Mobile Video Ads a Growing Interest for Brands: Study
No one’s claiming that the third screen will be viewers’ first choice for video any time soon. But according to the latest quarterly report from mobile ad network Rhythm NewMedia, last year saw a big jump in the number of brands willing to use video to cut through the ad clutter and reach smartphone users.
The Q4 report finds that more than 200 Fortune 400 brands ran mobile ad campaigns involving video content in 2010—eight time the number who used video in their mobile campaigns the year before. Seventy of those brands ran ads in the fourth quarter 2010.
The study was based on video ad content served over Rhythm’s network for the quarter, an average 535 million content views a month for the three months—up 26% from views in the third quarter. Rhythm specializes in serving in-stream pre-roll video to Apple and Android phones, in addition to full-page ads, banners and ads that display while a smartphone app is launching.
Brands running mobile video ads on Rhythm networks’ publishing sites include Procter & Gamble, Kraft, Unilever, HBO, AT&T, Marriott, Best Buy, Audi and Toyota. Those ads were published on sites including those for CBS news, E! Online, Fox, AP and a number of other entertainment, sports, lifestyle and music Web sites.
The automotive industry led all other verticals in incorporating video into its ads in Q4 2010 and accounted for almost 30% of the total ad revenue on the Rhythm network, according to the report. Telecom brands came in second at about 17% of revenues, followed by CPG brands (14%), travel and hospitality (12%) and entertainment (10%).
As in previous quarterly studies, the current report found that video in the mobile channel is stickier than that served online. Mobile video has a 94% retention rate in the first 10 seconds of play versus an 81% retention rate for Web video, and an 81% retention rate in the first 60 seconds compared to 56% for Web video.
Completion rates for pre-roll mobile video ads are also high, with 87.9% of viewers watching three-quarters to all of the video content. Viewers are also more prone to watch video via smartphone apps than on the mobile Web: At 11 monthly views per unique user, app video views are more than five times higher than the two views per month for the average mobile Web visitor.
Interestingly, the iPad’s roomier screen seems to be pulling the device ahead of other mobile handsets in terms of clickthroughs on video ads. Users of the Apple –made tablet clicked through on interactive pre-roll ads at a rate of more than 2% for the quarter, compared to a CTR of 1.5% on the iPod Touch, about 1% on the iPhone and just over 0.5% on Android devices.
Rhythm also notes that interactive smartphone ads such as those under study can make good use of a very specific “call to action”—namely the verbal instruction to “tap to video” or to “watch here”. While the average mobile full-page ad achieves a CTR of 3.7%, that same page can reap a 6% CTR by encouraging users to tap their touchscreens to start a video ad.
