More people are choosing to watch premium video, with video views in the US rose by 17% year-over-year (y-o-y) in Q4 2019. Along with that, video ad views also increased, growing about one-third (34%) y-o-y in the same quarter, per a recent report from FreeWheel.
The growth in video views was due to an increase in live video views, which grew 62% over the year before and accounted for 44% of all video views. Indeed, full-episodes and clips (0-5 minutes in length), which each account for a 28% share of video views, experienced a decrease in views, dropping by 2% and 7% respectively.
Live content also accounted for the largest share (50%) of ad views in the fourth quarter of 2019 as well as the largest increase in number of views (67% y-o-y). Full-episode videos, which accounted for 43% of ad views, climbed by 12%.
CTV accounted for almost half (47%) of video ad views in the US (up 53% y-o-y), which is not surprising considering that the majority of US adults surveyed by Integral Ad Science report having access to CTV. And, when it comes to CTV devices, Roku is clearly the dominant player, accounting for 43% share of CTV ad views in Q4. This was almost double the share held by its next closest competitor, Amazon’s Fire TV (24%), and also far ahead of Smart TVs (12%), gaming consoles (9%), Apple TV (9%) and Google’s Chromecast (3%).
Separately, programmatic premium video ad buying also experienced a lift at the end of 2019. Although it only accounted for about one-quarter (24%) of the total volume of premium ad views in the US, the number of such ad views grew by 50% over the same quarter of 2018.
There has also been an increase in audience-targeted ad views, growing 48% y-o-y in the US and Europe combined. Behavioral targeting accounted for the largest share of audience-targeted views at 71%, while demographic (based on age and gender) accounted for 29%.
The full report, including data for video ad views in Europe, can be downloaded here.
About the Data: Findings are based on aggregated and de-identified advertising data collected through the FreeWheel platform, covering professional, rights-managed video content worldwide.
