Eyeblaster: Video ads don't perform well in social environments

While Nielsen Online recently released data showing that time spent watching videos on social networks has risen almost 100% in the year to October, 2009, Eyeblaster has shown that social environments aren't necessarily the best for video advertising.

by Helen Leggatt

According to Eyeblaster, video ad impressions have increased over 10 times in the last four years, growing 60% faster than other rich media ad formats. Their study found ads that are started by users rolling over banners to be the most effective, followed by those which start without any prompting. Ads which require a user to click to see a video were found to be the least effective.

However, Eyeblaster's study also found that, while video ads perform well alongside static, editorial content such as news, sports and finance, they don't perform well in social environments.

Why? Eyeblaster put it down to the amount of time people spend on a social network webpage, or in other words, their "dwell time". While video ads generally increase dwell time on a webpage by around 20%, this was found not to be the case on social networks.

"People do spend ample time on social networks, but not as much on a single page," Eyeblaster's Ariel Geifman told Econsultancy. "Users may log in and out multiple times per day, or browse between pages more quickly. As a result, the performance of video ads in these environments is inferior as compared to other environments."

Tags: ad performance, dwell time, online video, research, social marketing, social network, video advertising