Commentary
Mobile Video Ad Views Skyrocket -- Brands Can Leverage
- by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, October 7, 2016
Often, we watch videos of all variety on them, and we do it quite frequently. The year-over-year uptick in mobile viewing is noteworthy for content creators and brands as it provides insight into consumer behavior.
The mobile platform garnered 51% of all video views in the second quarter of this year, according to video tech firm Ooyala in its latest quarterly report. That’s an increase of three times from two years ago. Smartphones comprise 43% of all views, with tablets checking in at 8%.
In many cases, consumers are watching video on their phones in the middle of watching something else. Google reported in its latest data that two-thirds of consumers say they pick up another device during a TV ad break, while a whopping 92% of YouTube viewers watch YouTube on their mobile devices while at home.
Overall, the number of viewers watching TV programming on the Internet’s biggest video site is up more than three times since 2013. Also, YouTube said it accounts for more than half of consumer time spent watching online video on the TV set.
Brands can capitalize on this behavior. As part of its findings, YouTube said almost 50% of Internet users have looked for a video about a product before visiting a store or making a purchase. Naturally, YouTube has skin in the game in promoting the use of videos and ads, but other reports bolster these conclusions.
About three-quarters of online video viewers have interacted with a video ad in a given month. About 80% recall a video ad they viewed in the past 30 days. That data comes from strategy firm Insivia’s curation of video trends.
The only problem with this "go mobile" stuff is that nasty old Nielsen keeps telling us that smartphone video usage doesn't amount to a hill of beans comapred to "linear TV" viewing---even for those darling millennials. Sure, its rising, but that's to be expected for an activity that operates from so small a starting base.
The reality is that Nielsen can't be more honst about the mobile reveolution because most of its revenue is tied to the traditional thinking, data, and focus on TV. If they start saying that mobile video is better than TV, then they probably lose about $20M in revenue because we all know that they have proven that they understand very little about mobile behavior and usage.
@Doug. I seriously doubt that Nielsen is deliberately understating the extent of smartphone video viewing and, in effect, shilling for traditional TV. Rather, I believe that smartphone video usage, as proclaimed by promoters of this platform, is vastly overstated and Nielsen's panel which supplies metered, not respondent claim, data is more likely to be accurate. Also, Nielsen is tallying minutes of usage, not "views" which can be of any duration but for most smartphone videos are rather short experiences.