The Online Publisher’s Association released their newest survey today, with, at first glance, some very interesting findings.
The “big picture” overview shows that :30 second spots outperformed :15 second spots on “ad likability” and consideration,” pre-roll ads with companion banners had the greatest lift on brand awareness, and that branded media sites generated higher response rates than user-generated sites and video portals.
In an interivew with ClickZ, OPA President Pam Horan said:
“We went into the study thinking that [15s] would do a better job. The people who had actually viewed the [30s], those ads had more of an effect in brand consideration and relevance,” said Pam Horan, president of the OPA, a not-for-profit trade organization. “What we have found is if you’re trying to drive one of the key metrics, which is brand consideration, the :30 ad turned out to be very effective, although it may be counterintuitive.”
Looking closer at her quote raises a few questions. Does this mean that they only counted and measured brand lift from users who viewed and completed the entire ad and ignored users who dropped off? There also seems to be no mention of the user experience. The ads may be working, but at what cost? What do those users who dropped off think about the brand?
Other takeaways that continue to make video advertising attractive to marketers:
- The Most Frequent Online Videos Viewers are Young, Male and Affluent
- Over 40% Watch Online Videos on at Least a Weekly Basis; 45% Access News Videos at Least Weekly
- News and Entertainment Reach Over 70% of Online Video Users
- Strong Video Ad Responsiveness with 80% Viewing an Ad and 52% Taking Action
- Online Video Ads Have Impact Throughout the Purchase Funnel: From Interest and Consideration through Purchase
The most surprising finding to me contradicts most of the rhetoric from the video advertising community. The report concluded that there were no major differences surfaced between repurposed and original content.
While advertisers should continue to explore new ad formats and ways to best leverage online video as a medium, they should all be jumping in with both feet and getting started by getting those TV spots online before all the good inventory is gone.
[...] I hate thirty-second preroll. Never met anyone who didn’t. This might be a Dewey-Truman problem, I suppose, but I’d love to know where they dug these people up. OnlineVideoWatch has more commentary. [...]