• Research: Key Video Ad Metrics Show Improvements

    Video ad tech provider Extreme Reach has released its 2017 Video Advertising Benchmark Report, which shows improvements in key video ad metrics. Importantly, ad fraud is decreasing, as filtered bot traffic decreased 31% across all content publishers and 40% for aggregators in 2017. Extreme Reach attributed this to advertisers’ demands for better accountability and improved vigilance by ad tech providers.

    Average video completion rate nudged up by 4.4% in Q4 ’17 vs. Q4 ’16, although it dropped from the 70-75% range in Q1 and Q2 ’17 to the 65-70% range in Q3 and Q4 ’17. VCR on premium media sites peaked at 79% in Q2, while ending the year at 70%. For media aggregators, VCR stayed in a consistent range of 60-64% during the 4 quarters.

    Meanwhile, mobile’s ascendance as a video viewing platform continued in 2017. Mobile accounted for 39% of impressions in Q4, vs. 28% for desktop and 13% for tablet. Compared to 2015, mobile is up 36% while desktop is down 38.5%.

    On the downside however, average video click-through rates plummeted 38.2% from Q4 ’16 to Q4 ’17 with a 14.8% decline from Q3 ’17 to Q4 ’17. Click throughs dropped throughout the year for both media aggregators and premium media providers, with the former dropping from just over .25% to around .12% and the latter dropping from 1% to just under .5%. Extreme Reach believes this is due to advertisers focusing more on completion as the key campaign goal for top of funnel awareness.

    The full interactive report is available here.