Vindico Blog Video Insights Report: 2015 Year-In-Review

Posted by: Rick Bruner, VP of Research & AnalyticsFeatured below is the Executive Summary from Viant's new Video Insights Report: 2015 Year-In-Review. Advertisers spent $7.5 billion on video advertising in 2015, a 42% growth over 2014. Video ads accounted for 13% of all digital ad spending in 2015, according to eMarketer. As one of the largest ad servers specializing in video ads, serving tens of billions of ad impressions annually for thousands of campaigns, Viant's video ad serving platform, Vindico, has the vantage point that affords it a rich view into overall industry trends for this important ad channel. Among the most striking conclusions of this report are the following: 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. Viewability 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. 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. CTR fall 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. To download a full version of the report, click here.