All agencies across Europe see addressable TV or connected TV as key digital video growth areas for the next 12 months, according to new research from IAB Europe, but measurement remains an issue.
The digital industry body’s annual Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising study, based on 300 responses in March and April, reported that 99% of agencies cited these two as growth areas.
Two thirds of publishers also agreed that the key area of digital video growth will be connected TV advertising. Advertisers themselves were more reticent, but still more than half (54%) anticipate video advertising opportunities in addressable and connected TV viewing.
More generally, the study found that nearly 60% of advertisers are investing in digital video to build their brand or gain competitive advantage whilst 40% of agencies invest to tell brand stories.
Advertisers regard digital video as a secondary touchpoint to TV, whilst agencies and publishers rely on this secondary touchpoint as a means to achieve reach and scale.
As one might expect, mobile continues to drive brand spend: advertisers are increasing their spend in mobile video with 75% of advertisers now investing more than 41% of their digital video budgets in mobile compared to 50% of advertisers in 2018/19.
Outstream investments are increasing too; 45% of advertisers allocated more than 21% of their video budgets to outstream compared to 36% in 2018/19.
The results also highlight a continued trend towards cross-media planning. In 2020, media agencies stated that 86% of campaigns have at least some aspect of cross-media planning compared to 81.5% in 2019.
However, cross-screen measurement is still cited as the top barrier to investment in digital video by buyers hindering further cross-media investment and planning.
It’s a point picked up by Fal Patel, Head of Business Development at Nielsen. “It is interesting to see that Digital Video Advertising continues to mean a different marketing opportunity for Advertisers compared to Publishers and Agencies and this disparity can lead to confusion on how you would measure the effectiveness of a digital video campaign,” she said.
“What is absolutely critical for the industry is to align on a single metric which measures digital video, consistently across publishers and devices to future-proof this media channel.”
Sourced from IAB Europe
