As marketers, we hear people complain all the time about advertising. It comes as no surprise that BurstMedia’s recent survey found that people don’t like ads—but it’s probably something we should think about.
First, the good news: The survey of 2600 online adults focused specifically on online video and advertising in online video. As we all know, the medium is pretty darn popular—72.1% of respondents viewed video online at least monthly.
As we all know, the primary audience for online video is young, adult males: 33.7% of males aged 18 to 24 viewed online video at least once a day (compared to 17.8% of females in the same age range and 25.4% of males over 25). Even seniors are getting into online video, with 58.6% of respondents aged 65 and over watching.
Most respondents viewed news clips online, but entertainment clips (including music videos, TV shows, movies and trailers) were more popular with respondents 18-34.
Also classed as “good news”: video ads have fairly good recall, with 53.6% of respondents remembering viewing an ad in their online video.
Now the not-so-good news: ads in online videos turn viewers off. Big time.
78.4% of respondents say in-stream advertisements in online video are intrusive – and one-half (50.4%) say advertisements in video content disrupts their web surfing experience.
Slightly more women than men say that ads disrupt web surfing.
Also not good: 50.7% actually stop watching online video when they encounter an ad. Worse yet, 15.3% stop watching and leave the site when they encounter an ad in video.
However, the most ad-tolerant group was people aged 18 to 24. 56.7% of these respondents stayed and watched videos despite pre-, during- or post-roll ads.
paidContent.org talked to Burst CMO David Cooperstein for some strategic solutions to these challenges:
For starters, marketers should try shorter spots – go to 5-10 seconds, rather than 15-30 seconds. Secondly, try to advertise on videos that relate in some way to the content. Finally, ad overlays, as YouTube and others have found recently, seem to offer the most promise, as viewers still get to watch their video uninterrupted and advertisers still get to reach their audience.
Although the report doesn’t specify, Cooperstein’s comments imply that the in-stream ads they asked about were not meant to include overlay ads like YouTube’s.
