Online video views have exploded in popularity over the past few years, likely due to a variety of factors including increased internet speeds, and better mobile and tablet video technology. According to the Q3 Video Monetization Report by Free Wheel, this year alone online video views are up 97%. The number of video ad views is up to 7.2 billion, a 128% increase during the same time period.
Nearly twice as many videos were watched in the first three quarters of 2011, compared to the previous year. The average length of the videos has also increased, which has likely contributed to the increasing ad views. Longer videos such as television shows already tend to have more advertisements, and ad saturation continues to rise as companies move larger portions of their advertising budgets to the internet.
On average, videos are maintaining similar completion rates, even with the introduction of more advertising. The majority of short and medium length videos are viewed between 2:00-4:00pm, near the end of the work day. Longer videos seem to be most popular between 9:00-11:00pm.
At this point, it seems that video advertising will likely become a huge part of many online marketing campaigns. It will be interesting to see how much advertising can be placed in online videos, before we begin to see a drop off in completion rates. Many people complain about the presence of the ads, but so far the ads have done very little to deter users from reaching the end of the video content.
Fahrenheit Marketing is an Austin web design firm.