It is no secret that video advertising for quite some time remains one of the main drivers of growth in the advertising market, both globally and at the local level. What is the reason for such a prolonged growth of the segment? It is obvious that great importance is played by the growth of consumption of video by users, but, in addition, a very important factor is the emergence and development of new video formats. Despite the fact that lately on the market there has been stagnation in the consumption of legal long video on the network, this doesn`t limit the potential of advertising communication, because the spectrum of video products is constantly expanding through the integration of advertising where the target audience is. Today video advertising can be seen in the text pages (outstream) and the feed of social networks. A wide range of formats varies only by the characteristics of consumption and the main goals that need to be considered when choosing a format.

In early January this issue was reported in details by Vice-President for advertising and business platforms of Facebook. Mark Rabkin illustrated interesting differences in the interaction with the advertising messages of various formats.

How people consume advertising

Accordingly, based on the specifics of consumption of different video formats appropriate adjustment of videos is recommended. The two main factors influencing the effectiveness of advertising message are the duration of user`s contact with the advertisement and the place of appearance of advertising and the nature of the interaction with it.

It should be noted that there is much attention in the world market to the issue of diversification of advertising formats and their effectiveness and it is nice that our market is also not lagging behind. One of the brightest examples of special positioning and evaluation of the effectiveness of video products, in my opinion, is the “True view” and “bamper ad” formats from YouTube. “True view” is a format with payments for a guaranteed viewing till the end of video. The conclusion of this format as a separate product, as well as significantly higher costs of placement became a signal to the market about the need to assess the strong and weak sides of different video placement. The next format – bamper ad – is 6-second video, which appeared in response to the increasing fragmentation of information consumption and the transition to mobile platforms. YouTube notes that 6-second videos work well to build brand awareness, but to convey more complex information it needs more prolonged contact with the audience, which means, watching advertising video till the end.

In 2016 Ipsos Comcon Company on request of Vivaki, Google, Rambler, imho.vi and GPMD made extensive study of video advertising on the Russian market. In accordance with its results, for example, in Banner video format, which is quite often characterized by short time of interaction with ads and may suffer from banner blindness, showed a lower level of impact on key brand metrics compared to in-stream video, and the greatest effect was demonstrated by in-read video format with a high degree of visibility and users attention.

Effectiveness of video formats

It should also be noted that for the same ad formats best indicators of impact on brand metrics were showed by non-skippable commercials that are characterized by a longer duration of viewing. However, the level of negative assessments of advertising for non-skippable ads did not exceed the indicators of skippable video.

Willingness to long involved viewing of the video, which is typical for the audience of professional long content results in high efficiency of in-stream formats in long content. According to the results of the study, which was carried out in the Russian market in 2016, the long video is much better able to convey complex communications than advertising in a short non-professional content. In the frame of campaign, in which the measurement was made, the advertiser has announced a financial service, available to owners of the advertised product. It should be noted that the brand of the advertiser was well known, which resulted in good brand awareness of the advertiser, however, this is not what was needed from the campaign. During a large-scale advertising placement video formats for YouTube and several sites with professional long videos were used. As a result, the analysis of the data confirmed that long professional video is much better conveys a more complex advertising message due to the greater involvement of the user in the view.

The effectiveness of video formats in professional long and short content

I believe that for some years we will see noticeable growth of video advertising segment; further diversification of ad formats in online video will be driver of it. However, in my opinion, in-stream advertising will show the greatest efficiency for the videos of television format and to build the brand and knowledge about the product in long professional content. On the background of stagnation of consumption of professional online video, it would mean increased competition for advertising time in a long video that will probably lead to differentiation of formats by cost. Thus the differentiation in price and efficiency actualizes the question of the quality of planning and setting goals for advertising campaigns in video.

AUTHOR: DMITRY PASHUTIN