December was a big month for internet advertising, as it always has been. However, December of 2012 showed the changing of the times a bit more than past years have, as different advertising platforms have grown significantly in popularity. Evidence of this comes from a recent report from comScore, detailing the performance of video advertising as a whole for December of last year. According to the report, consumers viewed 11.3 billion video advertisements in that month alone, which shows a significant boost in video ad view numbers, and that video advertising has absolutely become a viable marketing solution. The 11.3 billion video ad views came from 182 million U.S internet users who watched 38.7 billion online content videos for the month.
The report shows us that advertisements made up a total of 22 percent of all videos viewed in December, and ads from Google sites received the most views. It seems that Google’s acquisition of YouTube was the perfect move for the company, with video ads hitting high numbers not long after. Google Sites boasted almost 2 billion ad views, with the BrightRoll video network coming in second with 1.8 billion ads seen on their network.
The rest of the top five properties included LiveRail.com, Adap.TV, and Hulu. LiveRail.com had 1.7 billion ads viewed on their network, Adap.TV had around 1.5 billion ads viewed with their network, and Hulu came in close with over 1.4 billion ads viewed.
At least 53 percent of the entire population of the country was reached by a video ad in December, and each viewer averaged about 70 ad views for the duration. Although Hulu hit the bottom of the top 5 with total ads viewed on their network, the company had the highest frequency of video ads delivered to viewers at an average of 65. Google’s sites only delivered an average of about 20 ads per viewer for the month.
Some of the report’s other key findings included:
- 84.9 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
- The duration of the average online content video was 5.4 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
- Video ads accounted for 22.6 percent of all videos viewed and 1.9 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.
Video advertising has hit consumers in a huge way, simply because consumers are finding more interest in video and image content than they are written word these days. Video content is the favorite among internet users, especially those who are heavy users of social media. As video content is shared all around the web, so are video ads, which brings to the table a further reach for marketers. comScore’s report regarding December’s video ad performance simply shows the direction in which video ad content is headed, and it definitely looks good. With about 85 percent of the entire online community in the United States viewing online video, it should become very clear that a significant shift has occurred, and is not expected to change any time soon.
