Today, ad network Burst Media put out their latest issue of their newsletter, and in it, they bashed pre-roll with some pretty nasty looking data.
Once again, we’re presented with a bunch of charts and graphs and data points on why pre-roll sucks. But once again, we have no idea about the content that was used in the study.
Bad News: Most Stop Watching Video Content If An Ad Shows, Or Worse
Among respondents, one-half (50.7%) stop watching an online video once they encounter an in-stream advertisement.
Why is this even remotely interesting when you don’t know what kind of content the user was looking to watch? Answer – it isn’t. Users that abandon watching a “user initiated” video clip because they see the start of an ad simply don’t care about watching that video.
Would it have been worth it if they knew it was only a 5-second ad? I bet it would be. What if it were exclusive video? What if you desperately needed to hear about that breaking news story?
I am, again, on yet another rant about unmonetizable content. If the success of your business depends on running a pre-roll ad in front of “Man Lights Fart on Fire,” then you need to reconsider your business model. Fun to watch? Sure. Good business? Not even close.
Can we please stop bashing pre-roll? Can we please stop pumping out research that tells us that people don’t like advertising? Can we please talk about this powerful, exciting and effective medium like the complicated and layered business that it is? Size of the video player, quality of content, type of content, length of content — all factors that are continuously left out of research, but desperately need to be factored in to media planning. There are no simple answers, so lets stop looking for them. Lets start working on some in-depth analysis that (gasp) may be over the head of a 24 year old media planner.
Yes, it is hard to measure so many factors in any one study. But without it, we will continuously discover the same thing. Kids like music and entertainment, news is the most popular video category, and nobody likes ads.
B.F.D.
i don’t disagree with what you are trying to say. yes, the content the ad is playing on is absolutely relevant and should be looked at more carefully in a study like this to paint a more comprehensive and contextual picture. but, with that said… isn’t it also very relevant that this study shows that “one-half (50.7%) stop watching an online video *ONCE THEY ENCOUNTERED* an in-stream advertisement.”? doesn’t that tell us that it was indeed the ad that triggered abandonment rather than the content itself? also, to be fair, i think there are equal amount of people who bash pre-roll ads with vengeance as there are people who thinks online videos are simply unmonetizable without it.
Soxiam – You nailed it right on the head, but are drawing a different conclusion. And thats OK. What I think you are missing the “user experience.”
Half are abandoning “once they encountered an ad.” Without any information about the length of the content or type of content, I’m guessing that we are talking mostly about pre-roll here (so said the headline of that section.) If a user sees the start of an ad without any information on the ad-to-content ratio (ie, they don’t know if its a 5, 15 or 30 second ad), then the conclusion they have drawn is that “there is nothing I am willing to give up as part of this value exchange. I am not even willing to give 5 seconds of my time in order to see this particular piece of content.”
Yes, it is the ad that is disruptive. I’m not arguing that point. But in the value exchange, the user provides insight into the perceived (and real) value of the content. Mid-roll abandonment tells the same story. Assume there is no pre-roll. When a user is presented with an ad, and has already been given “a taste” of the content, they are again faced with the decision about the value exchange – is it worth it to continue? Am I enjoying this content enough to give up :15 or :30 to ads? And, if the content is long enough to support mid-roll advertising, then it probably has some semblance of quality about it. Why anyone would watch a post-roll is still beyond me.
As I said, I’m assuming that the broadcast networks aren’t too concerned with their rates of abandonment. Why? They know the value of the content.
“Without any information about the length of the content or type of content”
That’s the problem for most online viewers of one-off VoD content. They don’t really know how good the content they are going to see really is. They don’t know if they’ll get a preroll or not. They don’t know if the ad will be repeated a thousand times or actually be relevant. They don’t know if it’ll be 5 or 50 seconds long.
Once online video content and ad producers communicate what the actual ‘give and get’ will be, consumers will hang around during midrolls for shows they like….just like on TV.
Drew –
I’m inclined to agree with you for the most part. However, it is highly unlikely that we’ll see long-tail video publishers rank their own content as “not worth your time,” which is what the survey leans towards.
Back to me harping on the value exchange and content that is very difficult to effectively and efficiently monetize at any scale, regardless of the ad format.
Healthy discussion, of course. Just a lousy survey.
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