About 2 in 3 in-stream video ad impressions come from 4 advertiser categories, according to [pdf] a new study from Google DoubleClick. Looking at video ads served on DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) and the Ad Exchange between March 2012 and March 2013, Google reveals that automotive (19%), retail (18%), technology (17%) and CPG (14%) brands led all others, with these categories chiefly the realm of large advertisers seeking branding opportunities. And it looks like that trend isn’t going away: 2 in 5 video ad impressions in Q1 came from advertisers new to digital video, with the majority of those being large brand advertisers.
Some categories are doubling down on their investments – literally. Retail (197%) and healthcare (193%) advertisers have almost tripled their impressions on a year-over-year basis, while the the growth trajectory has been even steeper for finance (225%) and classified and local (256%) brands.
The findings appear to support recent research from Vizu, which showed that marketers are shifting online dollars from direct response to brand advertising.
Turning from advertisers to publishers, the Google study demonstrates that arts and entertainment is the top publisher vertical, by itself accounting for a majority of all video ad impressions, and growing by 66% year-over-year. Other publisher verticals are seeing stronger growth, though, and eating into arts and entertainment publishers’ share: news (201%), sports (165%) and computers and electronics (450%) publishers each posted strong video monetization growth rates.
Other Findings
- Programmatic buying is increasing rapidly, with in-stream video ad impressions on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange tripling year-over-year.
- Retail is the top category by share of total programmatic video ads, and has increased spending by 360% year-over-year. Automotive (+384%) has also posted strong growth rates in spend.
- Almost 9 in 10 programmatic video ads came from the top 5 categories: retail; automotive; media and entertainment; technology; and CPG.
- Looking at skippable ads, the study indicates that “skippable ads deliver 50% more attention by reducing viewer drop-off rates compared to standard in-stream ads.”
About the Data: Advertising that runs on YouTube or other Google-owned web properties is not included in the analysis.
All analyses are based on in-stream video ads displayed within a video player, either as a pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll. Not included: overlays, text ads, or video ads played in rich media ad units outside a video player.
Each advertiser’s category and each publisher’s vertical are determined by their top-level web property subject matter.
The global analysis is based on billions of served video ads which are aggregated to preserve confidentiality.
For audience drop-off rates, Google compared skippable in-stream and standard in-stream ads on video content monetized by the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and the Google Display Network, during Jan-Mar 2013.
The audience drop-off rate analysis does not include video ads run on Google owned & operated properties, such as YouTube.
