AdRoll Announces Video Ads
AdRoll today announced AI-powered video ads that leverage machine learning to determine the optimal bid price for each impression as well as analyze user behavior to serve the right ad to the right user at the right price.
The video ads rely on the AI used in the AdRoll platform. This AI has four key features: It is built in-house by AdRoll; it learns from performance data points based on aggregated shopping behavior across a base of 37,000 customers; it can be optimized for different marketing goals and attribution models; and it aims to help marketers understand how the ads affect buying behavior across web, mobile, and social channels.
“For video, all of the plumbing and sophistication from an AI perspective exists to help our customers figure out how engaged their potential customers and store visitors are, how likely they are to convert, and how seriously they are considering a purchase at that time,” explains Scott Gifis, president of AdRoll. “We can infer all this from looking at anonymized data on user behaviors, and from there we’re able to say, this user is worth this much money potentially, and so this price is the appropriate price to pay in the attempt to win that customer and convert them eventually into the journey of the customer buying experience and ultimately into a sale.”
AdRoll’s attribution technology enables companies to see what impact the video ads are having across the other channels and tactics they’re using, Gifis says, “to really look that and understand the relationship of those activities holistically, working together.”
The AI can also evaluate context and pull from different creative assets to deliver videos that will provide the most value in any given situation, depending on the customer’s behavior. “[Additionally], it thinks about which channels, which inventory sources are the best, where do we see the greatest level of performance, which helps us to mitigate things like fraud and issues around brand safety because we know those are important pieces in connecting to the value that creative is driving in terms of connecting with that consumer and converting them into engaged customers and ultimately paying customers,” he continues.
He adds that given the potential for video to help forge deeper connections with consumers, extending AdRoll’s technology to the medium was a logical step. “We have a lot of sophisticated technology where we ingest huge sums of data from a wide range of different events at any given time, and we’re processing that information in ways to create better experiences for end consumers on behalf of our customers,” Gifis says. “Being able to do that from a video perspective made a lot of sense, especially given that it’s such a valuable format in today’s world where consumers really engage with that content in a more meaningful way and as brands are increasingly trying to develop more meaningful relationships.”