'Net Features : video, video ads

Video Advertisers Want to be Stuck in the Middle

Allison Howen — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:00:00 GMT

A new study from Adobe reveals that video ad consumption is beginning to imitate that of traditional television commercials.

This is because mid-roll ads, which have the most similar placement to that of a television commercial (directly within the middle of a video), are dramatically outperforming both pre-roll (advertisements before a video) and post-roll (advertisements after a video) ads. This is good news, or course, for media companies because it could open the door to greater revenue potential.

“Market research shows that over the next five years the number of people watching video content online could grow as much as 50 percent, and a significant number of them will be doing so on connected devices like tablets, IPTVs and smartphones,” says Jeremy Helfand, vice president of monetization at Adobe. “For professional content owners and media companies exploring TV-like ad experiences online, the latest data demonstrates the strong potential for extending traditional broadcast advertising dollars to digital video.”

According to the study, mid-roll video format remains the most engaging placement for online video ads, and easily outperforms completion rates of both pre-roll and post-roll ads. Currently, mid-roll ads average an 87-percent completion rate, which surpasses pre-roll ad engagement by nearly 30 percent.

Other statistics reveal that mobile devices receive the highest engagement of any other channel, at 94 percent, which suggests that mobile viewers are more engaged and open to watching ads on the go in exchange for their desired content. Aditionally, 76 percent of viewers are more likely to consume ads within professional content, which is higher than the average completion rate of 63 percent for user-generated content (UGC).

Furthermore, live online events also recieve higher ad engagement compared to video-on demand (VOD), averaging an 85-percent completion rate for video ads, which is 23 percent higher then ads within VOD content.

Record 7 Billion Videos Viewed in July

Allison Howen — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 01:00:00 GMT

Online video continues to grow, with 180 million U.S. Internet users watching video in the month of July according to the latest report from ComScore.

The study averaged the watched video content at 18.5 hours per viewer, and showed that the total U.S. Internet audience set a record by watching 6.9 billion videos.

Google Sites ranked as the top online video content property in July with 158.1 million unique visitors, thanks in large part to YouTube. Second place went to VEVO with 62.1 million, and Facebook came in third with 51.4 million viewers.

Additionally, Americans viewed more than 5.3 billion video ads in July. Hulu produced the highest number of video ad impressions with 963 million, followed by Adap.tv with 674 million and Tremor Video with 639 million.

Other findings showed that 86 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video in July, the average online content video lasted 5.3 minutes and video ads counted for more than 12 percent of the viewed videos.

Video Growing; Dominated by Google

Administrator — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:12:00 GMT

comScore released data this week which reveals that the growth of video continues unabated but the direction its growing might not please very many.

The comScore Video Metrix service showed that 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in June for an average of 16.8 hours per viewer – quite amazing. Perhaps more impressive however is that the total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 6.2 billion viewing sessions during the course of June, an all-time high.

The top video property for the month of June was Google Sites (whose primary video property is YouTube). Google Sites generated the highest number of viewing sessions (2.3 billion) and highest time spent per viewer (324 minutes, or 5.4 hours).

Google Sites essentially are just blowing everybody out of the water – nearly tripling the minutes spent per viewers, and more than doubling the total unique viewers when compared to the nearest competitor. Google Sites are also responsible for driving more than five times the number of viewing sessions of Vevo and nearly 10 times that of Yahoo!.

comScore also analyzed the top video properties by video ads viewed. While Hulu is responsible for the greatest number of video ads, its percentage of reach over the total U.S. population is lacking, leading credence to the notion that pure-play video advertising networks such as Tremor, Adap.tv, RightRoll, Specific Media, Undertone, and SpotXChange have an honest chance of sticking around in the competitive landscape.

Video Rankings - August 2010

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:00:00 GMT

Comscore released some interesting data from its Video Metric service which shows that 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in August for an average of 14.3 hours per viewer. According to Comscore, the total U.S. Internet audience engaged in more than 5.2 billion viewing sessions during the course of the month.

YouTube of course drives the majority of the video viewing, with 146.3 million unique viewers, but what may surprise you is that Facebook passed Yahoo and made its way into the second position. Yahoo! Sites still receive more "minutes per viewer" but it does signal a trend that more video is being consumed on social networks.

Other important findings from Comscore include:

- Top video ad networks (in terms of their potential reach of the total U.S. population) were Break Media at 46.4 percent, BrightRoll Video Network at 45.0 percent, and ScanScout Network at 44.5 percent.

- The duration of the average online content video was 4.8 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.

- Video ads accounted for 10.7 percent of all videos viewed and 1.0 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.

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.

Video Out of Control (In a Good Way) in the U.K.

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:19:00 GMT

ComScore's Video Metric Service released data indicating that the total number of videos viewed online in the U.K. in April 2009 grew 47 percent versus year ago to 4.7 billion videos.

The report also found that 21.8 million U.K. Internet users viewed a total of 971 million online display ads on multimedia sites during the month, based on data from comScore Ad Metrix, a recently introduced service in the U.K. providing competitive intelligence on online display advertising.

So what are the top U.K. online video properties based on videos viewed? YouTube of course dominated, and experienced a 58% growth in views. Other pure play properties include Megavideo.com, dailymotion.com and Facebook.com.

"With nearly five billion videos viewed in the U.K. in April, online video is a powerful and growing vehicle for online advertising placement,” said Mike Read, SVP and managing director, comScore Europe. “The online video market currently relies heavily on display ads for monetization, and in the coming months and years we can expect that video ads will play an even more prominent role. Despite the market’s overwhelming size and audience at this phase of the growth curve, it is also clear that we’re still in the early stages of advertising optimization and effectiveness in this increasingly important entertainment channel.”

TurnHere Affiliate Program – Video Ads for Web Publishers

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:43:00 GMT

It’s not often that we highlight specific affiliate programs, but when that program carries with it the potential to impact a very broad swath of the Web population it deserves some attention.

Web video production and advertising solution TurnHere has been providing videos ads to small businesses through its sales channel partner program since its inception, counting CitySearch, YellowPages and Idearc/Superpages as clients. According to Greg Sterling at ScreenWerk, the company is expanding that offer through an affiliate program.

Affiliate publishers promote TurnHere’s video advertising services on their sites through a co-branded affiliate page (see an example here from BedandBreakfast.com). TurnHere provides all the “collateral” and back-end support, including production of the 60-second video spots. TurnHere also delivers the ad and plugs it in to all the distribution channels (e.g., YouTube, etc) that the company typically uses.

There have been a few challenges with video in the past. Publishers have never been able to successfully monetize and the cost has been far outside the reach of most advertisers. Fortunately, TurnHere is offering a price discount to advertising signing up before June 30th ($499 (down from $899). As the presence of video continues to increase, solutions like TurnHere are going to take center stage.

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Attention, Not Impressions - VideoEgg AttentionRank

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Rich media ad network VideoEgg announced a new approach to ad delivery with AttentionRank, which identifies when and where users are most receptive to a brand's message.

VideoEgg is essentially evaluating media not on an impression basis but on its ability to capture attention. Analyzing engagement with an ad (users voluntarily opt into the AdFrames advertising), the time spent with the brand message, and secondary user actions such as click-through rates, AttentionRank enables VideoEgg to understand where to place brand messages to capture user attention and how to effectively price those ads as a result of that increased engagement.

The company is touting substantial increases in time spent with ad content across three major brand categories; 18% increase in time spent for a packaged foods advertiser, 13.2% increase in time spent for an automative advertiser and a 12.3% increase in time sepnt for an apparel advertiser.

Try Veeple (Clickable Video) People

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:41:00 GMT

The next generation of online video has arrived, people -- and it goes by the name of Veeple.

Veeple offers “VaaS” (Video as a Service), offering web publishers with a software tool that makes anything within a video clickable. Website publishers essentially can add in-stream text, web page links, graphics, product images and thought bubbles to enhance and monetize videos in an engaging, yet non-intrusive manner.

With Veeple, any video can be edited for interactivity. Enriching video content in this manner will be most interesting to marketers and affiliates as they will be able to embed links and send users directly to whatever site they choose.

Veeple’s Flash-based technology looks simple to use and includes advanced analytics to monitor interactive spots, ad placements and viewer behaviors. VaaS service is free to try through March 2009. Veeple users will be paying 0.002 cents per view thereafter.

Here's a clip from Wayne's World using Veeple. Within the "product placement" scene, the Doritos bag was hyperlinked to Doritos.com.
See it live in the Veeple showroom.

Video SEO (VSEO) On The Move

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:13:00 GMT

Location-based SEO mavens Where 2 Get It announced a partnership with online video ad provider Mixpo that will allow clients to leverage video search engine optimization (VSEO). Mixpo will enable W2GI clients to create, deploy and optimize online videos ads for the purpose of generating additional organic traffic.

Video produced by a client would be featured on a local landing page and would be optimized for search (one could assume through metadata) and depending on the quality of said video, help drive conversions. Videos can be further customized to provide a location tag directing consumer to a specific local business location. Check out this excellent example of this on-page video SEO in action for Office Depot.

"We look forward to working with Where 2 Get It to enhance the effectiveness of their local search engine optimization solutions by leveraging the power of online video advertisements," said Anupam Gupta, president & CEO, Mixpo. "The Mixpo video ad platform is focused on driving direct response for locally focused businesses and we believe this fits in very well with Where 2 Get It's emphasis on addressing local marketplaces."

Adding video to landing pages is an exceptional way to increase conversions and add a little movement to web pages. If you’re considering producing videos for the purpose of promoting your website and its products and services, check out this excellent YouTube Keyword Research Tool from ReelSEO.