Display and Video / August 04, 2014 / By Erin Martin

Get Ahead of the Curve - Optimize In-Stream Ads for Mobile

With premium desktop pre-roll being sold out months in advance and the explosion in consumer video consumption on mobile devices, the next frontier for video advertising is mobile in-stream. Video advertising has been available on mobile for a couple years now, but it’s been a bit of a hodgepodge of user experiences billed as “mobile video” (such as the interruptive interstitial ads within games or tap-to-expand video ads). This type of ad can be very effective for media placements, but are not the same as in-stream video. 2014 is the year for interactive mobile in-stream video – video ads designed for both the mobile and video experience.

A few major trends are colliding to create new opportunities to reach consumers through video advertising on mobile.

1.  Consumers are spending more time on mobile. This trend is no surprise. According to Business Insider, consumer time spent on mobile shot up eight percentage points in 2013 compared to 2012, from 12% to 20%. It is noteworthy that mobile is the only medium in which consumer time spent grew between 2012 and 2013.
2.  Mobile video consumption is rapidly increasing. Companies like Google, Comcast, Netflix, HBO Go, Discovery, Hulu are driving the rapid consumer mobile video consumption as mentioned in the Wall Street Journal piece Why Google and Comcast are Headed on a Collision Course. From YouTube videos, to TV shows, to full-length movies, video is increasingly being watched on mobile. According to eMarketer, the average adult spends 33 minutes a day watching mobile video, compared to only 22 minutes watching video on their desktops. BI Intelligence forecasts that smartphones will account for nearly one-half of all online video ad plays by the end of 2016, up from just 10% in 2013. Tablets will grow to account for 20% of video ad views in 2016, more than doubling from 7% in 2013.
3.  Mobile ad spending is on the rise. BI Intelligence found that mobile ads are becoming more frequent and mobile’s share of total ad spend ticked up increasing from 3% share to 4% share in 2013. While mobile advertising is growing, Mary Meeker emphasized in her latest Internet Trends 2014 presentation that mobile ad spending in the U.S. severely lags mobile engagement. There is a huge opportunity to reach consumers on their mobile devices, if done the right way.
4.  VPAID 2.0 has emerged as a unified industry standard. The adoption of VPAID 2.0 makes it much easier to run ads across screens. The advertisers I speak to mean in-stream when they ask for “video”. VPAID 2.0 ad tags run on any device, saving advertisers the effort of developing different creative assets for the specifications of different devices. This standard also provides a full metrics suite and reporting across all units.

For video ads, mobile pre-roll ads are the way to go. Why? Because users expect to see a video ad before they are rewarded with free video content. The experience is fluid.

How can you optimize pre-roll ads for the mobile experience?

Make video ads interactive. Interactivity improves video ad performance. A recent Mixpo study found that interactive pre-roll had a 228% higher user interaction rate (deliberate user action on the creative elements of an ad unit), and click-through rate was 12% higher for interactive video ads compared to flat.

Personalize the message. Delivering relevant ads targeted by location, demographics, or time of day also increases engagement. An eMarketer study found that online video ad personalization and relevancy resulted in a 37% lift in reported purchase intent, a 100% lift in brand favorability, and 73% lift in brand loyalty. This shows that personalization can increase the ability to remember and relate to online video ads, which creates a more powerful branding effect.

Deliver across screens. Advertisers and consumers expect a consistent experience across all devices. Use a platform that enables responsive video ads, meaning the ad automatically renders in the right language, Flash or HTML5, and the creative scales based on the screen size of the give device.

One of the many advantages of online video is the ability to make a bigger brand impact through engaging and interactive ads. Take advantage of the four colliding trends around consumer viewing habits on mobile, particularly mobile video consumption, and the opportunity to purchase lower cost but highly impactful mobile pre-roll inventory. A good ad tech vendor and the VPAID 2.0 standard can make it easy to run creative across screens and maximize your online video impact.

Mixpo was the first ad tech company to run a VPAID 2.0 campaign. We are experts in helping agencies and media companies build, deliver and measure interactive video ads on all screens. Having served billions of interactive video ads across all major advertiser categories, we have empirical evidence of what works best. Maximize your online video impact, we can help.