AdNetworker

comScore released their February 2010 list of top U.S. online video ad networks, and Tremor Media has ranked as the top video ad network with a potential reach of 81.7 million viewers, or 46.9 percent of the total video viewing audience.  The full list is below:

Other notable findings from February 2010 include:

• The top video ad networks in terms of their actual reach delivered were: Joost Video Network (by Adconion Media Group) with 38.3 percent penetration of online video viewers, BBE with 18.3 percent, and BrightRoll Video Network with 18.1 percent.
• 83.1 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• 132.4 million viewers watched 11.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (89.5 videos per viewer).
• The average Hulu viewer watched 23.3 videos, totaling 2.4 hours of video per viewer.
• The duration of the average online video was 4.3 minutes.

Burst Media has revealed the financial details of the acquisition of On The Phone Media (OTP).  Burst said they paid £1.6 million ($2.4 million) as an initial payment towards the acquisition of OTP.  Further details released about the acquisition indicated the size of OTP’s business, which has 11 employees, and OTP’s financials have also been revealed as well, which show profit before tax last year at £170,000 ($259,287) after various undisclosed adjustments.

Burst agreed to pay a total of nearly £3 ($4.5 million) if OTP’s profit before tax reaches £205,000 ($313,000) in 2010 and £375,000 ($572,078) in 2011.

Chief Executive Officers Jarvis Cocker said, “We look forward to the success that is possible backed by a proven offering and the industry’s leading salespeople.”

In Q4 of 2009, Burst Media acquired Giant Realm and paid a reported $2.1 million on the acquisition.  According to Brand Republic, about $11 million, or 42%, of its capital has been spent, but as of December 2009, Burst still had $5.7 million in the bank.

According to a report released by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Q4 2009 was the largest quarter on record for U.S. online advertising, surpassing $6.3 billion.

U.S. online advertising spending during the recession last year in the fourth quarter of 2009 increased 2.6 percent, and was up 13.8 percent from the previous quarter.  The industry revenue for the year as a whole was down 3.4 percent to $22.7 billion.  2009 was the first year of declining revenue since 2001.

Here’s how that $22.7 billion broke down by advertising category:

• Search: $10.7 billion (47 percent)
• Display: $8 billion (35 percent)
• Classifieds: $2.3 billion (10 percent)
• Lead Generation: $1.5 billion (6 percent)
• Email marketing: $292 million (1 percent)

The strength of display advertising came from video ads, which reached $1 billion and accounted for 4 percent of the total ad spend. In the fourth quarter, video ads made up 5 percent of the overall pie.

TechCrunch has reported that Burst Media has acquired the U.K. based ad sales rep firm OTP Media (OTP).  Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

OTP Media is one of the largest online advertising networks in the U.K. and focused on premium advertising for various verticals that include parenting, automotive, sport, food and entertainment.

Burst recently acquired Giant Realm for $2.1 million in stock and cash in October of 2009.

CPX Interactive’s EVP of Technology, Sid Fein, will present at this year’s SugarCon event in San Francisco, being held April 12-14.  SugarCon 2010 unites CRM customers and developers with companies and projects committed to building open business applications for the Cloud.  Sid will lead the discussion on using Sugar as a transactional platform.  Read more here.

Ad Ops Online reports that ContextWeb has named Timothy L. Murray as their new CEO.  Murray will replace Anand Subramanian, who remains as remains with ContextWeb as Chairman and President of the ADSDAQ ad exchange.  Read more here.

Mediapost reports that Rubicon Project has hired Allen & Company to help finance expansion and possible acquisitions. Prior to hiring Allen & Company, Rubicon raised a total of $42 million in venture funding to fuel various growth initiatives, including strategic acquisitions, research and development, infrastructure and international expansion.  Hiring Allen & Company is a likely sign that Rubicon Project has aspirations for a future IPO versus M&A exit, not to mention their recent criticism of Google’s DoubleClick ad serving solutions for failing to measure up to its own “publisher-centric” standards.

Rubicon Project also announced two key hires in Ben Trenda as vice president of U.S. Demand, and Eric Matza as director of product marketing.  Read more here.

Paidcontent reports that Brightcove has raised $12 million from Accel in their latest financing.  Jim Breyer of Accel Partners told the WSJ that they approached Brightcove about the possibility of providing more cash to expand their operations and infrastructure into Asia and Europe.  CEO Jeremy Allaire told Paidcontent that Brightcove has been profitable for over a year and that they’re looking towards a 2011 IPO.

Reports have pegged Brightcove’s revenue at $80 million, up 50% from a year ago according to Paidcontent.  This latest $12 million round brings the total funding into Brightcove over $103 million.

Interestingly, Michael Arrington posted a round table discussion yesterday with Ron Conway, Marc Andreessen and David Hornik about the recent rising valuations for startups.  In the discussion the VC’s explained why valuations have continued to rise during the recession, which according to David Hornik are mostly driven by the fact that the top tier firms want to bet on “winners” and companies that will go the distance and show their LP’s a favorable return.  We’re heading towards a hot technology IPO market in 2011 to 2012, and it appears Brightcove will be joining the crowd of potential IPO’s like Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga and others.

Editors Note: In this guest post Ariel Wada describes the shift in ad dialogues, moving communications from 90-10 to 50-50.  Ariel is the CEO of Pure Verticals, a start-up that delivers smart commerce solutions in the new world of social.

As brands spend billions of dollars trying to get the attention of the consumer with random ad placement into “slots”, using targeting approaches that are invisible, beyond consumer control and many times repugnant to their Web 2.0 sensibilities, consumers are busy educating and entertaining themselves with online engagement. It appears they are no longer going to the brand for information about the product and they are no longer valuing the advertising slots. They are going to each other about purchasing decisions and they are doing this whether we acknowledge it or not. Consumer consumption is now largely based on peer recommendations, reviews, and real experience.

Interesting technologies have been deployed lately that hope to leverage (harness) all the power and influence of social and UGC – automated alignment, user-controlled, etc – the list is growing, but is the technology going in the right direction?

I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this movement (or trend/wave, depending on your stance). Exciting times, to be sure!

Ariel Wada

According to ecorazzi, as of March 31, 2010, Gaiam has announced that they’ve closed their green LIME ad network. Gaiam acquired LIME in 2007, which at the time was majority owned by AOL founder Steve Case.  In May 2007, they launched the first ad network dedicated to green living and the LOHAS movement.  After digging around, it does appear they still have a LIME Ad Network website still online, perhaps this will be taken down shortly.

According to their site, they describe themselves as:

The LIME Network is a collection of websites and blogs each have their own established audience and voice; all which keep in line with LIME’s brand and mission.

The LIME Ad Network helped green advertisers reach green websites.  At one point, LIME Ad Network was the leading green ad network.

Gaiam is also shutting down Gaia.com, a fourt year old social networking site.  As their site says “Thought its been an incredible four years, due to current economic conditions, Gaia Community has become simply too much to support.  As of the end of this month, I’ll be leaving, off to an overdue break, a new business venture, and a few adventures abroad, and the site will be shutting down”

The green vertical should be a strong ad network vertical, so this is a surprising outcome.  Based on the public statement by Gaiam, perhaps focus was more of an issue than the economy and the vertical.  A few remaining green networks include Matter Network, SustainLane and Natural Path Media.