FreeWheel: Online video ad views up 37% YoY
December 15, 2016
Premium ad management solutions provider FreeWheel has published its Q3 Video Monetization Report, stating that Q3 2016 was a unique quarter in a unique year, but the overarching trends continue within the premium video space.
Content consumption in non-linear environments is growing significantly, and more that consumption is taking place on bigger screens. While major events of national and global interest super-charge viewership across these dynamic screens, they also highlight the consumer’s ever-growing desire to watch premium content on the screen of their choice.
Report Highlights include:
- Year on year ad views growth is 28 per cent while video views grew 37 per cent, mostly driven by a relatively higher consumption of short-form content. (Short-form and live content achieved high double-digit growth, with the Olympics and US election driving much of that traffic).
- Sports and News categories saw the highest growth of any genre, growing 76 per cent and 45 per cent respectively. Live news ad views, fueled by US election coverage grew at 145 per cent. and FreeWheel expects to see that number continue to climb into Q4 as the election came to its conclusion in November.
- Live Sports tentpoles continue to drive high authenticated viewing growth, with the Olympics brining rates back to their peak of 72 per cent in Q3.
- The new Dynamic Living Room is driving the increased content consumption, fueled by more expansive content libraries, familiarity with TVE services and device adoption. The living room remains the most engaging viewing experience as more content is delivered dynamically to the big screen. More audiences are accessing content via the TV screen with OTT and set-top box VoD. This viewing trend is seeing continued growth, outpacing other platforms.
- Programmers are transacting with more automation (92 per cent YoY growth) as they continue to navigate programmatic trading, however automatic remains small part of the overall monetisation strategy (7.3 per cent of ad views). The majority of volume growth in automated channels coming from Digital Pure-Plays (28 per cent of ad views) which tend to have more short-form content, and has a differing degree of TV compliance requirements from long-form.