Dive Brief:
- IPG Mediabrands' Magna agency partnered with YuMe for a study that compared pre-roll, mid-roll and outstream video ads and found that pre-roll was the most memorable, engaging and least disruptive format of the three, according to a report in Campaign. An outstream ad is one that autoplays when in full view of the user.
- The study tracked 6,864 viewers watching unskippable spots from either H&M or Ghirardelli Chocolate on both mobile and desktop screens. Pre-roll was cited as disruptive by just 17% of survey participants, while outstream hit 60% for mobile users and 46% for desktop; mid-roll was found disruptive by 72% of mobile users and 53% of desktop users.
- In terms of ad recall, pre-roll reached 65%, mid-roll 39% and outstream 28% on mobile, with the desktop numbers relatively in line with the mobile results.
Dive Insight:
As marketers seek out new ways to engage on desktop and mobile, and also face down growing challenges like ad blocking technology, working with unintrusive formats should be getting a premium. The Magna/YuMe survey hammers home the value of pre-roll ads which, in playing at the beginning of videos, are by their nature less disruptive than similar offerings that cut content off midway or run adjacent to it.
However, the survey throws an interesting fold into the equation in that pre-roll spots also far more memorable and engaging across screens. These findings challenge previous notions about pre-roll advertising, as the format has, at least in the past, been deemed one of the more intrusive offerings and also the one driving adoption of ad blocking technology.
Video marketing is a growing focus for brands and also digital advertising platforms, following a trend of consumers demanding more video content, on mobile devices in particular. Twitter, for example, introduced a pre-roll product for both live and archived Periscope streams late last month.
