biddeo

The LAIAKids Awards

April 10, 2024 by Laura Morales

Biddeo.io, Kimia Group’s leading video ad tech, celebrated last Thursday (04/04) in Madrid the first edition of the LAIAKids Awards, an event aimed at recognizing excellence in advertising targeted at children in YouTube campaigns.

The event, held in collaboration with Nebrija University, brought together prominent figures from the advertising and children’s entertainment industry. Brands were honored in three distinct categories:

YouTube Channel with the Highest Advertising Relevance: the winner was Pica Pica, a music and theatre channel.
Best Child/Family-oriented Advertising Spot: Disney secured this award, as chosen by students from Nebrija University’s master’s degree program in Ad Directing.
Referent YouTube Channel in Divulgation and Values: Fundación Aladina received recognition for its unwavering commitment to supporting children with cancer and their families.

As their award, Biddeo made a donation to Fundación Aladina on behalf of the winners in the other two categories.

CTV inventory

Additionally, Biddeo also announced its new children’s advertising inventory, which encompasses more than 20 Connected TV (CTV) channels. This development represents a significant step in the expansion of its services, offering advertisers greater options to reach children’s audiences effectively and safely.

This development represents a significant stride in expanding its services, providing advertisers with enhanced options to effectively and safely reach young audiences.

Carlos Molina, CEO of Biddeo, expressed his enthusiasm: “We are thrilled to recognize and celebrate the talent and creativity behind children’s video advertising. The LAIAKids Awards not only highlight outstanding achievements in the field but also allow us to showcase our company’s latest developments and demonstrate how we can elevate video advertising.”

The inaugural LAIAKids Awards serve as a milestone for Biddeo, emphasizing the importance and quality of advertising directed at children while fostering a positive impact. If you want to learn more, click here.

Marketing trends for 2024

January 19, 2024 by Laura Morales

As 2024 begins, the media and advertising landscape continues to change, but we’ve compiled some of the main advertising trends to watch out for this year.

Adoption of new CTV ad formats

Connected TV (CTV) will provide the opportunity for enhanced commercial messaging and new and improved ad formats. Instead of having to choose between 30-second and 60-second video ads as the only ad formats available, the doors will open to greater freedom with brand sponsorship opportunities.

Goodbye to generalized AI

Just as the Internet split from large portals to niche websites and then to apps, AI will follow the same path. Instead of relying on broad applications like ChatGPT, we will leverage the large language models (LLMs) behind them to create personalized applications for marketing and client experience.

Creativity takes center stage

2024 will be a tipping point where creativity will become the primary variable in campaigns. This year we’ll see marketers investing in more creative ad tech tools, joining the 79% of advertisers who see creative personalization as essential (according to a report by Flashtalking).

Technology leads the way

During 2023, the use of technology for campaign optimization already played an essential role. Now the use of machine learning and AI to improve digital campaigns’ performance will consolidate itself as a must for any advertising agency.

Staying updated and striving for constant improvement and innovation has become crucial for campaign management in the digital world.

At Kimia Group, our companies aren’t afraid of taking the next step: Tidart and Biddeo, our advertising agencies, incorporate technology as one of their main assets. Whether it is to manage DOOH, performance and branding campaigns, when it comes to the former; or to manage video and CTV campaigns, when it comes to the latter.

The main KPIs for your video campaigns

August 2, 2023 by Laura Morales

In the fast-paced world of online marketing, constant measurings through different KPIs are essential to let us know what is working and what isn’t in our digital marketing strategies.

Therefore, the right use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is crucial. Diego Rayón, Biddeo’s CCMO, tells us that, by leveraging specific KPIs, you can gain valuable insights into the performance of your online marketing campaigns. So let’s dive into the KPIs the Biddeo team considers vital to evaluate a video campaign’s performance!

Impressions & CPM

When measuring performance, it’s all about views. But not only do we want to know the number of times users watch a video, we also want to know the “quality” of those views: how long do they watch it for, do they interact with it, when do they interact, etc.

To give us part of that information, we have to start with impressions: the number of times a campaign appears in a user’s timeline, it tells us how many people the campaign is reaching, how many people it is visible to.

The number of impressions is important to determine the CPM, the cost per thousand impressions, which is how much an advertiser pays for a thousand impressions of their ad.

“When a campaign focuses on impressions [typically branding campaigns], the objective is to achieve maximum coverage. In other words, the priority is for the ad to reach as many people as possible, regardless of whether they watch or not the complete ad”, explained Diego. He highlighted that, currently, Biddeo’s technology can lead to a 600% reach increase.

VTR & CPV

Sometimes, however, reach isn’t as important as the quality of the views the campaign is receiving. To measure quality, Biddeo uses the view-through rate (VTR): a KPI that indicates the percentage of people who have chosen not to skip your video ad, watching it throughout its duration, which can vary depending on the platform (while Google’s default view duration is 30 seconds of an ad, Twitter’s is 15 seconds). This KPI attests directly to an ad’s effectiveness.

Just like impressions are used to calculate CPM, VTR is used to calculate CPV: the cost per each view that reaches the default view duration. That is, how much advertisers pay for actual quality views of their ad.

The higher the VTR, the cheaper the CPV will be – which is an advertiser’s main goal -, since this pricing model is calculated by dividing a campaign’s total cost or budget, by the VTR.

At Biddeo, the average VTR percentage of the video campaigns managed is 70%, which means “we are successful at impacting audiences that are truly interested in our advertisers’ ads, ensuring the lowest CPVs”, added the CCMO.

Constantly monitoring and fine-tuning campaigns based on the right KPIs, according to your goals, leads to meaningful results, conversions, and brand loyalty.

If that’s something you’re interested in, then learn more about Biddeo by checking their website here. Also, don’t forget to follow them on social media.

Meet Álvaro Salinas, Biddeo’s CTO

May 3, 2023 by Camila Alvarenga

“I could work in Kimia all my life”, that’s what Álvaro Salinas, Biddeo’s CTO, emphasizes when talking about his path within the Group.

One of our longest-serving employees, Álvaro started in Kimia 13 years ago as a programmer, when the company wasn’t even a group yet, and had its main office in a flat in the center of Madrid. Now he’s CTO of one of our most promising companies and manages a group of six “techies”.

Get to know his journey

Let’s go back in time. Before you arrived at Kimia, what had been your trajectory?

Well, I started working in 1999. My first job was assembling computers in Torrejon de Ardoz, which is where I come from, but I was quite clumsy with my hands so I wanted to do something different. I got into programming, which, at the time, was an unknown world. But it quickly grew and became more important. I found myself working for important companies even before finishing college.

And how did you end up in Kimia?

I was working at Amena [a Spanish telecom company] at the time, as Software Sharings Manager. I had been working there for five years, when I met one of Kimia’s ex-partners and one of its ex-co-owners, shortly after its foundation. They came to Amena as consultants and eventually asked to interview me for Kimia.

Suddenly I was programming from a flat, developing mobile applications for the first smartphones on the market.

How do you remember that time?

It was very dynamic! From working a lot in apps we went to portals, and all that meant a lot of money for the whole company. But then, because of the regulations that started being passed, our profits dropped severely. Many of my colleagues left Kimia.

Throughout my years here we’ve seen very high highs, and very low lows, always adapting and changing. And that taught me what today I think is my best quality: I may not be the most intelligent or the most creative person in the room, but I adapt really really quickly to whatever change comes my way.

And how did you end up in Biddeo?

Time passed and eventually, Kimia got to a point where it became clear that it should become a group of companies rather than just one big company, to also position itself in markets outside of Spain. One of the first steps to get there was acquiring another company, and so Kimia acquired Msales.

Msales was a lot of work, and I started feeling a bit misplaced, like my time at Kimia was possibly coming to an end.

It’s true that I didn’t have vision at the time, I couldn’t see that Kimia was evolving into what it is today. I just wanted to leave. But I spoke to Iván [Carrillo, the Group’s Managing Partner] and Charly [Molina, CINO] and they had a cool project going on. It wasn’t even a company yet, they just wanted to improve this software they had in Tidart that optimized video campaigns, and they could use my help.

I jumped in and it turned out to be the best thing I ever did: it was like changing jobs without changing jobs.

So then what?

I became Tidart’s CTO and started developing the software that would later become Biddeo’s software. It was just a whisper at the time, kind of like a Tidart spin-off, but it was very exciting: we saw that we could optimize videos better than everyone else. So that made us realize that an independent company could be created from it. So Biddeo came to be and they turned me into its CTO as well.

Around eight months later I left Tidart to dedicate myself exclusively to Biddeo and other ad tech development projects. Tidart also needed exclusive attention that I couldn’t give, so we hired Estefanía [Morales, the agency’s CTO], and that was one of the best hires we ever did.

The Biddeo tech: building LAIA

Getting into Biddeo’s technology, how did it start?

We’ve always used, and keep using, Python as our programming language, but, in the beginning, it’s true that we had a very simple technology that has actually become a bit obsolete for what we need Biddeo’s platform to do nowadays.

The thing is, at Biddeo we manage large volumes of data. At first, it was fine to just monitor them for tendencies and insights, but, now, we really need to read that data. The only way to read it, being such a large volume, is through AI.

And that’s crazy. I never thought that I’d be working with artificial intelligence, but since we figured out that these systems can do much more than just create statistics – learn from videos, understand and isolate the elements of a photo – programming becomes a no-brainer. It’s something truly amazing, and also a bit scary.

What are you currently working on, then?

Right now, besides the normal flow of work here in Biddeo, we’ve been working for a few months now on LAIA. As you know, Biddeo’s main business line is to optimize video campaigns to make them more visible on the Internet with the best prices. Nowadays, companies want to be present on the Internet, but in a “gourmet”, surgical way.

Before if we would just get a video campaign and insert it in every video, but now advertisers want their ads to be featured in specific kinds of videos or don’t want them to show up in other types, but we can’t do that manually, it would take forever. That’s where LAIA comes in: she classifies and categorizes all of YouTube’s videos based on their description and what is said in their comment section. With that, we’re able to place a company’s ad exactly where they want it.

So, for example, if you’re selling shoes for kids, you might want your campaign to show in videos for children set outdoors. But let’s suppose that in one of them someone breaks their leg, that might not work for the advertiser anymore, we can filter that.

Does it have any similarity with ChatGPT?

Yes, they’re both language based. ChatGPT reads the internet to give you any and all kinds of answers, it’s like the sun, it’s huge. Our tool only reads YouTube and is much more precise.

And why is it called LAIA?

“La IA” [in Spanish, The AI]. Charly [Molina] and Diego [Rayón, Biddeo’s CCMO] came up with it.

Would you say that LAIA is the work of your life?

I mean, at least in terms of importance and scale it is. But, the truth is that, years ago, I spent four hours one night developing a system that divided information we collected between two databases because one alone couldn’t handle all the volume. I did it super fast, without really knowing what I was doing, after a long day of work, and we ended up using that system for four or five years. Although it didn’t have the same quality as other databases made by specialists in the matter – which I am not -, the fact that I did it in one night, exhausted, and that, not only it saved our day, but also ended up working for five years, was one of the coolest things I have ever made.

It’s true that LAIA is awesome, I even told my family about it, but I’ve made lots of really cool stuff in Kimia.

We already know that LAIA is the next big step for Biddeo but, what are the company’s long-term plans?

Well, we are in the process of internationalizing Biddeo, making it available for the whole world but with an emphasis on being close to the client, very much like a multi-tenant company. We just opened an office in Miami which is slowly growing so we are going in the right direction. Also, we hope to, at some point, get our hands on Smart TVs and streaming services.

If we get super ambitious, what would you like Biddeo to become?

Biddeo should grow into being the best ad tech in the world.

The Biddeo team

Let’s talk about the team behind Biddeo. Since you are mainly an ad tech company, are there more technology-focused people or…?

Well, it’s surprising, because not all of our members are tech-related. In our team, we have data scientists and programmers, as one would expect, but we also have people whose profiles are not exactly technological. We have a journalist, for example, who specializes on text processing and who is educating and training LAIA. I never thought I’d have these kinds of people in my team but I must say that it’s invigorating.

Your team knows you for your motto: “Taller towers have fallen”. Could you talk about that?

During all these years I’ve been in Kimia, I’ve seen us make a lot of money with a lot of clients, and I’ve seen it all vanish. That’s what the motto references to: I try to keep my feet on the ground even during times of success because I’ve seen bigger projects turn into dust in just a flick of an eye. I’ve seen taller towers fall.

Have you ever flipped that coin? That you’ve come out of deeper holes?

Yeah, but the Biddeo team consists of that type of really optimistic and happy people, so I’m the pessimist who balances it out.

Final thoughts

Now that you’ve told us everything, if you looked back on your journey, how would you think of it. You’ve been in Kimia for 13 years, it’s the job you’ve had the longest in your life, why?

Truth is at Kimia I feel at home. I’m not saying it’s perfect all the time, nothing is, but here I get to work with friends that have helped me when I needed to, in my job and in my personal life. We say that this is a family and it’s true.

I know that one day I won’t be here anymore, and if they decide at some point that it’s my time to leave, then I’ll accept it, but for now, this is a safe space for me, where I can be myself, where I can learn, work with an amazing team, get over the bad days together…

So, why 13 years? I mean, why not 20? I could work at Kimia all my life.

This chat is part of a series of interviews with our team. Click here to check out all of them so far.

Meet Diego Rayón, Biddeo’s CCMO

February 1, 2023 by Camila Alvarenga

“We can reduce a video campaign’s costs by up to 80%. For any video campaign done by any company, we can reduce their cost by 50 up to 80% thanks to our technology”, stressed Diego Rayón, Biddeo’s CCMO.

Biddeo is Kimia Group’s video advertising campaign optimization company, and Diego has been its CCMO almost since the very beginning, three years ago. Before joining us, he had vast experience working as Marketing Director for companies like 20th Century-Fox, Sony Pictures, and Universal Pictures.

“Actually, I was still working at 20th Century-Fox when I met Charly Molina [Kimia’s current CINO] at a business fair. He came to me as a provider and I was his client. We ended up working together and becoming friends. So when I told him I was leaving the movie industry, he recruited me for Kimia to start what today is Biddeo”, shared Diego.

So how was that beginning? You went from one side of the movie industry to the other.

I did. But it was like starting any other company, with a small team, except this time we had a technology that we knew worked well.

The thing was that I started on a Monday and the next Monday they put us under lockdown because of the pandemic. That was obviously bad from a business perspective, but it was very good to keep developing and refining our technology. We took advantage of the situation.

What makes Biddeo’s tech so good?

We can reduce a video campaign’s costs by up to 80%, which I think speaks for itself. And, I mean, the technology is great and it does its job, but we can’t rely only on what it does, or else we won’t grow. The key to our success is that we’re constantly improving it.

Now we’re developing LAIA, a video content recognition system. It’s a brand suitability tool, that monitors and recognizes video content to classify it, which later is confirmed by human verification, to guarantee a safe ad hoc environment for each brand.

So if a brand tells us, for example, that they don’t care how much their campaign will cost, reducing costs isn’t necessarily what they’re looking for, but they want to reach, specifically, a male audience of 25 to 35 years old, who likes cars and lives in Murcia [a region of Spain], and they don’t want their campaign showing up as an ad in any video that isn’t car-related. LAIA will be able to do that, to offer this almost surgical segmentation so that ads are placed where they are most effective and impact the right audience, shielding brands from having them appear in inappropriate content.

We have it under development already and we want to make it operational in march of this year.

Speaking of this year, what goals does Biddeo have?

Well, apart from LAIA, we want to keep pushing our internationalization process. Now we have an office in Italy and we plan on start operating very very soon in Miami, to reach the LATAM market. And, obviously, we want to continue expanding in Spain.

Also, we’re trying to get brand safety and brand suitability certifications. These actually are things we’re already doing, and it’s what LAIA is all about, but we want to get special certifications to really boost our tool.

And things are already working out for us! The year has only just begun and we’re already members of IAB Spain’s online video commission, and collaboration partners of AEA, the Spanish Association of Advertisers [a World Federation of Advertisers’ associate].

somos miembros de la comisión de video online de la IAB y socio colaborador de la asociación española de anunciantes?

Those are some bold goals and big changes, Biddeo is such a fast-growing company considering it’s only three years old…

Yes, in 2022 we actually grew 300% compared to the year before.

To what do you attribute those impressive results?

Honestly, there are two things that set us apart from everyone else: our technology, which allows scalability and is led by Alvaro Salinas, our CTO; and our service, led by Laura Ibañez, Lead Account Manager.

What clients want to see is that there is someone behind the tech providing them with a service, assisting them, answering their questions… They want follow-up reports, they want people who can catch any problems, and make changes and adjustments. And our differential is that we combine both things.

We take it very seriously, too. We have a Customer Service manual that every new person that joins Biddeo has to read because we want to standardize our service. We have a series of protocols that we adopt so that the client always knows what to expect from us.

So, considering everything, what makes you passionate about Biddeo? Which part of it do you enjoy the most?

Building a company from the ground up is always exciting, and so is its internationalization, and then there’s the bittersweet aspect of working with a digital business that not everyone enjoys: it never stops changing. Technology is constantly evolving and if you don’t adapt, don’t search for something new, you won’t make it. I, particularly, find that thrilling.

Until COVID hit, nothing had changed in the movie industry’s business model for the past 100 years. The only difference was that they used to “print” movies in roll films to then distribute them, and then they started distributing digital copies instead of physical rolls. The rest stayed the same. And this is nothing like it.

You start the business working on things you think you need and then new needs come along and you have to adjust. That’s very cool.

If want to know more about Biddeo, check out their website. Follow them on social media to get in on their latest updates!