Survey Says: Online Video Is Catching Up To TV In Ad Effectiveness

Every year online video ad startup BrightRoll does a survey of advertisers to see how they’re approaching online video and what their budget plans are for the coming 12 months. And every year, respondents tend to get a little more into the whole online video thing. This year, respondents continue to be bullish on online video, in part because they’re starting to believe that it can be just as effective as TV.

A majority of advertisers surveyed — 64 percent — said they believe that online video advertising is equally or more effective than the ads that show up on TV. BrightRoll posits that could be due to a number of factors, one of which is that 70 percent of Internet users watch video online, meaning that there’s no longer a question of scale when it comes to buying online.

The engaging nature of online video also makes it more effective than display and social media. According to BrightRoll, 87 percent of respondents believe that online video is equal to or more effective than display ads, while 69 percent said it was more effective than social media. A majority of advertisers still found direct response and search ads to be more effective than online video, however.

That’s probably why more advertisers are becoming bullish on the format. 30 percent of respondents said they expect online video to grow faster than any other type of advertising. And it’s not just growing in the traditional web browser — advertisers are increasingly spending on video across multiple platforms. 64 percent of respondents said they would place video ads on smartphones, while more than half will target tablets and 30 percent said they would buy ads on connected TVs over the next year.

Not everything is fine and dandy when it comes to online video ads, however: Advertisers still want better metrics to determine how effective those ads are. About 70 percent said that they needed a more clear ROI and success metrics to justify increasing spend on online video. And about a third want more info about the impact their online video buys have on offline purchasing.

And that thing about online video being comparable to TV? It’s got some advertisers thinking that they should start measuring online streams in the same way they measure TV, with these things called gross ratings points, or GRP for short. About 18 percent are interested in more research on using GRPs for online video, even though only 5 percent say it’s the most important metric today.

As always, it’s worth noting that BrightRoll is a video ad network and so it has a vested interest in showing off how much the online video market is going to grow. Anyway, if you’re interested in seeing more, you can grab the whole report here.