With the launch of YouTube Channels here, brands can expect a far greater focus on video advertising, especially as this and similar platforms gain momentum.

Casale Media has published a research brief showing that advertisers and agencies will increase spending on digital video advertising by 25% over the next 12 months, amounting to about 23.8% of total online ad budgets.

In three years, video will account for 90% of Internet traffic, says David Hsieh, VP for Marketing and Emerging Technologies at Cisco in this interview with Beet.TV.

Reconsidering the Channel

This proliferation is going to force brands to reconsider how they approach video, writes Andy Leinicke-Brickwire at Media Biz Bloggers. "The historical advertising model distracts audiences from their real mission of the moment: watching the game, reality show, or sitcom that happens to be playing."

"In contrast with the new model unfolding right now, through vehicles such as YouTube, advertisers have the opportunity to start a relationship with audiences based on shared values, causes or interests."

Leinicke-Brickwire points to a YouTube clip produced by Sender Films of Ueli Steck, a Swiss climber. "The video uses contemporary film techniques to display the risk, thrill, solitude and exceptionalism of Ueli's adventure… A promotion for a full-length film, which is sponsored by endemic advertisers such as The North Face, this video has taken on a life of its own." [video]

Analyzing What People Want with Video Ads

In anticipation of these trends, firms such as Liveclicker are beginning to produce metrics to help companies decide such issues as how to set up a studio, craft a video's style and most importantly, writes Simon Mutlu at Video Retailer, determine how long the video should be.
The company just released a video commerce analytics platform that allows in-depth drill-downs for individual campaigns. It has also aggregated data to provide some broad based observations about video campaigns.

The stats confirm the obvious, as well as some very specific questions, Mutlu wrote. "For example, we would all suspect that the low-engagement videos would be longer than the high-engagement videos." But Liveclicker also looked at:

• Exactly how much longer were the low engagement videos (85 seconds – 1:54 as opposed to 0:29).

• Whether people are less likely to even click the play button on longer videos than on shorter ones. The answer, Mutlu says, is people were more than four times as likely to play a video which is 30 seconds or less than one that is more than 90 seconds long.