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Measuring online video effectiveness
One of the most important issues facing all brands that use video advertising online is working out how to measure success.
As video advertising exists online, and in the absence of a better option, it is often measured on a click through rate which I’m convinced is absolutely the wrong measure. Why I hear you cry? Well when you consider that a huge proportion of video pre-rolls are brand adverts, and that they are TV adverts with no call to action, and that the user has clicked on a link to watch some content why on earth would the user click on a pre-roll to take them away from said content before they have watched it? It’s totally counter-intuitive.
When we run a video channel sponsorship on Telegraph TV we usually run a pre-roll before the content and then a post-roll after the content. The post-roll in 99% of occasions gets a considerably higher click through rate. That makes sense. The user has watched the video they came for, they have seen the message beforehand and now that the video content has finished, they are more likely to be interested in visiting another site; hopefully the advertisers site.
Trouble is, how else can we measure it? For larger video campaigns, we often run pre and post campaign research with a market research company. The questionnaire will go live before the clients ad campaign, and ask some carefully thought out questions to gauge brand awareness, propensity to buy etc and then the same questions are asked after the campaign. In all but one instance, these pieces of research have shown a significant uplift in key metrics. That’s fine if you are spending over £25,000 with one site, but if as with many pre-roll campaigns the gross revenue is substantially lower than that how are you supposed to measure success? Is it good enough to know that your advert will be seen a certain number of times, in a good environment, and by the right people?
I’d welcome your thoughts.
As video advertising exists online, and in the absence of a better option, it is often measured on a click through rate which I’m convinced is absolutely the wrong measure. Why I hear you cry? Well when you consider that a huge proportion of video pre-rolls are brand adverts, and that they are TV adverts with no call to action, and that the user has clicked on a link to watch some content why on earth would the user click on a pre-roll to take them away from said content before they have watched it? It’s totally counter-intuitive.
When we run a video channel sponsorship on Telegraph TV we usually run a pre-roll before the content and then a post-roll after the content. The post-roll in 99% of occasions gets a considerably higher click through rate. That makes sense. The user has watched the video they came for, they have seen the message beforehand and now that the video content has finished, they are more likely to be interested in visiting another site; hopefully the advertisers site.
Trouble is, how else can we measure it? For larger video campaigns, we often run pre and post campaign research with a market research company. The questionnaire will go live before the clients ad campaign, and ask some carefully thought out questions to gauge brand awareness, propensity to buy etc and then the same questions are asked after the campaign. In all but one instance, these pieces of research have shown a significant uplift in key metrics. That’s fine if you are spending over £25,000 with one site, but if as with many pre-roll campaigns the gross revenue is substantially lower than that how are you supposed to measure success? Is it good enough to know that your advert will be seen a certain number of times, in a good environment, and by the right people?
I’d welcome your thoughts.
Tags: Measuring, Mike, Nicholson, Telegraph, advertising, click, effectiveness, online, pre-roll, rate
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Comment by Jonathan Harris on December 9, 2009 at 8:35am -
I think the "trackability" of online, while one of it's greatest assests, is also one of it's greatest limitations. Clients have got into the mindset of judging campaigns on CTR and immediate responses, and with the advertising opportunities we are looking at now, including video, there needs to be a shift in how we and clients think about performance.
For me, while clicks are great, reach and frequency are now far better metrics for judging online video. The lines between online video and TV are blurring, so we need common metrics. UKOM will obviously help in this area and a focus on E2C reporting the future can also aid our cause.
To address the point you made about measuring success, I don't think there is a definite answer. Certainly at the moment video is not great as a DR tool, and is used by the vast majority of advertisers as a branding tool. Is this case, we do have to hope the agency/planner is intelligent enough to go into the areas that the target audience will be in, but this is no different to TV buying which still gets the lions share of video budget.
I think online has huge potential for video and the trackability factor is great, but this is still early days.
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