• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, June 13, 2013

The use of exchanges is growing in online video, but the market is still dominated by direct buying on major sites. That’s one of the findings in a state-of-the-industry report from video ad management platform Vindico that analyzed video impressions across the Web for 2012.

About 65% of impressions were placed directly on sites owned by traditional media outlets such as CNN, Hulu, The New York Times, and NBC along with standalone Web sites such as Yahoo, YouTube and MSN, Vindico said in its report. That’s actually up slightly from the year before when 62% of impressions ran on those sites. Specifically, Vindico found that 36% of video impressions occurred on major media-owned sites and 29% on Internet brands. Meanwhile, ad networks delivered about 35% of the video impressions last year, down slightly from 38% the year before. But ad networks have grown their overall share of video impressions since 2010 when they accounted for 28%.

Don’t assume that ad networks won’t grow more in the year ahead, though. In fact, studies from Forrester have pointed to real-time video advertising buying as a key source of overall video ad growth. But, these results point to stability at the very least in the benefits that direct buying can bring to brands in digital video.

Vindico also found that opposites don’t attract. Ads perform best when surrounded by video programming. Video ads on sites of major media brands, like an NBC or Hulu, have the highest completion rate at about 91%. Ads on Internet-centric sites average a 76% completion rate, and those placed by ad networks and exchanges are generating a 68% completion rate.

“Major media acts as a prime environment for high ad completion rates regardless of ad length,” Vindico said. “High quality content, TV-like execution and extensive long-form  content offerings trump any ad length distinctions  among consumers.”

In addition, Vindico reported that the tablet as an ad venue is growing quickly and now  encompasses one third of all mobile and connected ad buys, with volume in the second half of the year six times higher than that of the overall connected and mobile segment. There’s a caveat though; measurement and ad serving standards aren’t consistent for tablets, Vindico said.