I am going to discuss an interesting topic of advertising here today which is performance comparison between video ads and display ads (GIF & JPEG). It’s universal that video advertisements is far better than traditional banner ads. After analyzing Doubleclick’s CTR (Click Thru Rates) statistics of both types it will get clear which one is better. Video Ads have 4 to 7 times CTR than display ads; actual CTR of video ads measured from .4% to .7% whereas banner ads only averaged about .1% CTR.
But CTR, would only be one way to look at this. When comparing click interactions, it is important to realize that with video banner ads, one can actually measure the length of interaction as well, or the duration of video watched. And, just as we have seen with in-stream video advertisements, users tend to watch more than 2/3rd of the video on average. So, not only are users interacting more often with video advertisements, but they are captivated by the advertising message for a measurable duration.
Although the research does not measure additional interactions within the video advertisement, one additional advantage to video ads is that you can potentially track conversions. With a video (depending on the player used), one could overlay links to the advertiser’s website, email contact forms, and other methods for conversion. Imagine the power of telling an advertiser that not only did their ad receive a .7% CTR, but that X percentage of viewers converted, and X leads were generated.
Knowing that consumers watch 66% of video ads on average, advertisers should do their best to create a strong message that occurs early within the video. This study ran only video advertisements that were 15 and 30 sec. in duration.
It is important to note that it is important that when running video banner ads, your player should have a prominent “PLAY” button. Each of the video banner ads analyzed in the DoubleClick study had play, pause and stop buttons. In addition, DoubleClick measured which of the 3 buttons were most often used and found that the video control consumers clicked on most was the “play” button. In essence, the play button functions as the video banner ad’s subliminal “call to action.”
It is also important to note that the majority of the videos in the research study were auto-play and audio was user-initiated. I wonder if the same results would be realized if the video were also user-initiated. This would lend even more weight to the idea that the “play” button has some special effect on users.
Finally, it would be interesting to see this research updated with a comparison of video banner ads versus flash based animated banner advertisements. If videos were to outperform flash ads as well, this could also add to the idea that the increase in performance is heavily related to the instance of a “play” control.
If anyone is aware of any additional research with regard to this, please let us know in the comments section below.