Mobile Video Ads: Don’t Shoot the Messenger
With mobile video ads, customers are judge, jury, and executioner. With this in mind, in this piece, Rob Gay, co-founder Alchemy.video (pictured below) argues for a mobile video solution which runs outside of the native players.
This summer, Business Insider released its US Digital Media Ad Spend Report. While US-centric, the research provides some great insights into projected growth figures, including this: Mobile ad spend will surpass desktop by 2019. As brands and budgets move to mobile, it’s no wonder Business Insider estimates mobile ad revenue will rise by a 26.5% CAGR until 2020. And an increasingly key driver for mobile ad-spend? Rich media video ads compounded by the penetration of mobile. In fact, the report says video will be the biggest ad revenue growth sector by 21.9% CAGR over the same period.
Where the US leads, the UK is sure to follow. Earlier this year, Ofcom announced its 2015 Communications Market Report into UK online consumption patterns. The report found, for the first time, mobile use overtook desktop and laptops as the way most UK consumers connect online. The report also offers a granular breakdown of activities with some great highlights on video and changing viewing habits:
“On smartphones, short-form video clips are even more popular than watching a film or TV programme: 42% of people say they watch short videos from services, including YouTube, Instagram Video and Vine on their phone, compared to 21% watching a film or TV programme.”
With mobile being the destination du jour for connected consumers, and video the most widely digested activity, they are the next big thing for online advertising revenue opportunities. However, while business models are still architecturally nascent, consumers are getting a raw deal from mobile video ads. Not only are consumers being given a bad user experience from staccato playback and lower quality video on existing ad delivery systems, they’re also being charged by their Telco carriers for data usage in ads.
There are some solutions designed to alleviate data charging. T-Mobile recently announced it was experimenting with tariffs on its Binge On plan to stream mobile vids (at a much lower quality) without charging customers on their data plans. But, technically, its zero rating policy is a legally murky quagmire that’s not strictly compliant with the US Federal Communications Commission’s Net Neutrality rules.
As far as we know, there are no other data solutions to support mobile video – specifically for advertising. And who should pay the data bill for mobile video ads? Should it be customers as part of their price plan, or should advertisers be required to pay as well? Data use has got exponentially greater as ads have moved from static pixels to rich media videos that require many more megabytes to play. Some partisan companies have even gone as far as saying mobile ads take up to 50% of data charges on monthly bills. Whatever it is, it’s a red flag in need of resolution or, at the very least, better management.
The online advertising industry should not punish the customer; after all, these are the very people being targeting by the advertisers. Brands need to seed loyalty to expand revenue opportunities and drive higher engagement rates, but they’re stymied by some of the tech delivery systems that impact their messages through bad practice. With mobile video ads, customers are judge, jury, and executioner. It’s no surprise the industry is on tenterhooks after going through a long, dark, and very public night of the soul – what IAB president-CEO Randall Rothenberg called a “cri de coeur” after Apple decided to support ad-blocking natively through its Safari mobile iOS.
That one judgement call turned what was a niche activity into mass-consumption thanks to the market saturation of ‘idevices’. Because, if customers switch ads off, they might just turn the internet off too. There are a multitude of companies (especially those born on the internet) getting their paycheques through advertising. That’s not good for advertisers, publishers or, ironically in the long run, the same customers blocking ads in the first place.
This is an industry-wide challenge, which could carry on unabated as the use of mobile video continues to dominate digital. One potential solution is a mobile video ad platform designed not just to improve user experience and incentivise higher engagement rates, but to take the onus off customers for data charges where possible. A platform that enables video to run on mobile web outside of the native players.
If we can enable full-screen, auto-play, mobile video-meets-web-browser to help advertisers connect to their audience and helps publishers monetise mobile web inventory, we will have created an evolved tech delivery package that will still impact customers who’ll be served better and more relevant ads and not pay a penny extra on their Telco data plans.
That’s because such a solution would only allow video ads to be rendered over WiFi – meaning no carrier data charges for customers.
Of course, that’s only a small step in the right direction, but it does help redress the balance by putting the needs and wallets of consumers front and centre rather than shooting the messenger through data charges.
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