Are We All Doing YouTube Preroll wrong?

Here is Nail's blurb about the dog video:

As marketers, it's time we change the way we do YouTube preroll.

The current model seems to be to simply throw your TV commercial in front of any video a loosely defined demographic happens to be watching.

What a missed opportunity. The skip rates are unbelievable (94 percent is a generous estimate). And when there is no skip button, you can practically feel the resentment oozing through the Internet. Hardly the temperament most brands want to inspire from their customers, right?

.....

YouTube ads should be designed for YouTube. They should use the tools and features given to us and interact with the user and the platform in a way that can't be rivaled. They should be self-aware. They should talk to one person at a time.

What the heck are we talking about, you ask?

OK, here's an example. We wanted to raise awareness and money for an organization near and dear to us: the ASPCA. We had virtually no money but had given ourselves a serious challenge: can we make a skippable YouTube that virtually no one skips?

Did we do it? You tell us."

Iframing - The VAST Problem Of Video Viewability

Remember the scene in the movie "Kill Bill, Vol. 2" where the vengeful heroine, the Bride, is buried alive in a coffin and has to pound her way out with her bare fists? That’s your video ad.

Click Here for Full Article on AdExchanger

It’s essentially trapped in a box and buried in the publisher’s web page, and whether it can get out and reveal any metrics to the advertiser depends on whether it can bash through the various impediments blocking it from the surface.

A VPAID In The VAST

Even if the video ad can crack through the iframe, it still needs to crack through the player, and this creates another issue. The problem, points out Pieter Mees, CEO of Zentrick, is that “most video doesn’t have the infrastructure to run code.” This makes it difficult to run interactive video – Zentrick produces a tool that enables the creation of interactive video – and analytics.

Consequently the ability to gather any salient metrics, not just those related to viewability, depends largely on the publisher's video integration methodology. If the video was integrated using only the Video Ad-Serving Template (VAST), then marketers might as well dump their video ads into a titanium box for all the visibility they’ll get. VAST video placements, according to Kandi Onwuama, Extreme Reach’s VP of software architecture, don’t allow third-party tech vendors or advertisers to apply viewability technologies.

CBS Makes Up to 20% More Ad Revenue Online Than TV per Viewer: Research Chief

Click Here for Full Article on Variety
CBS, like every other TV network, is seeing audiences increasingly shift to Internet viewing of programming — and that’s been a good thing for the Eye, according to chief research officer David F. Poltrack.
“We actually make more money per viewer streaming than we do on television,” Poltrack said Tuesday at the 2014 Media & Entertainment Industry Forum in New York, presented by the IESE Business School and Variety. “If you stream our programming online, you’re seeing a full complement of advertising – you can’t bypass it.”
On average, CBS generates 10% to 20% more ad dollars per viewer from Internet-streamed programs than TV. Poltrack expects that to differential to increase even more later in 2014 because of a dearth of inventory for premium video online: “There’s been a flight to quality this year. Demand for our online video is through the roof.”

For CBS shows streamed online, such as “The Good Wife” (pictured, above), viewers can’t fast-forward through the ads. That also means that brand recall and recognition rates are higher for Internet video than TV, Poltrack said.
Of course, one of the big reasons ad rates for premium Internet-streamed video are higher than TV is because the online audiences are smaller – and hence, harder to reach. Online audiences also skew toward younger viewers, which are a more desirable target for marketers.
In addition, TV ad spending is far greater than digital-video advertising today, although the Internet segment is growing as a faster rate (from a smaller base). TV advertising in the U.S. will grow 3.3% in 2014 to $68.54 billion, while digital-video ad spending will increase 41.9% to reach $5.96 billion, according to a recent study from eMarketer.
According to Poltrack, the top 30 TV programs today overall have the same size audience as the top 30 in 2000. The difference today, he said, is that “it’s just not all on the television set in the living room.”
The majority of TV viewing is still live on television, but it’s been shrinking. In the first quarter of 2014, 80% of TV viewing was live, compared with 89% in 2011 among adults 18 and older, according to Nielsen data.
Poltrack, as he’s inclined to do, discounted pundits who have predicted that the rise of Internet video will damage the TV biz. In a December survey commissioned by CBS, 28% of respondents said they were watching more TV than  a year earlier, while 55% said their viewing was about the same and 17% said they were watching less.
Up until recently, consumers were more likely to say they were watching less television, in spite of the fact that Nielsen data showed time spent viewing TV was increasing. “It used to be a more ‘socially correct’ statement to say you were watching less television,” Poltrack said. “Today, I would argue, it’s ‘socially correct’ to say you’re watching more television.”
As for the trend of younger consumers watching less television, Poltrack said that’s been a recurring theme over the past 40 years. “The reason (younger people) watch less TV is because they are not home as much — and as we get older, we spend more time at home,” he said.

Todd Spangler

NY Digital Editor@xpangler