Expert: Programmatic changing video

IRIS.TV, a video personalization pioneer that enables publishers and marketers to maximize the value of their video inventory by programming personalized streams to individual users across all devices, grew its business significantly in 2016. We asked Field Garthwaite, CEO of IRIS.TV to explain why:

by Kristina Knight

Field Garthwaite, CEO, IRIS.TV: 2016 was a year of extraordinary growth for IRIS.TV because we proved out the business proposition of how personalization can move the bottom line. For example, we began the year with IRIS.TV customers seeing their monthly video views increase by an average of 54% alongside of increased user retention and engagement. By year's end it was up to 70%. One major publisher observed a 465% lift in video views over one week as a result of our video programming platform.

IRIS.TV's ten largest customers averaged a 400% increase in video views over the year validating the premise that if you serve personalized videos of proven interest, audiences will watch more and for longer, helping publishers better monetize their video ad revenue potential.

Kristina: Was your growth just in the United States?

Field: We began the year with player and publisher partners only in the United States but by year's end, were operating in 11 countries across 5 continents including Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, India, Qatar, Panama and Chile. This dramatically increased the volume of video views moving through our personalization engine by 700% from the start of the year.

Kristina: And as I recalled you moved into the branded content in a big way.

Field: Yes indeed. In September, IRIS.TV launched Campaign Manager™, a product that enables publishers using its video programming platform, to serve audiences branded video campaigns in-stream with premium editorial content. Instead of driving audiences to dedicated landing pages and waiting on clicks, Campaign Manager uses IRIS.TV's personalization engine to program the branded video to the right user across all publisher video entry points. With "in-stream" programming, marketers, for the first time, can place branded campaigns to targeted audiences organically on premium publisher owned & operated destinations.