• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, June 2, 2015

According to April 2015 research by Google, marketers remain concerned about paying for video ads that aren’t seen. Paying more for larger ad sizes could help boost viewability, says the report.

eMarketer estimates that US digital video ad spending will increase by 33.8% this year and maintain double-digit growth through at least 2019,. In dollar terms, spending will nearly double from $7.77 billion in 2015 to $14.38 billion by 2019. However, this forecast masks structural problems in the digital video advertising industry, the most pressing of which is a disagreement between buyers and sellers over current standards for ad viewability and other benchmarks, says the report.

Nowhere is the ad industry’s lack of cohesiveness more evident than in the case of viewability, determining whether an ad is within the user’s view when it’s playing.

In Q4 2014, worldwide viewability rates for 15- and 30-second video ads hovered around 51% based on a 2-second in-view rate, says the report. That means that roughly 50% of video ads were viewable, according to the MRC’s 2-second benchmark.

According to a study looking at video ads served by DoubleClick and Google Display Network worldwide, among the most common ad sizes across the web, larger players were the most viewable. For example, 848x477 units ranked second for volume behind 300x250 placements, but the former hammered the latter when it came to viewability, with respective rates of 88.6% and 19.8%, the highest and lowest out of all sizes studied, says the report.

Data from Innovid in March 2015 found similar results. Among interactive online pre-roll video ads served worldwide in 2014, broadcast publishers (such as ABC, CBS and NBC) crushed portals and publishers (AOL, Condé Nast, Mashable, Yahoo etc.) as well as platforms and aggregators for viewability rate, at 77% vs. 49% and 38%.

Broken down by size, online pre-roll video viewability for broadcast publishers

was 80% on large players, compared with 19% for medium and 0% for small units. Results were slightly different for the other two publisher types, which each saw highest viewability for medium players; still, the lowest rates were for small ones, says the report.

Beyond size, Google looked at the viewability factor of video, location, and found that ads with the highest rates were located on the top and in the center of the page

eMarketer estimates that digital video ad spending will reach $7.77 billion this year, up 33.8% from 2014. For video advertisers to get the most for their money, they should keep in mind that bigger is better and focus on front-and-center placements that grab eyeballs before users scroll away, concludes the report.

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