Commentary

Number Of Video Ads Viewed Dipped In July; YouTube Gains Ad Market Share

Ah, have the dog days of summer gotten online video ads down?

ComScore’s monthly report on online video viewing and advertising revealed that the number of video ads viewed in July dropped to 9.6 billion -- down from 11 billion in June, and the lowest amount of ads viewed since April. 

The dip is likely due to seasonal viewing fluctuations more than marketplace health. July is prime vacation time, which often pushes down video consumption. Also, sites like Hulu served less ads, probably as a result of less first-run premium shows in July on that site with many TV shows in summer repeats. Even so, we’ll want to keep a close watch on the next few sets of monthly numbers to determine whether this dip becomes a trend.

Good news came from Google-owned YouTube, which didn’t suffer any summer blues. It delivered 1.5 billion ads in July, up from 1.4 billion in June and May, and 1.3 billion in April. The world’s biggest video site continues to gain market share when it comes to ads, evidence that YouTube’s efforts to invest in higher-quality content to lure marketers is starting to pay off. One caveat, however -- the site still has a long way to go in terms of boosting the number of ads seen relative to video views, but that’s because so much of the content on YouTube isn’t brand-appropriate for a variety of reasons.

Although the overall number of ads dropped last month, the top four video ad properties each delivered more than 1 billion video ads — YouTube with its 1.5 billion, Hulu with 1.2 billon,  Adap.tv with 1.1 billion, and SpotXchange with 1 billion. TubeMogul took the fifth slot with 830 million. For comparison, the top 5 sites in June all delivered more than 1 billion ads each.

Stay tuned for next month’s numbers and we’ll see which direction videos ads go.

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