ComScore: Online video market maturing
February 15, 2013
According to digital measurement and analytics specialist comScore, the coming year will present marketers with a range of opportunities to connect and engage with consumers. The findings are contained in the 2013 U.S. Digital Future in Focus report. This annual report examines how the prevailing trends in social media, search, online video, digital advertising, mobile and e-commerce are defining the current digital marketplace and what these trends mean for the year ahead.
“2013 is poised to be digital’s most exciting year yet as the growing ubiquity of digital platforms presents marketers with nearly endless opportunities to connect and engage with consumers,” said Linda Abraham, comScore CMO and EVP of Global Product Development. “It’s clear that the dynamics of the marketplace have fundamentally evolved through the adoption of smartphones and tablets and the increasingly ‘digital’ nature of all media. Navigating this changing landscape requires a holistic understanding of the key trends, underlying drivers and new opportunities that the digital ecosystem will bring in the year ahead.”
Among the key insights from the report:
- Online Video Brings TV Dollars to Digital as Consumers Become More Platform Agnostic – The US online video market also shows signs of maturing from a consumption standpoint, but monetisation is picking up steam as YouTube ramps up advertising efforts while traditional media players find success with TV commercial content. Because the demand for high-impact video advertising exceeds the available inventory, look for continued momentum on the advertising side – particularly as targeting improves.
- Digital Advertising Improves Accountability in Quest for Print and TV Ad Dollars – Nearly 6 trillion display ad impressions were delivered across the web in 2012 as brand marketers have become increasingly comfortable with a medium capable of delivering strong marketing ROI. Despite delivering so many impressions, comScore research showed that an average of 3 in 10 ads are never rendered in-view, leading to significant waste, weaker campaign performance and a glut of poor-performing inventory that imbalances the supply-and-demand equation and depresses CPMs. Through the continued adoption of a viewable impressions standard, the market is beginning to embrace a digital scarcity model that better aligns monetisation with the value created by the inventory.
- Smartphone and Tablets Carve Out Space in Multi-Platform Digital Media Landscape – Smartphones continued to drive the mobile landscape in 2012, finally reaching 50 per cent market penetration in 2012. The Android platform also hit a 50 per cent milestone as it captured the majority of the smartphone market for the first time. Meanwhile, tablets continued to gain traction, with 52.4 million U.S. tablet owners as of December 2012. The rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets, and consumers’ increasing use thereof, has resulted in a fragmented digital media landscape where the typical consumer now shares his time across multiple screens.