Adgully Exclusive | Vdopia is the leader In terms of monetizing professionally produced content: Vdopia Inc's Debadutta Upadhyaya

Vdopia Inc. has been a pioneer in mobile and online video advertising. It enables major brands to engage their desired audience in premium content environments around the world. Vdopia aims to meet the needs of leading brands to deliver video advertising to their key targets, in the digital environments where these targets are already consuming high-quality content, introduced video advertising to mobile devices and is the only provider of auto-play video ads running across both apps and the mobile web.

ComScore, Inc. the global leader in measuring the digital world through digital marketing intelligence has released the Video Metrix which confirmed Vdopia's leadership position in online video advertising domain in the India in terms of professionally produced content. Originated from the Indian content publisher sites, the data was released towards the end of 2011.

Speaking exclusively with Adgully, Debadutta Upadhyaya, VP-APAC, Vdopia Inc shared the rise of video advertising and Vdopia's role in that direction

Speaking about the performance of vdopia at ComScore, she said, "The common knowledge was already there that Vdopia is the leader in terms of monetizing professionally produced content, which means the content that has been developed or made for the web and not UGC. I think that perception was already there but as a company it is sensible to always have a third party validation and ComScore being the leaders in this space, we started working with them and felt it was the best place where we could get Vdopia registered. Obviously it took time but it justified whatever the perception was so far regarding our position today."

Upadhyaya said, "As per the ComScore report we are just after Google. And Google or YouTube for that matter, the substantial part of their content that is UGC driven whereas network like us, we aggregate video content inventory from a lot of sites which are professionally producing video content and then we sell that content in the market. So as a leader in that particular space and from that sense, yes it ratifies what we have believed and the market has perceived."

Sharing the trends for 2012, she said, "The first trend would be that there would be a substantial shift in the display revenue which will go towards more Video media and there is a basis of that. As people are becoming attuned to what digital and video brings in to the platform marketers are very comfortable in stepping towards video ads. The reasons for this could be; one being the availability of the material, second what is making it more interesting is the analytics that comes with it and third would be the engagement."

It is fair enough to say that video as a format itself so engaging in terms of communicating. The impact that a video has in terms of communication is far better that any medium.

She said, "The above mentioned three things would propel the growth and also the consumption itself has gone up. Like if you look at our network itself, we have had 150% growth in terms of consumption, from last year to this year. And I think in the coming year video should grow at the pace of 50 to 60%."

Speaking about the challenges, Upadhyaya said, "There have been a lot of challenges but more in terms of perception, as in, who watches videos and who does not. Then there were band width issue and much more. But when we started operations, we actually went into the market with a product that was a new entrant in the Indian market."

The advantage for them was that they were actually looking into launching something new in the market so there was a novelty element to it. From pre-road part they moved on to launching the video format, then live-streaming and now they moved on to the Mobile part of it. Whatever is the case, Vdopia has always been seen doing unique and innovative things in the space; obviously this could only happen after a thorough research and after understanding the willingness of the audience.

Having said that, as far as the web part is concerned, the company seems to be settled in terms of how things work out in that space, but in the Mobile part due to 3G coming in, it has not taken as it was anticipated which is expected to get settled in coming time. She says, "But the best part was that after the launch of the Mobile product in terms of cost factor we were able to capitalize almost around 10x of what the market was giving."

As per the ComScore study, Vdopia is No.3 in the Top 100 Video properties in India and the 2nd largest video network in India. Vdopia has more than 8mn visitors out of total 30 mn unique video views across its extensive network of India specific publisher sites. Vdopia is the largest digital video advertising network for online video ads placed inside the professionally produced content that brands and users crave for. | By Aanchal Kohli [aanchal(at)adgully.com]