Surely there is not any doubt that the world of internet marketing has become a business that relies heavily on visuals. This means of course that consumers are constantly showing a better response to things like images and videos than they do simply text on a page. Today, video advertising is of particular interest to advertisers, as it allows them a way to grab consumer attention visually, and still relay to them a message that images may not be able to. Because of their success, advertisers have found multiple uses and methods of using video ads. Nielsen, the well-known information measurement company, in collaboration with Sharethrough, a company that deals with native advertising, have recently compared a few of these methods of use for video ads to find which would bring in higher brand-lift metrics for brands and advertisers.
In order to conduct this research, Sharethrough helped five leading advertisers create video ads in a pre-roll format and then in a native format, both of which would convey the same creative message. After this, the company used Nielsen’s Online Brand Effect to see the effects that each had on brand lift, and what would cause this lift.
An important finding from the study that Nielsen and Sharethrough conducted is that, when prompted with a brand survey, attitudes differed based on the type of video ad consumers were shown. In fact, the study states that pre-roll ads were more likely to bring about negative responses in a brand survey than were native ads. Pre-roll ads often come off as unwelcomed in users’ eyes, and they often feel as if content is being thrown at them without their asking for it. In fact, the study found that those users that were shown pre-roll ads were 29.3 percent more likely to state in a survey that they viewed a brand’s content “unfavorably,” compared to people who had not been shown any advertised content.
Now, as far as brand lift goes, native videos conquered this study. With all five ad campaigns that Sharethrough examined, native videos brought the higher lift. Among users that saw ads, these native ads showed an 82 percent lift. What makes this fact even more impressive is that pre-roll ads only made for a 2.1 percent lift, according to the study.
It seems that as of today, native ads take the cake in the area of brand lift. Pre-roll ads may prove to have the highest reach, and they are almost always being viewed constantly, but native video ads really deliver in this area.
The company mentions that as of December of 2012, the US has streamed about 24.6 billion videos on the web. Considering the importance of videos on the web today, it is also important to consider the type of video you use for your advertising purposes.
