I am still trying to track down this information for Europe but in the meantime here is some data from E-Marketer for the US showing the online video ad-spend as a percentage of TV ad-spend.
encouraging data from e-marketer
The percentage is rising and in the current ad-spend environment that is very healthy but as @kones asked on twitter – is it effective? Well the only people who know the in-depth answer to that question are the advertisers and their agencies who monitor these things and they don’t usually like to give away that data. I would like to think that if it weren’t effective then advertisers would not be flocking to use it.
An old boss of mine once described a gaggle of inexperienced sales guys as ‘a bunch of five-year-olds trying to play football’ – everyone running around chasing the ball without actually thinking about why they were chasing it. This analogy plays well in the world of online advertising where from time to time a new technology or trend will appear and all of a sudden everybody wants to use it or be a part of it. To a certain extent online video advertising is like that – video brings a powerful connection to the consumer, interesting formats and perhaps most importantly the accountability of being online.
So the fact that online video advertising grew by 120% last year could just be the five-year-old football effect but I believe that it shows the growing trust and acceptance that is developing between the advertisers, agencies and publishers that are working in the sector.
