Pre-roll Ads Most Tolerable Video Ad Format [Report]

Yahoo! surveyed 1,775 consumers in the 16-44 age range who are regular online video viewers, several time a week at the least. Some of the results seem counter-intuitive to what many other reports have found. I guess it depends on who you survey, what platform you survey form and when you survey.

Paying for video seems to be not all that popular with the Yahoo! survey respondents. Just 35% said they would make micro payments for video while just 25% would pay monthly subscription fees for video. But the question is, are they talking about things like news video clips you find on Yahoo!? I mean, presumably, the audience they surveyed was theirs and not say, Netflix users.

Now, 35% of the U.S. online video viewing population is about 66 million people so that’s not all that bad. 25% is 47.25 million and that would be a fairly large SVOD subscriber base.

The research also showed that the video viewers are pretty ad savvy. Over half (57%) expect online advertising to be “more interactive.” More interactive than what immediately sprang to my mind. Than TV or print? Surely. Than other forms of digital advertising? Well, who knows, because I can’t find the exact wording of the question.

Privacy seems to be less of an issue to these surveyed consumers;

 

 

Nearly half of the respondents expect online advertising to be relevant to them and 55% expect to have some choice in the ads that are shown to them. So overall, about half of the respondents are ad savvy where they have some passing familiarity with interactivity, engagement, ad relevance and targeting and ad choice, presumably in pre-roll ads.

The quality expectation for online video content has come close to that from TV.

This question seems a bit leading to me. Were they asking about appealing or disruptive or a combination of both? Take a look at this slide from a Yahoo! presentation of the results (the typo is theirs I assure you). It’s entirely possible that the “How acceptabile [sic] are each of these ads ?” was the exact question I suppose.

Here’s that part where I said tolerable because just 22% said that pre-rolls are more acceptable, apparently in regards to the others. Second was interactive ads which had an 18% approval rating, even though in the same slide show 57% said they expect the ads to be more interactive. Sponsorships also got 18% of the vote. Tied at 15% were banner and wrapped banners and mid-rolls were least acceptable in the reported results.

For video player ads there’s a 10% difference in acceptance of mid-roll and pre-roll. I hate pre-rolls personally, especially when the ad is paired with a piece of content that is less than 200% of the ad length. In terms of relevant targeting, 42% said they would be happy to share shopping information to get more relevant ads, another 42% said they might consider it and 16% said No .

Finally a few key take aways for advertisers;

• Take into account daypart, device type, and demeanor

• •Don’t get in the way of what the user wants to do

• •Use data wisely and respectfully when targeting

• •Contribute to the value exchange and reciprocity

2013 Digital Future in Focus [report]

comScore released the 2013 Digital Future in Focus report. This annual report examines how the prevailing trends in social media, search, online video, digital advertising, mobile and e-commerce are defining the current digital marketplace and what these trends mean for the year ahead.

“2013 is poised to be digital’s most exciting year yet as the growing ubiquity of digital platforms presents marketers with nearly endless opportunities to connect and engage with consumers,” said Linda Abraham, comScore CMO and EVP of Global Product Development. “It’s clear that the dynamics of the marketplace have fundamentally evolved through the adoption of smartphones and tablets and the increasingly ‘digital’ nature of all media. Navigating this changing landscape requires a holistic understanding of the key trends, underlying drivers and new opportunities that the digital ecosystem will bring in the year ahead.”

 

Key insights from the 2013 U.S. Digital Future in Focus include:

Social Media Market Matures as Focus Turns Toward Building Business Models and Financial Success

Americans’ usage of Social Networking sites continued to be dominated by Facebook, which accounted for 5 out of every 6 minutes spent online on these sites. Facebook’s 2012 IPO signaled a maturation of the social media market with a renewed focus on building strong business models and monetization streams. Several other social media players also made waves in the public markets this year, including LinkedIn, Yelp, Zynga and Groupon. Several other notable social media players like Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram (now part of Facebook) have all posted strong user growth as they begin to ramp up their revenue engines.

Google Leads While Bing Grows Share in Search Market

Google continued its strong lead in the U.S. search market, while Bing managed to gain ground as the #2 search engine in 2012. The desktop-based U.S. core search market saw its first signs of flattening as an increasing number of searches shift to vertical-specific searches and mobile platforms.

Online Video Brings TV Dollars to Digital as Consumers Become More Platform Agnostic

The U.S. online video market also shows signs of maturing from a consumption standpoint, but monetization is picking up steam as YouTube ramps up advertising efforts while traditional media players find success with TV commercial content. Because the demand for high-impact video advertising exceeds the available inventory, look for continued momentum on the advertising side – particularly as targeting improves.

Digital Advertising Improves Accountability in Quest for Print and TV Ad Dollars

Nearly 6 trillion display ad impressions were delivered across the web in 2012 as brand marketers have become increasingly comfortable with a medium capable of delivering strong marketing ROI. Despite delivering so many impressions, comScore research showed that an average of 3 in 10 ads are never rendered in-view, leading to significant waste, weaker campaign performance and a glut of poor-performing inventory that imbalances the supply-and-demand equation and depresses CPMs. Through the continued adoption of a viewable impressions standard, the market is beginning to embrace a digital scarcity model that better aligns monetization with the value created by the inventory.

Smartphone and Tablets Carve Out Space in Multi-Platform Digital Media Landscape

Smartphones continued to drive the mobile landscape in 2012, finally reaching 50-percent market penetration in 2012. The Android platform also hit a 50-percent milestone as it captured the majority of the smartphone market for the first time. Meanwhile, tablets continued to gain traction, with 52.4 million U.S. tablet owners as of December 2012. The rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets, and consumers’ increasing use thereof, has resulted in a fragmented digital media landscape where the typical consumer now shares his time across multiple screens.

E-Commerce Gains at Expense of Brick-And-Mortar While Consumers Experiment with M-Commerce

Despite the backdrop of continued economic uncertainty, 2012 was a strong year for retail e-commerce. Throughout the year, growth rates versus the prior year remained in the mid-teens to outpace growth at brick-and-mortar retail by a factor of approximately 4x. Total U.S. retail and travel-related e-commerce reached $289 billion in 2012, up 13 percent from the previous year. While e-commerce continues to gain share from traditional retail, the first signs of mobile commerce affecting the digital commerce landscape are starting to emerge. In Q4 2012, comScore estimates that m-commerce transactions (from both smartphones and tablets) now represent approximately 11 percent of corresponding e-commerce spending.

 

AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo Kick Off Display Ad Deal

The ménage à trois in display advertising among Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL has started on schedule. The three companies said today they are officially offering one another’s unsold inventory.

As a result, all three sales forces now have access to a trough of Interactive Advertising Bureau standard ad space bigger than any offered in one place before. But more important than reach and volume is quality, as the deal’s architects pray media buyers will view the new marketplace as the first stop for brand campaigns concerned above all with locking in “premium” media.

Yahoo and AOL’s ads will be served on the Right Media Exchange, while Microsoft will use its own branded exchange, which is built on the AppNexus platform.

The agreement, announced in November 2011, spans not only the portals’ branded sites but also network partners. It lets the three companies do what ad networks have been doing for years – resell each other’s media. The main difference is a matter of scale and complexity. AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo together represent a greater variety of inventory types than is available through smaller ad network companies.

One risk is that the arrangement could remove the differentiating audience characteristics of the companies’ three ad network products: Yahoo’s Network Plus, AOL’s Advertising.com, and the Microsoft Media Network. Those networks will still offer unique data and other capabilities.

Another interesting question is how intensely these three ad sellers will compete to be the point of contact for agencies. In a blog post today, Yahoo advises its media buyers interested in accessing inventory on Microsoft and AOL to “please contact your Yahoo account executive or account manager.”

“I want to thank Yahoo and AOL for their partnership on this agreement, which took a concerted effort from all parties,” Daniel Scheinberg, senior director, display marketplaces at Microsoft Advertising, wrote in a blog post. Four months ago, the trio announced the partnership would take effect in the first quarter of 2012.