Video Ad Views Held Strong in November, Accounted for 1 in 5 Video Views

December 19, 2012

This article is included in these additional categories:

Analytics, Automated & MarTech | Brand Metrics | Data-driven | Digital | Paid Search

comScore-Online-Video-Ad-Views-Jan-Nov12-Dec2012Americans watched 10.5 billion video ads in November, down slightly after October’s spike of 10.9 billion, but still fairly steady after a summer lull. The data, courtesy of comScore, also finds that video ads accounted for 20.8% of all videos viewed and 1.8% of time spent viewing video online, as 6 properties served up more than 1 billion ads.

The comScore figures reveal that the average online content video was 5.4 minutes in length, while the average online video ad was 24 seconds long. Online video reached 85.5% of the US internet population in November, down slightly from 86% in October.

Ads Better Served in Short-Form or Long-Form Content?

New research from AOL [pdf] suggests that ads served in short-form content perform better than those served during long-form content. To arrive at this conclusion, AOL conducted a survey of 800 online video viewers, with the same ads that were watched in the long form videos also shown in the short form videos. Ads served in short-form video produced 42% higher purchase intent, 33% more positive brand impression, and 25% higher brand recall.

Still, it’s not clear that ads served in short-form content are necessarily most effective. Data from FreeWheel consistently shows that ads served during long-form content have higher completion rates than ads shown during short-form content. That’s important because studies from TubeMogul and Vindico show that completion rates are an extremely important metric for measuring advertising effectiveness, more so than click-through rates.

It is worth noting that the AOL, TubeMogul, and Vindico studies each had different measures of effectiveness, so while short-form may be better for brand recall, long-form may be better for driving traffic to advertiser websites and generating interest in those brand pages.

BrightRoll Keeps Position As Top Video Ad Property

Returning to the comScore data, each of the top 6 video ad properties delivered more than 1 billion video ads, led for the second month running by BrightRoll Video Network (1.8 billion), and followed by Google Sites (1.7 billion), Hulu (1.5 billion), Liverail.com (1.3 billion), Adap.tv (1.2 billion), and TubeMogul (1.1 billion). Time spent watching video ads totaled 3.8 billion minutes, and BrightRoll delivered the highest duration of video ads (951 million minutes).

Video ads reached 53% of the US population an average of 60 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency (62 ads per viewer), compared to Google Sites’ average of 18.

NDN Continues Climbing the Video Content Property Rankings

Fresh off a jump into the third spot in the list of top video content rankings in October, NDN grew its audience again in November to 55.7 million (up 4.7% from 53.2 million), this time moving into the second spot. Yahoo! Sites, which had sported an audience size of 55.3 million in October, good for the second position, dropped into the 4th ranking in November (52.3 million), behind NDN and Facebook (53.8 million).

Google Sites maintained the #1 spot yet again in November, chiefly via viewing on YouTube.com. Google boasted 153 million viewers, down slightly from 153.2 million in October.

Maker Studios Becomes Second-Ranked YouTube Partner

The video music channel VEVO held down the top ranking yet again among YouTube partners, with 50.6 million viewers, down from 52.2 million the previous month. For the first time, Maker Studios moved into the second spot, with 28.2 million viewers, though that audience size was actually a slight decrease from 28.9 million the previous month. Maker Studios’ ascension into the second ranking was instead due to a big drop in viewers for Machinima, down from 35.1 million to 26.2 million.

Among the top 10 YouTube partners, Machinima again demonstrated the highest engagement, though, at 69 minutes per viewer. VEVO streamed the highest number of videos (575 million), followed by Machinima (511 million).

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