Video Ad Completion Rates Reach New Highs, While Fraud Rates See New Lows

Video advertising may be coming into its own. 

Extreme Reach, a provider of video ad technology, recently released its Q1 2018 Video Advertising Benchmark Report and it provides some useful insights into performance trends in the channel and comparisons for assessing campaign success.

The report explores trends in click-through, completion and viewability rates as well as invalid traffic and time spent, with breakdowns according to purchase method (i.e., premium media sites vs. media aggregators) and device used (i.e., desktop, mobile, tablet and connected television [CTV]).

Extreme Reach found that viewable completion rates (percentage of impressions that are both viewable and completed) remain on an upward trajectory, achieving modest gains over Q1 2017. On average, the percent of video ads that are both viewable and played in their entirety is an unprecedented 88 percent for premium media sites and 69 percent for aggregators.

The report also reveals that one of the most pressing concerns of digital advertisers, fraud, is waning. Extreme Reach found that filtered general invalid traffic reached a new low of 3.7 percent, a reduction of 32.3 percent compared to Q1 2017. Premium media sites experienced even greater declines, dropping 45.9 percent year over year to reach just 2.2 percent. 

"The way consumers interact with media is almost completely different than it was just a few short years ago, and as 'lean back' is supplanted by 'on-the-go,' brands are learning quickly that their campaigns must also adapt - and that means more video," stated Mary Vestewig, Senior Director, Video Account Management at Extreme Reach. "With these most recent metrics, the trends are unmistakably positive. As a result, we expect to see accelerated growth in cross-platform video advertising in the months and years ahead."