Vindico Blog Viant Video Insights Report: Viewability, CTR, Media & More

Originally posted on AdotasAdvertisers spent $7.5 billion on video advertising in 2015, a 42% growth over 2014. In order to provide deeper insight into why video continues to capture the attention of advertisers, Viant, a TIME Inc. technology company, released its 2015 Year in Review Video Insights Report.Viant's annual report is based on one of the largest buy-side representations of digital video across today's market, explains Jon Schulz, CMO at Viant (pictured left). Through the lens of Viant's video ad serving platform Vindico, one of the largest ad servers specializing in video ads, the insights are based on tens of billions of annual impressions placed by today's leading agencies and advertisers.Highlights from the 2015 Video Insights ReportViewability rates are flat: After two years of industry focus on improving the "viewability" rate of digital ads, with the IAB advocating last year for 70% averages for campaigns, and the 4A's insisting 100% should be the standard, the actual rate was only 46%, effectively unmoved from the year prior.CTR falls significantly: Click-through rates, the perennial ad metric everyone loves to hate, fell significantly for video ads, from 0.62% on average in 2014 to 0.43% in 2015. This may suggest that advertisers are recognizing digital video primarily as a branding tool.Rapid shift away from desktop to mobile and OTT: The balance of digital ad delivery is shifting away from desktops/laptop computers to mobile and over-the- top devices. Ads served to internet-connected televisions grew six-fold from the year before, nearly overtaking ads served to tablet computers.Major Media brands lead in viewability and completion rates: The digital properties of traditional media companies (e.g., CBS.com, CNN.com, People.com) saw improvements over last year in key performance indicators for digital ad campaigns and had viewability and video ad completion rates (71% and 92%, respectively) that were far higher than the media categories of Internet Brands and Ad Exchanges/Networks.Completion Rates Improve for Mobile and Desktop: Completion rates on smartphones, tables and even desktops made significant improvements compared to 2015, owing perhaps to publishers giving more focus to mobile user experience over the past two years.