The market for online video ads seems to be holding up, despite the rapid growth of inventory. Real-time media buying company TubeMogul has recently done a research that shows CPMs increasing at an average rate of 2.5 percent monthly. However, a lot of media buyers fail to take advantage of the huge gains to be had with placing ads over the weekend. Read on. This will help your media planning.
CPM Average
The average CPMs for top-tier publishers were $9.93 during the first half, but it managed to hit $10.19 last July, and has exhibited a consistent growth rate throughout the rest of the year. What’s worth noting about this is that the growth happened even though the inventory is growing at the very fast rate of 4.7 percent a month. This counters the common knowledge that an increase in inventory results in unit pricing depreciation – basically the whole law of supply and demand.
Data Source
TubeMogul launched its ad platform last spring 2011, and builds its model on the virtues of transparency. Their data comes from multiple private and public video ad exchanges, but omits data related to fees paid to TubeMogul or the exchanges. This is important as it prevents direct sales channels from compromising the research. Only ads that were bought in real time are included.
Best Time to Buy Video Ads
One of the key takeaways from TubeMogul’s report is the best time for buying video ads: Weekends. This is because viewers tend to tune in more during the weekend. Meanwhile, prices remain below average when compared to the rest of the week. This is probably because media buyers aren’t at work during the weekend.
Most Effective Ad Size
According to TubeMogul’s research, larger players are very effective, with 96.2 completion rate compared to 80.1 percent for players smaller than 1,000 pixels. So advertisers who want the best completion rates and conversions should ensure that their ads take over the whole screen instead of being relegated off to the side.
Most Effective Publisher
The data for the performance of a publisher, on the other hand, was all over the place. There are even more cases of lower quality sites providing better clickthrough rates than quality or authority sites. So don’t sweat about the comScore rank of the publisher. That low quality site may actually end up giving you more conversions.
