Online ad firm MediaMind has compiled a list of ten essential facts about in-stream video advertising. Even though their self-interest is obvious, the information is worth checking out for anyone looking in that direction for monetization.
For instance, MediaMind’s benchmarks indicate a huge difference between the click-through rate (CTR) for banner and in-stream ads. It reports the average CTR for standard banners is 0.009 percent, while the benchmark CTR for in-stream video is 2.15 percent, an increase of nearly 2000 percent. Click-throughs aren’t a great way of measuring effectiveness, but they are useful for comparative purposes and general traffic trends.
MediaMind also crunched its data to report an average of 70 percent of in-stream impressions play all the way through, with 75 percent of them getting at least three-quarters of the way to the end. Even if those viewers are annoyed that they can’t zap past the ad to watch the content, there’s no denying that these ads are getting in front of eyeballs.
A particularly interesting fact from the study is that online video ads that run 90 seconds or longer get played all the way more frequently than shorter ads. One possible reason for this is that shorter ads are more likely to be repurposed from conventional TV campaigns, which Dynamic Logic and TubeMogul research has shown are less effective than spots made specifically for the web.
There is a lot of money at stake here. Forrester forecasts that dollars spent on video advertising will increase from $2 billion to $5.4 billion by 2016.
Related links:
MediaMind – official site
MediaMind – report download site
Photo by Flickr user Racum, used under Creative Commons license
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