Matthew Fiorentino, the company’s director of marketing, explained that the firm had been “kind of pushed” into a consultancy role by clients who wanted to know not just how their online video ads had performed but how they could optimise that performance.

With its trends database aggregating and benchmarking the performance of hundreds of campaigns across social media channels, publishers and ad networks, Fiorentino said: “We have a really good sense of what works and what doesn’t.”

Viewable Media, the new ad network, allows advertisers to buy “user-initiated views” in social video. Web users are presented with a choice of ads to watch, matched to the video content the web user is already viewing. Ads can also be shared to drive “endorsed brand reach”.

Fiorentino quotes research from Vivaki’s The Pool initiative, which found that letting audiences choose which ads they want to watch increases brand lift metrics up to 450%.

Viewable Media’s research data will be provided by Visible Measures, with the company following a “church and state approach” to keeping the businesses separate of each other, Fiorentino said.

Tremor Media’s former vice president of brand platform Steven Carter has been brought in to lead Viewable Media as general manager.

CEO Brian Shin (pictured) said: “The advertising industry has recognised Visible Measures as the leaders in social video advertising and measurement and has been looking to us for a better way to drive brand reach and lift for years now. With Steve at the helm of Viewable Media, we can emphatically answer advertisers’ call for a viable and scalable solution for social video advertising.”