• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, February 24, 2015

As the audience for digital video and the ads that come with it grows significantly year-over-year, marketers are becoming more sophisticated in the metrics they rely on to evaluate their campaigns.

Advertising agencies ranked completed views, conversions, and brand lift as the three most important metrics in a digital video campaign, according to a just-released study from online video platform BrightRoll.

Click-through rates have become much less important to advertisers, the study found. That’s because the value of digital video is changing. Marketers like digital video especially because of its targeting capabilities. In fact, 72% of agencies believe that online video advertising is as effective or more effective in TV ads, due in large part to video’s targeting tools.

Innovations in programmatic buying are driving many of the newest advancements in targeting. Many agencies plan to increase their spending on programmatic buying this year. Twenty-two percent of agency respondents said they will devote the majority of their online video ad budgets to programmatic buying in the next year, up from 6% of respondents citing a majority last year.

In addition to the growth in programmatic buying, mobile video is also fueling an expansion in online video advertising. In 2011, about 95% of the time that U.S. adults spent with video was on TV, and that number dropped to about 83% last year, eMarketer said in a recent report. The research firm also found that the average adult watches more video on mobile devices than on computers.

As a result, look for ad spend to increase on mobile video. BrightRoll said that 60% of agencies expect the largest increase in digital media spend to come in mobile video.