Not So Fast: 2009 Online Video Advertising Year In Review
eMarketer announced that it was revising its online ad spending forecast for the worst. And while that disappointed some agencies, there was good news for online video ad creators: The analysts at eMarketer found that online video advertising would show the most growth. It was an award of confidence for the industry, showing that advertisers would continue to gravitate to online video. The total online video advertising budget for 2010 would be $1.470 billion, eMarketer said, jumping up to $2.005 billion in 2011 and $2.909 billion in 2012. As to why eMarketer's forecast was dramatically different from projections made by Magna, eMarketer senior analys David Hallerman said that his company tallied all online video advertising, including video banner ads, while Magna only counted traditional streaming video.
Google and YouTube were in the news again in November when the video site announced a program where viewers could click to skip preroll ads. While the ads ran, viewers saw text reading "Skip this ad" in the lower right corner. It wasn’t an advertiser-unfriendly new feature, though, but a way to collect user data. YouTube, it seemed, planned to offer advertisers a user-engagement option where they would only pay for the parts of their ads that were seen; YouTube wanted to know what type of advertising users found engaging enough to willingly sit through. The testing was only done with ads where the advertiser had given permission.
Word also got out that same month that smartclip, a German interactive video advertising network, had set up a New York office and was preparing to break into the New York market. The company already had an 82% reach in Germany and about 40% in both Germany and the U.K. "We’ve noticed a huge increase in online video ad budgets this last year, which has helped us grow our business by 200%," said Roland Schaber, smartclip’s COO. The company’s multiscreen strategy means that it works with content owners to serve ads on mobile handsets and TVs, as well as online. smartclip announced plans to expand with new offices on the west coast in and in Chicago.
The year closed with EveryZing going away, although that was only so it could change its name to Ramp, adding a new product and a new focus. The Boston-based company announced a new platform that would let major media houses automate online content creation, doing much more with the video assets they were already creating. The fourth module in the automated process helps companies monetize their videos by matching the subject matter to the advertisements. The Ramp platform is a software-as-a-service solution that works through a browser interface.
Finally, advertisers got an unexpected gift when eMarketer announced that online video advertising spending had soared in 2009. Total spending would be $1.03 billion, analyst Hallerman said, an increase of over 40 percent. The worst was over for the industry, he added, predicting strong increases in 2010 and 2011.
As online video grows, online video advertising’s fortunes can only follow. The field still feels young, however, and there’s still no firm opinion on which formats or lengths will yield the best results. Look for higher spending and more experimentation in 2010.
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