More Better Views

Triple the Value of Your Media Spend - Part 1

Posted by Robert Helstrom on Mar 31, 2015 11:37:00 AM

This is Part 1 of a four-part series of articles that chronicles how brand strategists and media planners can achieve 3x-plus return on their media buys through well-managed online video advertising campaigns.

A few months ago, we released a "Tipping Point Alert" about ad industry movers and shakers that are shifting significant dollars from TV and other media budgets to online video ads. Now let's explore how you can turn every one of those shifting dollars into three or more in ROI.

Get full value for your money—Buy completed views

woman watching video ad on tabletThe first and most important thing is to get 100% direct return for your ad spend, and you can't do that buying CPMs.

According to industry average figures cited by Integral Ad Science for Q4 2014, here’s what you get If you buy $100K video ad CPMs:

$39K worth of viewable impressions.

What’s a “viewable impression?” According to the Media Rating Council and IAB, 50% of the video ad’s pixels were viewable for at least two continuous seconds.

Put another way, $61K of your investment pays for ads that are never viewed.

Granted, 50% for two seconds is the minimum standard. We can assume that some of the ads were actually viewed all the way through, but like with TV advertising, there’s no real way to tell.

Unless you buy completed views.

For example, the Sightly platform runs programmatic YouTube TrueView in-stream campaigns for its clients, which guarantee 100% of media spends produce completed views, chosen by viewers.

We call this "completed view-plus."This is the highest value video ad you can buy. Period.

TrueView in-stream video ads are skipable after five seconds and the advertiser only pays when a viewer watches the entire ad or 30 seconds, if the ad is longer than that.

Moreover, recall for in-stream ads is 3.5x higher compared to ads in-banner. In addition they produce higher favorability, higher brand association and engagement and higher intent to purchase.

Yes, you can buy other ads on cost-per-completed-view (CPCV) basis, or see “completed views” as a metric in your CPM-based campaign buy, but pay attention to the details to ensure you’re getting the value you expect.

Caution: not all completed views are created equal

If you’re a brand steward, which of these scenarios would you rather pay for?

  1. Viewer A is forced to watch your ad before they can watch the video content they’re interested in.
  2. Viewer B chooses to watch your ad before they watch the video content they’re interested in.

young man forced to watch annoying commercial on phoneThat’s what we thought.

Why are viewers who choose to watch your ad more valuable than those who are forced to watch?

Because your message is more relevant to them, they’re more likely to remember and respond to it. Essentially, they’re self-targeting your message.

What is that worth? 75% higher engagement.

As YouTube’s Baljeet Singh put it upon the launch of the TrueView ad unit:

“Viewer intention to watch an ad is widely seen as a proxy for whether a brand message is being delivered and consumed.”

Whereas, being forced to watch an ad is widely seen as annoying.

This is especially true if the advertiser has done a poor job of personalizing its message for viewers and/or micro-targeting them.

Don’t settle for 39% ROI

Allowing the viewer to choose to watch your ad is a win-win for both of you. They tell you if it's relevant to them right now and you don't pay if they don't watch it all. It’s simply the difference between a “high quality view” and a view.

Don’t settle for 39% of your investment generating “viewable impressions.” Buy completed views—TrueView in-stream full views if you can get them—not CPMs.

Stay tuned for Part 2

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Triple the Value of Your Media Spend, where we explore the significant benefits of measuring and valuing partial views.

If you’d like more information on video ad viewability, download a free, shareable PDF of our Viewability QuikDeck:

Topics: Video Advertising, Multi-Screen Reach, Video Ad Viewability

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