Branded video has evolved from a “post and hope” approach to a data-driven strategy, says Mark Book, VP and Director of Social Content at Digitas LBi, in an interview with Elaine Boxer, Director of Industry Initiatives at the IAB.

“It’s about using data to be strategic about how you reach people in a contextual way,” he says. Next up for branded video will be a more audience-driven approach in tandem with publishers, he says. Key to this strategy is working with publishing partners to better understand what their audiences want.

“We are partnering with publishers to understand throughout the production process how to create and distribute so we know who we are reaching, and producing the creative for the campaign to run natively,” he says. As an example, Digitas has worked closely with the social viral platform Upworthy to dig into the ideal duration, emotion and types of video to best reach consumers.

Book was interviewed earlier this month at the Beet.TV video summit about video advertising outside of the pre-roll.  The event was presented by Teads.