toward brand advertising, according to Vizu CEO Dan Beltramo. Many prefer click-through ads because they're easier to measure, but Vizu has developed a brand lift measurement system called Ad Catalyst to help change that.

"With accountability on the Internet for brand advertising comes more dollars, comes more growth. It's a big opportunity," he says in the segment.

Ad Catalyst polls a tiny subset of those exposed to a certain ad campaign and compares their responses to an unexposed group to measure its effectiveness. In the online video world, Ad Catalyst has shown that video pre-roll drives brand lift much more effectively than other types of in-stream advertising and static display ads.

Vizu, founded in 2005, has raised $3.9 million in funding from investors including Ron Conway and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. I interviewed Dan last Wednesday at the Mogulus studio in SoHo.

--Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer