Executives turning to digital video brand advertising: survey

A rising number of Canadian advertisers are looking at digital videos to support advertising projects and nearly half of them prefer to advertise on the online platforms of traditional broadcasters, a new report by IAB Canada and digital video ad firm BrightRoll Inc. said. The report, titled "Digital Video 2012: Canada Video Advertising Report," drew from surveys of “more than 100 advertising executives at top agencies across Canada” to find that a majority of those executives said digital video ads are more effective than other forms of advertising and that a rising number of them include video components in more than half of their requests for proposals. “As consumers watch more video online, coupled with the rapid adoption of mobile, Canadian advertisers are re-evaluating their digital media strategies to better engage viewers across the four screens—including online, mobile, tablet and connected TV,” the groups said in a release Wednesday announcing the report. According to the report, 82 per cent of the survey’s respondents said digital video ads are “equally or more effective” than online display ads, while 68 per cent said they were equally or more effective than television advertising. Another 73 per cent said digital video ads were equally or more effective than social media advertising, while 47 per cent said they were more effective than direct ads, and 39 per cent said they were more effective than search ads. Forty-five per cent of the survey’s respondents said they had included digital video ad components in at least half of their requests for proposals over the past 12 months, the report said, adding that this figure climbed from 41 per cent a year earlier. Unlike a concurrent U.S. study, the report said, nearly half of all Canadian survey respondents said they are “most inclined” to advertise with broadcasters' digital and online properties. The study found that 49.6 per cent of Canadian respondents said they are most inclined to purchase digital video ad space from broadcasters, compared to 27.5 per cent who said they would buy that ad space from an advertising network and 7.6 per cent who said they would buy space through a portal. In the U.S., only 6.7 per cent of advertising executives said they preferred to purchase digital video ad space from broadcasters, compared to 41 per cent who said they would turn to advertising networks and 34.3 per cent who said they are most inclined to buy video inventory through a portal. “These data suggest a couple of different scenarios about the preferences of Canadian video buyers,” the report said. “They may prefer the potential of integrated buys that broadcasters can provide (access to Top-10 shows), or they may not have experienced ad network capabilities (advanced targeting capabilities, such as targeting by audience or user behaviour, at greater scale).” According to the study, approximately 42 per cent of the survey’s respondents said their clients view the targeting capabilities of digital video ads as their most valuable quality. It added that the Canadian advertising landscape has seen “subtle shifts” in how advertisers use video ad targeting to appeal to different groups of people, such as those who share demographic, behavioural, geographical or contextual interests. The study said audience targeting, which targets consumers who share more than one of those characteristics, gained the greatest value in advertisers’ minds since a similar report in 2011. Twenty per cent of survey respondents said they viewed audience targeting as the “most valuable” form of targeting in digital video ads, up from 8 per cent a year earlier, the survey said. It said behaviourial targeting was seen as most valuable by the highest number of survey respondents, at 32 per cent. The study also found that “pre-roll” video ads that run before featured online videos “continue to dominate across all video platforms.” The groups reported that 96 per cent of respondents said they use pre-roll ads in their online campaigns, 26 per cent said they use them in mobile campaigns, and 30 per cent use them in campaigns that target tablet users. They added that the number of ad executives who said they use pre-roll ads for tablet campaigns has seen “a three-fold increase” over the number who reported using them in tablet campaigns last year. “Looking ahead, Canadian advertisers will continue to adopt pre-roll in earnest,” the report said. “Respondents from this year’s survey predict an even greater rise in pre-roll use with 50 percent anticipating use of pre-roll on mobile, and 56 percent foreseeing use of pre-roll on tablet devices over the next year.” The report said ad agencies continue to desire better metrics that can give their clients a better idea of the impact of their digital video ad campaigns. “Given Canadian advertisers’ emerging preference for cohesive, multi-screen video ad campaigns, the high level of interest in unified metrics across screens is logical,” the report said. news@thewirereport.ca

Executives turning to digital video brand advertising: survey

News | 09/26/2012 2:30 pm EDT

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