'Net Features : online video advertising

Online Video Ad Budgets Growing Fast

Linc Wonham — Tue, 03 May 2011 15:00:00 GMT

Industry leader BrightRoll has released its third annual Online Video Advertising Report with new data that shows planned spending on online video is growing faster than all other online categories.

Findings from the previous two surveys highlighted online video as a rapidly emerging category, though respondents expressed concerns over the lack of well-defined success metrics and a shortage of accepted industry standards. Previous participants were also interested in better understanding online video’s ROI and more effectively leveraging the medium’s targeting capabilities.

This year’s survey found that the category is still seeing rapid growth and has now become a staple in the online ad buy. The rollout of mobile video inventory, increased adoption of industry standards and introduction of sophisticated targeting tools have all contributed to this growth.

Additional key findings from the report include the following:

• 28 percent of buyers revealed that they expect to see the greatest increase in ad spending in the online video category for 2011, followed by mobile video (27 percent) and social media (25 percent)

• 86 percent of respondents are shifting at least part of their display dollars over to video, while 64 percent plan to shift TV dollars to video; budgets are also migrating from search, social media and direct response, though in slightly more modest numbers at 28 percent, 27 percent and 26 percent, respectively

• Nearly two-thirds of respondents indicated that online video is equally as effective, if not more effective, than television advertising

• 41 percent of media buyers view targeting as online video advertising's greatest attribute, representing an increase of nine percentage points from 2010

• For the third year in a row, buying directly from online publishers was reported as the dominant means of purchasing inventory (52 percent), followed by ad networks (31 percent), broadcasters (10 percent), portals (6 percent) and ad exchanges (2 percent)

• 96 percent of respondents indicated that research into the efficacy of online video helps drive value for advertisers, though just 35 percent are conducting research of their own

“Looking over the results of this year’s survey, it’s clear that online video is fast becoming a fixture in the media buyer’s toolkit,” says BrightRoll CEO Tod Sacerdoti. “The industry continues to deliver improvements in campaign targeting, reporting and effectiveness. Our hope with this survey is that it will contribute to a growing body of research that helps underscore and validate the effectiveness of video’s ability to reach online audiences, while highlighting those areas that need to be addressed in order to continue to propel the category forward.”

Hulu Surpasses 1.2 Billion Monthly Video Ad Impressions

Linc Wonham — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 12:00:00 GMT

Americans viewed 5.9 billion video ads in December, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1.2 billion, according to Friday’s release of the comScore Video Metrix.

Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall (and highest among video ad networks) with 1.0 billion ad views, followed by ADAP.TV (682 million) and BrightRoll Video Network (588 million). Video ads reached 49 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 39.8 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 47.1 over the course of the month.

The top video ad networks in terms of their potential reach of the total U.S. population were Tremor Media at 51.4 percent, BrightRoll Video Network at 40.6 percent and Break Media at 39.7 percent. Nearly 85 percent (84.6) of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in the month of December.

Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube, ranked as the top online video content property in December with 144.8 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 53.1 million viewers.
The duration of the average online content video was 5.0 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes. Video ads accounted for 16.4 percent of all videos viewed and 1.6 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

An estimated 172 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in December for an average of 14.6 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in nearly 5.2 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month.

Hulu Will Be First to Launch New Video Ad Format

Linc Wonham — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 16:00:00 GMT

With online video gaining an increasingly bigger share of Internet users’ time and attention, online video advertisers find themselves at a critical turning point. A new technology developed by VivaKi may very well determine the course for the entire industry, especially since it is receiving significant support from many of the major Web video publishers.

Hulu, Yahoo and AOL are among the online video publishers that will be offering users the opportunity to choose which ads they watch before or during a video. Hulu will be the first to deploy the technology — called ASq — presently targeting a Sept. 15 launch date.

Instead of pre-determined pre-roll and mid-roll ads running automatically, the publishers will give users two or three options to choose from. The intention is to provide a better viewing experience for the user as well as a higher ROI for the advertiser. VivaKi’s own research — backed by seven of the Web’s top video publishers — found click-through rates to be 240 percent higher with the option-based system than with standard pre-roll ads. “Top-of-mind awareness” was said to be 438 percent higher, and purchase intent rose to about 44 percent.

The process for viewers will be simple. After Sept. 15, Hulu users will be able to select an ad from two or three choices, and if no selection is made one of the ads will run automatically by default. It’s not surprising to see how the process would increase engagement and even purchase intent, and it’s hard not to see consumers responding favorably to the platform. How advertisers react will ultimately be decided by the performance of their ads.

Besides Hulu, additional publishers currently committed to the format include Yahoo, AOL, MSNBC, Discovery, CBS and video ad network BBE, all of which contributed financially to VivaKi’s research. Keep your eyes open for Hulu’s deployment in mid-September for what may become the new industry standard in online video advertising.

Online Video Soaring as Users Come to Accept Advertising

Mike Phillips — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:20:00 GMT

According to research from Frank N. Magid Associates, conducted on behalf of Metacafe, consumers still prefer short-form video online. The study shows that short, "professional" videos account for 8 of the 10 most popular video genres. That includes music videos, television show clips and movie previews. And in a telling symptom of the Internet age, one in four respondents claim that these short professional videos are more entertaining than full-length television shows.

Some other findings include:

55% of online video viewers find online video ads just as, if not more, acceptable than TV ads, up 3% year-over-year.
The coveted viewers ages 18 to 24 accounted for the greatest increase in weekly online video viewership.
85% of males and 68% of females watch online video weekly -- a 15% and 27% increase over 2009, respectively.

There are a few important takeaways here. First, keep your videos relatively short -- if you have a lot of content to publish, consider breaking it up into smaller parts so viewers will watch everything. Second, try to make your videos as professional (and entertaining) as possible -- grainy videos and unsteady camera work is fine for a quick blooper, but not good for branding purposes. Third, don't be afraid of running ads before, during or after your videos. Consumers have come to accept that the price to pay for free video content is often a brief advertisement here and there.

Online Video the Best Form of Advertising, Say Agencies

Linc Wonham — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:50:00 GMT

Video is the fastest-growing online advertising format with estimates of about a 40-percent growth rate through 2010. And the marketers that have taken part in its growth are resoundingly satisfied, according to a recent study from video ad network BrightRoll.

More than 50 percent of the agency executives who participated in the study indicated that online video was the most effective form of advertising, and 83 percent said they were getting more value for their video advertising spend in early 2010 than the previous year. A whopping 94 percent revealed plans for spending more on online video ad campaigns this year than in 2009.

Another sign of video advertising’s maturation in 2010 is the more than 60 percent of respondents that said behavioral targeting increased the performance of their campaigns. The targeting capabilities of video ads were cited as the biggest concern among agency execs in 2009. The biggest concern revealed in this year’s study was maintaining credibility with video ads, with executives saying that videos that start automatically were the biggest detractor.

Video Advertising Affiliate Program

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:56:00 GMT

Video advertising service Jivox announced an online video advertising affiliate program. I've seen thousands of affiliate programs for publishers interested in reselling advertising, but this may be the first I've seen for video advertising.

The program provides three tiers of participation for online publishers and marketing agencies. Publisher partners will receive a co-branded version of the Jivox video ad service to market the services to their advertisers, agency partners will receive a "master" account to offer the same services to their clients and referral partners (much like a traditional affiliate program) will refer advertisers directly to the Jivox site.

"The Jivox affiliate program allows all our partners to participate in the fast-growing online video advertising category by providing three levels of integration into our online video platform," said Jim Gustke, vice president of marketing and product management at Jivox. "The Jivox online video service is a modular platform that includes ad creation, online hosting and targeting, and access to the online publisher network, which allows our partners to offer all or some of its components. No matter how our partners choose to integrate, by signing up as a Jivox online affiliate, they can give their customers access to highly effective, locally targeted video advertising."

Related information and stories on Jivox: