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Posts Tagged ‘online video advertising’

Let’s go to the video Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Twitter has been getting all the media attention this year, but online video has also taken off in a huge way in 2009. Here are some interesting facts:

  • 62% of U.S. adult Internet users watch videos on YouTube and other video-sharing web sites, up from 33% in late 2006, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center.
  • Also from the report: “Online video watching among young adults is near-universal; nine in ten (89%) internet users ages 18-29 now
    say they watch content on video sharing sites, and 36% do so on a typical day.”
  • Speaking of Twitter, check out how Twitter compares to online video consumption on the chart below:

  • According to a ComScore report, 157 million Americans watched 19.5 billion online videos in June, up from the 16.8 billion in April. The average viewer watched 124 online videos in June, up from 111 million in April. Google (read YouTube) still accounts for 40% of all videos viewed and more than half of videos viewed per user.
  • A report on ClickZ calls online video “the fastest growing medium in history, having gone from zero to mass market globally in three short years.” More good advice from this report: “Create ads that work as content. Create fun or arresting videos that tell a story and seamlessly integrate your brand.”
  • Another report from iMedia UK looks at the myths of online video and explains why it’s not as expensive, boring and unaccountable as you might think.

Online video on the rise Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

One of the topics getting an increasing amount of airplay is online video. It’s growth is bucking the downward spend pattern of most other forms of media. Here are just a few of the articles worth reading on this trend:

  • Is the Big Shift Underway? Talks about how relatively high CPMs compared with television to grab large audiences has been holding back the growth of online video. One of the comments on the story says, “We think there is another business model emerging for brands leveraging video on the Web: Brands hosting video content on their own site instead of running ads around someone else’s video at an aggregated site. Our vision is that brands will soon realize that a person watching video content on a brand’s website are easily worth 20 times the value of a viewer offsite watching an ad. We think a new metric will soon be developed. And it will define the ROI of brands creating their own engaging, fun content on their own websites that visitors want to see.”
  • Online Video Changes Game for Brand Marketers: “Video has expanded well beyond the media industry and into nearly every corner of the professional Web, as corporations, governments, non-profits and educational institutions look to use video as a cornerstone of how they communicate, market and inform on the Web.” Has some good case studies on the effective use of online video.
  • Online Video Subtitles (Duh!): Predicts that spending on online video advertising will grow by more than 50% a year for the next five years to more than US$5.8 billion by 2013. Cites research showing that adding subtitles to videos increased time spent viewing by more than 40 per cent.

Will be interesting to, um, watch what happens in Australia in this part of the online market.


TV-online video migration continues apace Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

The evidence is gathering that online video is cannibalizing television consumption and revenue. 

An IBM study that polled 2,800 people in six countries has revealed that more than three-quarters of people have viewed video online and nearly half do it regularly. Of those who have watched online video, 15% say that as a result they watch “slightly less” TV, while 36% said they watch “significantly less” TV.

Paying homage to the history of commercial television, 70% of online video viewers prefer the ad-supported model over consumer-paid models. They specify, though, that they prefer watching a commercial before or after an uninterrupted online video, and they don’t like product placement.

Almost 60% of the respondents said they were willing to provide to advertisers some personal information about themselves in exchange for something of value, such as access to high-quality music videos, store discounts or airline frequent-flyer points.

“The industry must find appealing ways to monetize new content sources or risk a similar fate as that of the music industry where value shifted away from core players,” said Saul Berman, the study’s co-author.

Meanwhile, eMarketer reports that while TV revenue growth is slowing, online video revenue growth is soaring - though the overall numbers suggest there is a fair amount of leakage in overall spend.

eMarketer estimates there will be $284.8 billion in total US ad spending in 2008, and TV still garners 25% of those dollars. But in 2009 US TV advertising spending will decline 4.2% to $66.9 billion.

 

“This precipitous drop reflects not only the poor economic conditions, but fundamental changes in the way television advertising is being bought and sold,” says Carol Krol, eMarketer senior analyst. “Although there will be inevitable stumbling as they find their footing, the broadcast networks are making bold and interesting choices in an effort to follow consumers online,” says Ms. Krol. “They are collaborating with competitors, hooking up with online partners and forging alliances that were unheard of just a few years ago.”

Online video ad spending as a percent of TV ad spending is expected to nearly double over the next two years, however it will still only reach 1.7% in 2010 - and still less than 3.5% of overall online advertising spend.

Krol points out that there is still “no clear winning online business model for broadcasters,” and that online advertising revenue growth is less than offline media decline. Which raises the question: where is that money going?


‘Engaged’ video viewers open to brand messages Friday, October 24th, 2008

Forrester Consulting’s online video engagement report , conducted for online video company Veoh, reveals that while some online video viewers still only “snack” on short clips, there is a growing audience of “young, influential, engaged viewers who watch a great deal of long-form online video and pay attention to the brand messages delivered to them in online video environments.”

As Veoh reports: “The study found that Engaged Viewers (viewers who watch more than an hour of online video a week) make up nearly 40% of all online video viewers and watch nearly 75% of all online video. Of these Engaged Viewers, those who spend the most time consuming and sharing long-form content:

  • Are more likely to watch videos all the way through
  • Pay more attention to online video more than they do TV
  • Interact with and rate the videos they watch more frequently
  • Are twice as likely to recall in-video ads and post-rolls than non-Engaged Viewers
  • Agree more readily that advertising is fair and helps pay for their free experience
  • Consider banner ads and ads that come in between videos (mid-rolls) most effective”

The takeaway? Veoh concludes that, “As online video viewing matures, advertisers can take advantage of the unique opportunity to reach valuable Engaged Viewers by starting with the following:

  1. Think Advertainment, not Advertisement. Engaged video viewers are more open to enjoying the advertising they watch giving marketers an opportunity to create ads that are as entertaining as the video clips they are paired with. Make the advertising a part of this engaging environment by telling compelling stories rather than consistently repeating the same 30-second spot.
  2. Active mindset = greater action…. Consider having multiple creative units depending on the mindset and propensity to engage with the medium.
  3. Think about all the ad units on the page as a team. All viewers feel advertising can be annoying. But none of them said it had to be annoying. Engaged viewers respond to ad formats that don’t intrude unfairly. Their preference for banner ads supports this. But banner ads can be supported by a comprehensive ad experience that ties display ads, sponsorships, and in-video ads together into a coherent package.
  4. Target it and they will come. As more viewers spend more than an hour a week viewing online video, it’s time for advertisers and the sites that enable them to start matching ads to viewers more intelligently. The easiest place to do this is with long-form content, where the choice of programming - an episode of one’s favorite tv show - says more about a viewer than a short clip about a dog on a skateboard ever can.”

Online video grows, still tiny in comparison Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

Online video ad spending is set to hit US$500 million this year and is predicted to grow to nearly US$3.5 billion by 2012, but is still tiny compared to the US$70 billion TV advertising market, according to eMarketer.

In another sign that media agencies are still stuck in traditional paradigms, eMarketer is predicting that most of the growth in online video will come from major brands booking pre-roll and mid-roll streaming advertisements - in other words, ads that you have to watch, which is the closest thing you can get to traditional TV advertising on the Internet. Oh yeah, product placement and sponsorship are the next biggest spend areas. The move toward innovative advertising models using social media continues its glacial pace…