To see how quickly digital video is growing, you only need to look at some compelling findings from Forrester:
- Online video will grow at a 21 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years.
- 90 percent of U.S. online adults ages 18 to 34 watch online video weekly, and two-thirds of those ages 35 to 54 do the same.
- In 2015, marketers will invest more than $6 billion in video ads, which represents 38 percent of total desktop display advertising spend. This will grow to almost 55 percent of total desktop display advertising spend by 2019
We took a look at recent industry reports from Forrester, IAB and Gartner to see what this growth means for advertisers:
Online video is more popular with consumers
Consumers embrace all forms of video content, and it’s fast becoming central to their online content consumption habits. This makes video advertisers’ biggest opportunity. As Forrester’s brief, “Digital Platforms Free Video from TV’s Shackles,” notes, both online video and television have the ability to deliver powerful brand messages through sight, sound and motion. However, online video is overtaking television because it is more ubiquitous (meaning it is consumed on any device, at any time, at any location), personal, data-driven and emotional.
Online video also allows marketers to engage customers across the lifecycle. Forrester references a personalized video engagement program from SundaySky customer Atlantis in support of this. The resort uses personalized video to engage guests at multiple touch points prior to their arrival to introduce them to the property’s amenities and, by doing so, increased spend by 9 percent (Note: You can read the full case study here).
More ad spend moves to online video
IAB found out of all video formats, digital video has the highest expected ad spend, followed closely by mobile video. It also reports that more than two-thirds of survey respondents plan to shift funds away from TV budgets to instead fund digital video programs.
There are some obstacles to increased spending on digital video. One of the biggest? Proving the ROI versus other mediums. This could be a sign that marketers aren’t fully capitalizing on the delivery and creative targeting opportunities digital video presents, which leads us to the recommendations from a recent Gartner report…
Marrying data and creative
Gartner’s 2015 Hype Cycle for Advertising looks at marketers’ increased investments in data-driven advertising technology, including dynamic creative optimization (DCO), which Gartner refers to as the dynamic, real-time selection of creative elements based on viewer segmentation, context or conditions. The report predicts further adoption of DCO technologies to allow marketers to create 1-to-1 ad variations at scale with great efficiency, such as the SmartVideo Cloud platform does with video.
Data and creative must be combined for the most efficient and effective digital advertising. With real-time bidding and programmatic, advertisers have the potential to perform media targeting and creative selection at the same time, increasing the efficiency and performance of their advertising strategies with messages truly personalized to the individual.
States Gartner in the report, “Programmatic media has shifted the focus of advertisers away from creative toward media-based targeting techniques and technologies; DCO will shift the focus back toward targeted creative, resulting in demand for DCO design talent and more robust tools to help advertising ‘creatives’ approach the daunting demands of DCO for many versions of each message.” Informing creative decisions with data lets marketers enhance creative assets in a way that’s relevant to each individual, thereby engaging audiences with individualized, timely and relevant messages.
