Google has published the results for their study of video advertisement viewability on YouTube, Google, and DoubleClick. It’s absolutely mind boggling how captious Google is about recording all, and any data. With this big a grasp on information, it really is no surprise that Google has an overwhelming market share in so many different sectors. Not only did it conduct an elaborated research about what ads are viewed where and how often – Google actually has their own Active View technology specifically designed to monitor this. Why is this of any importance you ask? Well, firms naturally want the highest return on investment (ROI) and instead of paying for every ad displayed, firms are more frequently opting to pay per ad viewed, or even per ad that’s interacted with/clicked on. This way they are certain of a higher ROI, thus Google has done what it does best; it collected all the information you might possibly need about this, and made it public as to show to firms that any advertising investments in Google, YouTube or DoubleClick is very profitable indeed.
The Media Rating Council and the Interactive Advertising Bureau have recently defined what it means for an ad to be viewable: “when at least 50% of the advertisement’s pixels are visible on a screen for at least two consecutive seconds”, the ad is considered viewable. With that in mind, Google has basically shown that video advertisement viewability is a mere 54% on the web and as high as 91% on YouTube. Part of the reason that percentage is so high on YouTube is because of mobile devices. With an ever increasing amount of people streaming media on their phones, and more than half of YouTube’s content being streamed on mobile devices, YouTube is doing well for itself as ads are typically played before a video commences, and even along the course of longer videos. With mobile devices there’s not many ways around this, and scrolling down until the ad is gone isn’t as simple as it would be on a desktop either. For that reason, smartphones and tablets on both the web and with the use of the YoutTube app, have a video add viewability of 94% (!).
Certainly many people use youtube to stream music videos and don’t really look at the screen at all. Even in this case, Google reports that 33% more of streamers exposed to the sound of the ad alone could recall the content as opposed to test subjects that had not been exposed to the content.
With all this information, Google does not aim to only serve itself. By making the results of their research public, and not only available to potential customers who want their content on Google’s sites, Google aims to give a helping hand to any sites struggling with ad viewability. To improve video ad viewability sites should strive to use larger video players, and increase ad positioning near the top and centre of their page.
