By: Emarketer | Friday, April 20th 2012
New technology and creative thinking will foster deeper ad engagement from viewers
With
video advertising the fastest-growing online ad format, brands need to pay
close attention to their video ad campaigns. Ad management solution provider VINDICO found that marketers may be placing too much emphasis on clickthrough rates (CTR) to measure campaign
performance. The study, which examined video ads served in the US in
2011, found that ad completion rate was a much more useful metric of ad
effectiveness than CTR. And high CTRs for video ads are being misinterpreted as
a sign of success, since many users are clicking on ads in an attempt to make
them go away.
VINDICO’s
study compared ads featured in long-form video content, which it defined as
having a narrative arc and lasting at least 10 minutes, with those placed in
short-form video, described as being 10 minutes or shorter. The company found
that ads in short-form content had a CTR of 1.31%, compared with 0.83% for
long-form content.
However,
ads served in long-form video had a higher completion rate, 88%, compared with
76% for ads placed in short-form content. That’s because viewers who have
committed to watching a long-form program are more willing to sit through ads,
especially mid-roll ads.
Video
ad completion translated to deeper interaction by customers with brand pages,
according to VINDICO. Users who had watched a video ad to completion and then
went to the advertiser’s brand site were more likely to go beyond a brand’s
landing page to product and checkout pages, compared to customers who arrived
at a landing page by clicking on an initial ad.
The
research also found that video ads were evolving to take advantage of mobile
users and the web’s interactivity. In 2010, 98% of online video ads had simply
been repurposed from television campaigns. But in 2011, that figure dipped to
90%. Of the nontelevision-derived ads, in 2011, 2% were optimized to be viewed
on a mobile device, while 8% took advantage of the web by including some kind
of interactivity either within the ad, or by surrounding the ad video with
static or interactive branded content. Marketers can expect ad functionality to
change and improve as video ad technology, and the way it is applied, continues
to develop.
Read the original story here.