What is Tremor Media?
After uploading close to 50 3D animations for one of my other properties (WoodMarvels.com) using Revver, I heard about Tremor Media… to put a long story short, I asked Mr. Kronengold, the director of Corporate Communications at Tremor Media, how different Tremor Media is compared to YouTube and Rever. At first, I though they where yet another video site but he set me straight 
Background information
Tremor is an independent, Venture Capital (Canaan Partners and Masthead Venture Partners) backed online advertising video network that specializes in pre-roll, video-in-banner and other format of monetizing online videos submitted to them. These beginnings are similar to both YouTube and Revver except for one glaring difference, they aren’t a “social video” warehouse like the other two, they concentrate squarely on the monetizing aspect of video content. In this way, they could actually work hand-in-hand with Revver and YouTube, though these companies already have internal plans on doing so (YouTube after being acquired by Google).
Video Quality
As I wrote a few articles back, Revver has great video quality while YouTube absolutely sucks. Tremor tells me its got the best video encoding technology out there. They have their own platform called Ad-inStream which enables publishers to serve their own video content, manage playlists, build business rules around content for serving ads and creating media RSS feeds but they don’t offer individuals a tool for uploading their own personal videos to host or share. Their focus is on corporate, not anybody with a video but just looking at the samples on their site… the quality is amazing.
Interactivity and Sharing
Both YouTube and Revver allow commenting of their videos and embeddable technology that allows you to share your video even outside of their respective sites. Although Tremor isn’t focused on the social video aspect of the industry, it does work with marketers in leveraging the social media space through branded widgets and content integration. Advertising in the social media landscape is just one of the many services that they offer our clients.
Revenue Sharing
Revver is build on a revenue sharing platform, YouTube is slowly getting there and Tremor has no interest in going there at all. Again, Tremor’s roots are not in social video like the other two but instead, on creating a platform that allows advertisers to purchase ads on the Tremor network in either pre-roll or in-banner media. Revver shares money with both content producers and “sharers” while Tremor shares revenue only with the publisher where the ads end up appearing.
Advertiser Targeting
From what I can see and experienced, each ad network has a very complex system that targets ads to a specific demographic that the advertisers is searching to hit. Although Google is secretive and Revver is no different, Tremor did tell me they have a combination of behavioral targeting, contextual targeting, standard channels, geography, day-part, browser type, operating system and connection speed targeting. The difference is that unlike Revver or YouTube, Tremor will actually build a custom channel that reaches the exact audience that the advertiser, unlike the other two that simply rely on what the customer submits to automate this process.
Vetting and Click-Fraud Prevention
If you have a pulse, YouTube will accept your videos, that’s why it’s so full of video garbage while Revver actually reviews each video to make sure it meets a certain standard of quality. Tremor takes this one step further by vetting all publishers on their network to make sure they have high quality (unique) content, enjoyable user experience and ad-friendliness. For instance, I can stick a YouTube or Revver embeddable video on the most horrible site on the internet without raising an eyebrow while Tremor finds this completely unacceptable. All three sites so share a number of automatic and common sense measures to reduce the occurrence of Click-Fraud.
Conclusion
While YouTube and Revver are social video sites, Tremor is a video ad network… I guess you learn something new everyday!
The Bottom Line
Advertisers, Publishers, Producers all have the same mission, to get the word out.
Buzvia: Tremor Media, Youtube.com, Revver.com, WoodMarvels.com
