Online video is booming. This is now common knowledge and the trend will continue for the foreseeable future. Ad spending on video is also increasing significantly, but not yet as rapidly as online viewing time is increasing. Publishers are working hard to ensure that their websites offer space for video ads. On the one hand by offering more video content themselves (this is what users want and you can sell pre-rolls) and on the other hand by creating paid video positions among existing written content. The latter are in-article videos, also called "out-stream" video.
So simply put, as an advertiser, you have a choice between using pre-rolls or in-article ads to show your commercial video. Both variants have their advantages and disadvantages. But when do you choose which variant? Here are a few points to consider when making this choice:
Instrusive
The main difference between the two variants is that with a pre-roll the user has to watch the video to get to the content you want to see, while the in-article video is between the content and you can decide whether to watch the video. So in the second case, you will only watch a video that is of interest to you. For the user, this is nice because you won't be "bothered. For the advertiser it can also be pleasant, because you won't evoke negative feelings from potential customers.
The downside is that with in-article, you have no guarantee that the target audience will finish watching your video, even though they often pay for it. In addition, in-article videos are played without sound by default and the user can manually turn it on. However, this is usually not done, so your video has less impact. With pre-rolls, however, you do have the assurance that your videos will be watched (average viewout ratio is around 90%) and the videos, like the content the user wants to see, are played with sound.
Settlement Model
Whereas with pre-rolls you pay on a standard CPM basis (cost per 1,000 impressions), this is often different with in-article videos. Pre-rolls can't be clicked away, so each display is basically a full view of the video. With in-article videos, the choice to view the video lies with the user. If everyone decides to scroll through instead of watching the video then it would be a great waste to pay per view. Therefore, other payment models are often adopted for in-article videos. The most common variant is that you pay when the video has been in view for at least 50% for two seconds.
YouTube, among others, which recently started offering in-article positions, uses this billing model. However, this still does not guarantee that the video is actually viewed. If you read the text around the video then the video automatically appears for longer than two seconds, while the reader may not pay attention to the video at all. If you really want a guarantee that your video will be viewed, some publishers also allow you to choose to pay when the entire video is viewed. Anyone who sees the video but does not watch it in full is reached for "free," so to speak. It should be noted that the cost per view is high, especially in comparison with a pre-roll display. You quickly pay 10 cents per viewed video (=100 euros per 1,000 views) for in-article, while the average CPM rate for pre-roll is around 25 euros.
Limited pre-roll inventory
Despite the efforts of publishers to create their own video content for their own Web sites, we see for now that video content lags considerably behind written content. After all, videos are more expensive to create and it takes more time. If you want to cover the latest news, it is a lot faster to write an article about it than to record and edit a video. Partly because of this, we see that pre-roll inventory is under pressure on most platforms. This can be a reason to deploy in-article videos, where there is usually plenty of inventory.
Targeting
Earlier in this article we talked about how in-article videos give users the choice to watch the video themselves. For this choice to be in the advertiser's favor, targeting is very important. The better the video matches the user's interests or desires, the more likely the video will be watched. Targeting can be done in several ways and these are basically the same for both video variants. For example, both pre-rolls and in-article videos can be targeted based on data and based on content/context.
Data is currently quite sensitive with the new AVG standard and it is also difficult enough for most parties to have sufficient data to run campaigns on. Targeting on content is of course still possible, since this has nothing to do with personal data.
It was mentioned earlier that parties are increasingly creating their own video content, but written content still predominates. So there is more written content than video content on most websites. Because of this, targeting based on content is a lot easier with in-article video than with pre-rolls.
Just when should you deploy which variant?
Now that we have uncovered some of the differences, the question still remains as to which variant is best to use. However, there is no single answer to this. The choice will depend on the attractiveness of the video, the target group and the campaign goals.
For example, if you have a very cool video aimed at a target group with specific interests, an in-article campaign with content targeting would make the most sense. However, do you have a more generic target audience and a video that is informative but perhaps not very exciting? Then again, a pre-roll with viewout guarantee seems like a better choice.
Should neither of these options sound appealing enough, there are always alternatives. For example, you can wrap a video in a banner or use native ads where the video is user initiated (video only starts playing when the user presses play). In addition, social media channels also offer plenty of options for distributing online videos.
Questions about which variant is best suited for your campaign? Call or email us!