Fewer than 50% of all U.S. video ad impressions were viewable last year.
Video ad management platform Vindico published a report this week that says fewer than 50% of all U.S. video ad impressions were viewable last year. And because many video ad networks sell advertising placements per CPM (cost per thousand impressions), you would have likely paid for those impressions even if your video could not be viewed.
Even more frustrating: Internet brands like Yahoo and YouTube, and advertising networks had highest disfunction with only 37% of video ad impressions viewable during the year!
How could this happen, you ask?
Ad networks sell advertising inventory across networks of websites so, as you can imagine, there is minimal monitoring of how and where ads appear across those networks; it is usually mostly automated. This combined with the fact that there are quite a few scenarios where a video ad could be rendered un-viewable creates a formula for poor performance.
Besides the automated factor, other common reason why your video ad might be un-viewable include it rendering in an inactive window, being muted when played or it rendering outside of the frame.
So, is video advertising total hogwash?
Absolutely not. Despite the fact that the majority of video ad impressions on ad networks and Internet brands such as YouTube and Yahoo were un-viewable in 2013, there are still places where more often than not video ads are rendered viewable.
In fact, it seems the place to be is on major media publishers like the New York Times and NBC; video ads on these sites performed vastly better than ad networks and Internet brands, with nearly four-fifths of video ad impressions being viewable.
Furthermore, the video ads that were actually seen last year performed very well; 81% of them were watched in totality. That coupled with the fact that the number of online video views and shares are growing by the minute should keep video top of mind for you as one the most viable online advertising solutions.
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