Back in 2012, before the words \u201csafe environment\u201d for digital video became industry mantra, a company called Outrigger Media launched OpenSlate. It was a tool to help advertisers target the long tail of video production.<\/p>\n
Among other things, the company knew \u201cthere would come a time in an industry that got hyper focused on audience and eyeballs and finding the right human that context would matter again someday,\u201d says JoAnna Foyle, COO of the company now known as OpenSlate.<\/p>\n
Given the recent and widespread advertiser backlash against their ads appearing alongside objectionable video content on places like YouTube, context has indeed arrived front and center.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur whole mission in life became how do we create an analytics system leveraging all of the ingested meta data from every scrap of videos that have ad opportunities on them,\u201d Foyle recalls in this interview with Beet.TV.<\/p>\n
This no small task considering there are 300 million videos on YouTube with ad opportunities. OpenSlate\u2019s platform analyzes and scores YouTube content on quality, brand safety, subject matter expertise and audience.<\/p>\n
In essence, OpenSlate<\/a> helps brands create \u201ca safe version of YouTube,\u201d one that is tailored to their audience targets and objectives, according to Foyle.<\/p>\n The company scored a major coup in March of this year as brands began to flee some video platforms by partnering with WPP\u2019s media investment management unit GroupM. As the companies announced<\/a> at the time, their effort was aimed at providing GroupM clients \u201cadditional controls and content safeguards\u201d to support their YouTube buys.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re talking to a number of the other holding companies,\u201d says Foyle.<\/p>\n