What marketers should consider when booking their advertising space

Video is the advertising format with the highest advertising impact. In this context, it is increasingly observed that different types of video advertising formats are bundled and purchased as a single product. This is problematic simply because the different types of video formats; instream, outstream, in-banner or social video, are fundamentally different in their functionality. In order to achieve the desired effect of their advertising media and at the same time achieve reliable measurability and comparability of campaign results, there are some tips that marketers should consider when booking their advertising space.

When measuring the KPIs of a video ad, marketers should ask themselves the following questions: 

• What is the placement and size of the player? 
• How is it integrated into the site?
• How is viewability measured?
• Which KPIs are still important to assess the success of a campaign? 

The size of the player is important because it strongly influences the advertising impact. For example, a player that plays in a desktop 300 x 250 rectangle away from the content can never achieve the same advertising impact as a 9:16 vertical player that is embedded in the content and takes up almost the entire size of the screen, although both can have the same viewability.

It is also important how the player behaves on the page. Is it embedded in the editorial content or does it float outside the text? If the player 'sticks' to the bottom of a page, for example, it will have high viewability and high browse rates - but such formats are of lower quality. You should also consider whether the player pauses as soon as it disappears from a user's visible area. Basically, you cannot compare the results of a pausing player with those of a non-pausing player. 

For video campaigns, you should definitely pay attention to how viewability is reported. While most providers use the MRC standard of 50 percent of the player being in the viewable area for two seconds, there are also those that use their own viewability standards and reduce the limit to a minimum. Thus, it can happen that a video was counted as viewed even though just one pixel of the total size was in the viewable area. Therefore, we advise to check the viewability of all ads and independently of the provider with a third-party tool such as MOAT. Providers that do not allow independent verification of the results should be avoided in any case.

Finally, there is the question of whether the MRC viewability standard is sufficient in itself to assess the success of a campaign. Two different formats can have the same viewability score, even though one ad was viewed by the user for an average of only two seconds and the other for ten seconds. The viewability score says little about the actual time users spend with the ad. That's why we recommend not only measuring viewability, but also checking the in-view time. This says much more about the success of a campaign than the pure viewability score.

Advertisers should keep in mind that bundled video products are often literally apples and oranges stirred into one pot and compared. This wastes a lot of optimization potential, both in terms of advertising impact and ROI. To ensure transparency, advertisers should only compare players of similar size and functionality, use an independent tracking tool, and include factors such as in-view time when evaluating KPIs. The best way to control all of these factors is to choose the appropriate advertising partner for each format and allocate video budgets accordingly. This may not always be the easiest solution, but ultimately this approach will pay off in higher ROI and optimal measurability.