CHICAGO — Advertisers are finding it easier to use online video like conventional static display ads – because specific targeting through video remains challenging, according to one ad data exec.

“People think about display as ‘top of funnel’ and ‘bottom of funnel’ – branding and direct response,” eXelate marketing chief Khurrum Malik tells Beet.TV in this video interview.

“With video, it’s very ‘top of funnel’ right now. Data is being utilised from a demo perspective a lot – age and gender is really powering a lot of video targeting. If you go too far down the funnel in video right now, the inventory gets really small.

“We’re seeing people staying at the top of the funnel, using demo data, because that’s where they get most reach.”

“Video is much deeper immersion – people are having a hard time getting direct response from it. So we’re staying at the top of the funnel for online video.”

One of the biggest current industry efforts is using data to help video ads reach specific audiences in the same way web display ads do nowadays. Exelate itself specializes in providing demographic data and analytics to advertisers.

We interviewed eXelate’s Malik earlier this month at the Beet.TV programmatic video advertising summit, where is was speaker