Commentary
After Addressing Initial Video Viewability, These are the Metrics That Matter
- by Jeremy Ostermiller , Op-Ed Contributor, June 26, 2015
As video commands a larger portion of advertising budgets, it’s not surprising that video viewability is a chief concern. But once this issue is satisfactorily addressed, marketers need to know what other metrics matter. It’s great if all of an advertiser’s videos meet the IAB viewability standard, but does that matter more than completion rates or other engagement metrics? If ads are always seen, but the message never connects, did the campaign accomplish any of its goals? These are major questions, and once marketers are comfortable with viewability, the following metrics will take on even greater importance.
Viewing Time and Completion Rates
Putting video ads within view is, of course, the first step toward campaign success. But the next step is figuring out if consumers actually watched the video while it was viewable.
Even more important are how long the ad actually stays in view while it plays, and how many viewers completed the video. Research supports the fact that completed views are more valuable to advertisers than click-through rates, with brand recall being significantly higher if the entire ad was watched.
This lets marketers really measure how their creative connects with their audience and how well it resonates. It’s arguably better to deliver a slightly lower overall viewability percentage and a higher video completion rate. A high percentage of consumers getting further through the video or watching the entire ad is a good indication that the marketer is hitting the right audience and delivering a successful campaign.
Moreover, in an effort to get ads in view, advertisers shouldn’t forget that reaching the right consumers is imperative to a successful campaign -- and that achieving 100% viewability still doesn’t guarantee that they have reached the right audience.
Engagement Metrics
Of course, viewing time doesn’t tell the whole story. Marketers must dive deeper into their metrics to uncover the audiences that actually engaged with the video. Marketers can more deeply measure campaign effectiveness by examining engagement with interactive elements like overlays or buttons within the videos. Click-through rates alone are not good indicators of success for branding campaigns. In fact, clicking through, whether done purposefully or inadvertently, could result in the viewer missing the ad message altogether.
High skip rates are part of the engagement puzzle as well, with very high rates signaling low engagement. Either the campaign is missing the target audience, or the creative isn’t resonating. Repurposed 15- or 30-second television spots do not always perform well in an online environment where users actively consume content verses passive TV consumption. Creative and spot length matter, and delivering a compelling hook and brand message in the first few seconds can make the difference between success and failure.
Post Campaign Conversions
The power of programmatic ad buying and audience targeting is that brands can compare different audience segments side by side. Astute marketers slice their performance numbers to find which segments deliver the highest performance and optimize toward those.
Marketers need to look at these performance metrics, monitor if they improve or decline over time, and look deeper into trends revealed through post-campaign data. Was one piece of creative more effective than others? Did one audience segment exhibit higher engagement? Did one creative result in higher completion rates? These are valuable insights.
Of course, the purest measurement of campaign success is the ring of the cash register. Digital attribution models are still evolving, but marketers should start monitoring the ROI on their video campaigns even as they still struggle to define viewability.
Viewability is still a major concern, but the truth is that it’s just one factor among many in a marketer’s campaign considerations, and not the leading indicator of success. Once marketers get some assurance that their ads are seen, the true value for video lies in making sure the right audience responds to and remembers the message.
While I agree that ads that are in-view for longer durations are more likely to work for the advertiser than those that are on screen for only a few seconds, We are going to need a better indication of actual viewing and ad message registration. It may be that such metrics can be deveolped for the pre-testing phase, assuming that branding advertisers will take the trouble to find a way to simulate the video viewing experience and measure the levels of ad recall, sales motivation, etc. that their ads generate under varying circumstances---before they are served to audiences. It is also likely that once we learn to track human response mechanisms to video ads that some sort of ongoing measurement of the performance of ad campaigns will be initiated, which, coupled with electronic indicators like time spent on screen, CTRs, etc., provide a more complete picture of how well the ads are working. I don't think that we can rely only on the electronics.