• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, June 21, 2016

Publishers have long contended that “content is king” and marketers benefit from adjacency to quality editorial as a way of differentiating themselves and justifying higher ad prices.

Now they’re getting some data to back up their pitch courtesy of Teads, a native video ad clearinghouse that studied various contextual placements for mobile video ads using eye-tracking technology.

According to the Teads study, readers looking at premium editorial content don’t scroll through as quickly as other types of content – presumably because they are actually paying attention to it.

Therefore, they are more likely to see and engage with ads that appear alongside or in-stream in the article.

On average, users scrolled 50% faster through social media feeds than premium publisher sites. As a result, roughly nine in 10 readers looking at premium editorial content also viewed video ads appearing within the article, compared to six in 10 readers looking at social feeds.

Similarly, users spent 24% more time looking at in-article video ads within premium content than they did looking at video ads in social feeds.

The Teads study also found that people are less likely to remember video ads delivered intrusively with “forced” views (for example, pre-roll ads with delayed skipping), even with high viewability and long dwell times. On that note, nine out of 10 people viewing pre-roll ads focused their attention on finding the skip button.

For readers exposed to mobile video ads for over two seconds, ads appearing in premium content generated twice as much recall as skippable pre-roll ads.

The Teads findings provide publishers with talking points to combat the threat of commodification by programmatic trading platforms and other new technologies, which have put pressure on premium publishers by promising advertisers access to the same audiences at lower prices via lower-quality sites.