In 2013, when Kate Middleton gave birth to the first new royal in decades, television network the CW bought inventory surrounding to the royal baby to promote their new television show called Reign through a service provided by online ad platform GumGum. At the bottom of pictures with the princess and her new son, an ad would appear with an option to click through to view a preview for the new television series. This is an example of in-image advertising and how GumGum is harnessing the vast number of images on the web to promote its client’s products and services.
GumGum, an online advertising platform that boasts more than 300 million unique visitors a month, said it created the space called in-image advertising with the basic idea that, for advertising to be effective, it needs to be seen. Using pictures already on the web, the company can tap into relevant markets for a more engaging user experience.
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An example of in-image advertising
SVP of Marketing Tony Winders said he thinks a lot about metrics. The old model of impressions served he says is outdated, since 54 percent of those so-called impressions are not actually viewed by people (and presumably, people, not other computers, are the target of any online advertising campaign). His company prefers impressions viewable; a metric that is more likely to capture whether a human viewer saw the advertisement.
“For too long [the industry] relied on click-through as a proxy for engagement when in fact so much else is going on,” said Winders. He’s not alone in this, in fact, an entire group – Making Measurement Make Sense – is dedicated to changing the way the industry measures impressions.
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An example of in-screen advertising
And now, GumGum is looking at data that suggests more than half of internet traffic is going to be mobile. Winders says the advertising market is shifting in that direction and that his company is figuring out how to tell stories on a smaller screen that aren’t disruptive.
The move towards mobile “feels a lot like the first kind of web rush in the mid nineties, in lots of ways,” said Winders. Listening, you can hear the excitement in his voice when he talks about shift and the technology the company uses. In a recent project, the GumGum team of image scientists used facial recognition technology to see what celebrity faces were best suited to turn their eyes green. This was for a project on "Witches of the East End."
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The science behind GumGum’s work for "Witches of the East End"
According to Winders, here are three things to know about in-image advertising:
First, it gets seen. With more than 1,000 publisher websites and 70 million unique visits a month in the U.S., putting ads in pictures boosts exposure. This helps GumGum outperform benchmarks for ad networks by nearly 20 percent, according to work performed by DoubleVerify.
Second, its contextually relevant. This means advertisers are targeting people who show an interest in their field. Recently the company sold inventory around the Oscars. According to Winders, it’s a great way to extend exposure around a single event, because beyond the 30 second commercial spot, there will be weeks of pictures leading up to and after the event.
Third, its scalable. Winders said there is enough brand-safe image inventory to consider moving into the space. For big brands, there's enough to dedicate significant budgets to it, upwards of millions.
The company saw phenomenal growth last year of 263 percent growth in revenue and expects similar, if not bigger, numbers this year.
GumGum expects to grow from 56 employees to 80 by the end of the year. Beyond their flagship office in the clock tower building in Santa Monica, the company has offices around the United States in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Detroit and Atlanta and partnerships in Canada, Latin America and the UK. The six-year-old company raised $10.8 million to date in funding.
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