blinkx Unveils the Un-roll Unit, A Unique, Immersive Approach to Online Video Advertising

blinkx Unveils the Un-roll Unit, A Unique, Immersive Approach to Online Video
Advertising
MediaCom and Shell Oil leverage the Un-roll to tell Shell's alternative energy
story to the world

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- blinkx, the world's largest video
search engine, today introduced the Un-roll Unit, an entirely new and
immersive branding experience that gives advertisers the unique opportunity to
tell a compelling story through their brand and online television, and enables
users to engage with a brand continuously throughout a video. In addition,
MediaCom and Shell Oil are among the first agencies and brands, respectively,
to deploy the new ad format.
A media first, the Un-roll was developed in-house by blinkx in response to
the industry's need for an alternative format to traditional pre- and
post-roll advertisements. Available through blinkx AdHoc, the only contextual
advertising platform for online video, the Un-roll integrates a brand with
relevant, professionally-produced programming on the Web and serves up
multiple touch-points, including contextual overlay ads and logos, throughout
the viewing experience. This ability to weave a brand into online television
is extremely powerful, not only in terms of enhancing viewer experience, but
also in generating higher rates of engagement.
The Un-Roll in Action
-- The unit begins with a branded curtain that draws back to reveal the
video and a branded blinkx video player when the video has fully buffered.
-- As the video plays, touch-points such as overlay ads and logos appear
at contextually relevant moments within the video, generated by blinkx's
patented, award-winning technology.
-- The video ends with a clear call-to-action and the viewer has the
option to continue the experience on the brand's Web site.
"We're proud to offer our advertisers a unique and effective alternative
to traditional pre- and post-roll video advertising," said Suranga
Chandratillake, founder and CEO, blinkx. "Although click-through rates for
pre-roll advertisements tend to be positive, some viewers are reluctant to
watch 30 seconds of advertising for videos that sometimes last only one
minute. Now, using the Un-roll, brands and agencies, like Shell and MediaCom,
can tell their story through highly targeted advertisements within online
television because blinkx technology understands video better than any other
service available today."
Shell Oil - in search of stronger online engagement around alternative
energy
Shell's goal was to establish an effective mechanism for communicating
their alternative energy initiatives to international audiences.
"The exponential growth of online video -- both long- and short-form --
presents tremendous opportunities for advertisers and publishers alike. The
blinkx Un-roll unit is a new format to the market that provides high impact
branding in and around online video content, complete with a return path to
garner response," said Stefan Bardega, director of Digital, MediaCom, Shell's
digital media agency. "These types of formats are the future of online video
advertising and will become more ubiquitous than the traditional online 'pre-
roll' ad, which affords no interactivity. Both MediaCom and Shell have a rich
history of innovation and we are pleased to be driving this digital innovation
online with blinkx."
blinkx engineers tested approximately 40 different formats before settling
on the Un-roll format, which had the lowest "annoyance factor" and strongest
brand identity stickiness. In tests, the Un-roll format maintained between two
and 12 percent click-through rates, and less than 20 percent of users clicked
away from the video before it was finished. Only 15 percent clicked away
because of an ad. blinkx estimates that the format will maintain a three to
five percent click-through rate over time.
Additional blinkx partners will be deploying similar campaigns in the
coming weeks and months. The new ad unit is timely as the blinkx network
continues to expand significantly. As reported during its most recent half-
year results, unique visitors were up 106 percent year-on-year to 64 million,
and pageviews were up 267 percent year-on-year to 668 million in September
2008 (comScore). blinkx returned more than 7 million searches a day in
September 2008.
As the pioneer in video search technology, blinkx has built a reputation
as the smartest way to search new forms of online content such as video. With
more than 420 partners and 32 million hours of indexed video and audio
content, including favorite TV moments, news clips, short documentaries, music
videos, video blogs and more, blinkx uses advanced speech-recognition
technology to deliver results that are more accurate and reliable than
standard metadata-based keyword searches.
To see the Un-roll in action, visit
http://www.blinkx.com/category/shell_unroll_demo.

About blinkx
blinkx plc (LSE AIM: BLNX) is the world's largest and most advanced video
search engine. Today, blinkx has indexed more than 32 million hours of audio,
video, viral and TV content, and made it fully searchable and available on
demand. blinkx's founders set out to solve a significant challenge -- as TV
and user-generated content on the Web explode, keyword-based search
technologies only scratch the surface. blinkx's patented search technologies
listen to -- and even see -- the Web, helping users enjoy a breadth and
accuracy of search results not available elsewhere. In addition, blinkx powers
the video search for many of the world's most frequented sites. blinkx is
based in San Francisco and London. More information is available at
http://www.blinkx.com.
SOURCE blinkx

Tim Turpin of Sparkpr, +1-415-321-1894, tim.turpin@sparkpr.com; or Adrie
Wessels of Bite Communications, +44 (0)20 8834 3474, Adrie.Wessels@bitepr.com,
both for blinkx; or NOMAD, Charles Lytle of Citi