Mid-Rolls Perform Best Among Rising Video Ad Completion Rates

April 17, 2012

adobe-video-ad-completion-rates-h2-2011-april2012.jpgMid-roll ads perform far better than pre- or post-roll ads, says Adobe in an April 2012 report. This is relatively unsurprising, given that users are actively engaged in the content by the time the ad plays, but is important nonetheless, given recent Vindico research showing that completion rates can be a better branding success indicator than click-through rates (CTR). Overall, mid-roll ads had an 87% completion rate in H2 2011, up from 75% in H1, compared to 67% for pre-roll ads (up from 61%), and 50% for post-roll ads (up from 46%). Mid-roll ads performed best on mobile devices, with a 94% completion rate.

Ad Engagement Higher in Long-Form Content

Data from the “2012 Adobe Digital Video Advertising Report” indicates that in-stream video ads in general had about a 20% higher completion rate when viewed in long-form content (76%) as opposed to short-form (defined as content less than 5 minutes in length – 63%). This is supported by the Vindico research (see link above), which found that ads placed during long-form content had an 88% completion rate, 16% higher than the 76% completion rate for ads placed during short-form content (videos lasting less than 10 minutes).

Professional Content Also More Engaging

The Adobe study also finds that ads appearing in professional content (72%) have a 14% higher completion rate than those appearing in user-generated content (UGC – 63%). This is despite there being a much higher volume of ads served during professional content than in UGC. Indeed, in H2, an average of 5.5 ads were viewed per stream during long-form professional content, compared to an average of just 0.6 ads per stream for long-form UGC. For short-form content, professional content viewers watched an average of 3.4 ads per stream, compare to an average of 0.4 for UGC viewers.

Other Findings:

  • The completion rate for ads served during live content was 85%, 23% higher than with ads during video-on-demand (VOD – 69%).
  • CTR was higher for VOD than live content ads (2.17% vs. 0.43%). For benchmarking purposes, data from a MediaMind report released in April indicates that users are about 200 times more likely to click on in-stream ads than standard banner ads (2.15% vs. 0.010%).
  • The MediaMind report also indicates that 70% of in-stream ads are completed, while 75% play three-quarters of the duration.

About the Data: The Adobe findings are based on a study of roughly 2.5 billion video ad impressions in the second half of 2011.

Chart-Library-Ad-1

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