Q&A Interview with Alex Liverant of AnyClip

Alex Liverant, CTO at AnyClip Media, was a very early adopter of technology. He received his first computer, an Atari, at age six along with some programming books. He began working professionally at age 15, coding custom applications for different organization. After building next-generation command & control software for the Israeli army, and then a stint at Shopping.com, Liverant was asked to join the advisory board of AnyClip. About a year ago, he was appointed Chief Technology Officer there.

CW: How did you first discover the problems associated with ad delivery location?

AL: In 2007 a friend of mine from Technion, named Oren Netzer, came to me with a problem he had. He had been working for an ad serving company called CheckM8, and had been frequently traveling between Israel and the US. He found that no matter where he was on the globe, he saw the same ads that were appearing in the US i.e. Toyota New York or Verizon Wireless. He wanted me to check the severity of this problem, so I built crawlers that simulated visitors from around the world to visit the top 100,000 sites and measure ad viewability (below or above the fold). What we eventually discovered was amazing; more than 30 percent of the ads were not showing in the right location or to the right person. This meant a whole 30 percent of any given campaign budget was going down the drain.

CW: What were the next steps?

AL: This discovery led to the founding of DoubleVerify in 2008. In a few short years, we grew from a 2 person operation to a major company monitoring billions of ads per day. It is currently seen as a leader in online media verification and campaign effectiveness for marketers, advertisers, and publishers.

CW: Tell me about AnyClip Media.

AL: I was asked to join AnyClip Media’s advisory board by Oren Nauman, its CEO. A couple of months passed before I was appointed CTO. I was amazed by AnyClip’s technology and vision after being exposed to its massive library of content, the amount of data it collected from users, and the way people interacted with its video players. I had long discussions with Oren about where the company going, and together, we outlined a detailed roadmap that I have been working on implementing since building up the tech team, operations and platforms.

CW: Give me some predictions about the media landscape over the next three to five years.

AL: Currently, video is at the point where display was 4 years ago. In 3-5 years, I think most advertising will be video-based, fully transparent, and with little to no fraudulent activity. Users will get content that is relevant and targeted directly to them instead of being bugged by irrelevant messages. Content marketing efforts will rise in popularity, driving the media landscape and replacing current methods like pre-roll video. Viewable impressions will become the correct currency of measurement when analyzing campaign effectiveness. Most importantly, User effectiveness will drive the market as more content is delivered to the right users at the right time at the right place.