Commentary
What Is Premium? High Completion Rates!
- by August 2, 2012
Few words are more popular in the media and advertising worlds than “premium.” When referencing content, in particular video content, everyone claims to be premium. There is a generally accepted definition of this concept, but as media consumption habits change, this definition may no longer be adequate.
Is there a more appropriate way to define premium in the current environment?
First, does it even matter that media is categorized as premium? Due to the volume of content, it can be difficult for brands to sift through the jungle and find the most appropriate and best content within which to advertise.
Cleaning up the market and giving clear definitions allows distinctions to be drawn between the various types of content and vendors. This makes having a clear definition of "premium" very important for brand advertisers.
Money = Premium?
Traditionally, premium video content is assumed to be content from major media companies. Traits of this accepted definition of premium include, being created by a major media company, having high production values and ultimately confirmed through high Nielsen ratings. Brands know what they are getting when advertising within content from major media companies.
This established definition of premium stems from an old paradigm and only looks at one issue: the brand. Advances in technology both online and with mobile devices have led to changes in media consumption habits. Consumer interests have changed and need to be considered when defining premium.
Completion Rate Defines Premium
Entertaining and captivating video content is what is premium to a consumer, regardless of who created the content, major media company or not. Highly sought after content that is brand safe is premium for both brands and consumers.
Assuming the content is brand safe, the best measure of whether it is premium is by the completion rates of ads shown within. For a consumer to agree to watch ads in order to access content, it must be desired content. There needs to be, in the consumers mind, a fair value exchange of 15 seconds of their time watching a commercial, in order to see their favorite programming. That fair value exchange is always present in premium content, meaning ad completion rates will be high.
Completion rates for video ads on TV, online and mobile can range from 5% to almost 90%. Mobile video advertising within premium content has an industry leading completion rate of 89%.
As the media industry changes, concepts like “premium content” develop in parallel. Marketers that quickly adapt will stay at the forefront of consumer interest, giving their brand messages the best opportunity to resonate.
Ujjal,
I really like the point you are trying to make!
Between 2005 and 2007 I set up a test with this exact line of thinking in mind. I wanted to establish whether or not my company had "The Ultimate in premium content" so decided to see how many hoops people would jump through in order to gain access to our content??
(Our company shares peoples first time skydiving videos with their family and friends).
The test: In order to access the video each viewer had to sit through 2 x 15 second pre-rolls, THEN fill out their first name, last name, email, age, sex, region and their relationship to the customer in the video.
The result: We shared 40,000 videos and over 700,000 viewers jumped though all of our hoops to watch! (17.5 individual viewers per video was pretty good back before social networks became popular).