The Future of Video Advertisement with Oz Etzioni

I had the pleasure of interviewing Oz Etzioni, CEO and co-founder of Clinch. After spending years leading user experience, design and innovation teams at major agencies, Oz founded Clinch to take advantage of the explosive growth in programmatic and address the need to provide data-driven video creative at scale. Today, Clinch is the only creative technology company to enable advertisers to use data to personalize videos regardless of platform to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time.

Chris: Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory” of how you become involved in the adtech or digital media space?

“After a decade in working at major agencies in creative innovation, I realized that big brands would pay a lot of money to explore big ideas but never execute any of them. One thing that became clear was the power and necessity for personalization. Personalization was already being done when it came to email marketing and display to some extent, but personalization of video at scale was a harder problem to solve. Together with my co-founders we set out to create a creative technology solution to turn video into a personalization platform.”

Chris: What do you think is the most interesting thing that has happened to the industry thus far?

“IOT — Internet of things. IOT provides the ability for us to communicate with our products/objects/accessories and for them to communicate between themselves and with our daily consumption and routine infrastructure and services. The different virtual assistant and connected devices are just the tip of the iceberg; all the different dots are slowly connecting and being able to interact with each other. Because of this there are endless opportunities across all industries including digital marketing and advertising that lead to more personalized and customized experiences tailored to individuals’ preferences and habits.”

Chris: What are your “5 things you think will change or should change over the next 5 years in adtech and digital publishing” and why?

“1. There will only be 3 or 4 main demand side platforms (DSPs) remaining and media buying and targeting will become a commodity.

2. Data-driven personalization will become the norm for all campaigns throughout the funnel across all industries.

3. Traditional ad formats (16:9 videos, banner ads, etc.) will go by the wayside and allow more room and budget for more experience-based formats like Instagram stories, canvas and vertical videos.

4. “The All-in-one Provider” will emerge. Brands and clients will aspire to consolidate and minimize the number of providers/ agencies they work with. All-in-one turn-key solution providers will emerge that can unify and streamline the data collected and analyzed and the creative executions throughout all the touch points with their current and por-spot customers. Media buying middlemen/mediators companies will disappear, one-dimensional companies (video only, display only, social only, etc.) and agencies will (once again) consolidate to all-in-one service providers.

5. Mobile Video advertising: Desktop will become an irrelevant channel to target ultimately allowing for a complete domination of mobile, especially for video advertising.”

Chris: Tell us something you or your company is doing to stay up to date in adtech (maybe making changes to comply with Better Ads Standards or GDPR, working on your header bidding stack or testing new types of ads)

“We are working to provide an All-in-One Personalization solution for brands and agencies for scalable ROI throughout the funnel. That means all distribution channels (programmatic, social, OTT, Connected TV) and all formats (video, display, in-banner video, in all ad units available). This way brands have one point of contact that can unify the data and creative for them across all campaigns and help them build better data sets, CRM and user experiences.”

Chris: Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why?

“I would have a private breakfast with Michael Jordan because I am a huge Chicago Bulls fan and he is my idol.”