Smartphones account for over 1 in 5 video ad views
August 26, 2015
FreeWheel’s Q2 Video Monetization Report has revealed that 38 per cent of monetisation this quarter came from outside desktop and laptop environments. This growing share is driven by smartphones and OTT devices (Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, gaming consoles, and Smart TVs) having yet another quarter of phenomenal growth at 107 per cent and 194 per cent, respectively.
Moreover, this quarter marks the first time that smartphones have surpassed 20 per cent share of total video ad views, and also the largest single growth quarter for mobile on which we have reported. Tablet and desktop/laptop computers both demonstrated healthy double-digit growth rates and continue to play an essential part of the market.
Deep-diving into content consumption across devices, we found that both video duration and content category monetisation differed across screens. Smartphone viewers were most likely to watch short-form clips, accounting for 67 per cent of their video ad views, while tablets saw 42 per cent of their ad views on long form content, the largest share for any device.
Entertainment consumption followed increasing screen size across the non-desktop environments, with 57 per cent of OTT, 40 per cent of tablet, and 30 per cent of mobile video ad views coming on scripted and reality series.
While the largest variety of content is available on web based portals, OTT continues to be the most popular TV-style viewing device, with 95 per cent of video ad views coming from the sports and entertainment categories, and 89 per cent of monetisation achieved across live and long-form content.
Smartphones saw the largest share of music content consumption of any device, at 32% of video ad views, but still had a majority of monetization come from traditional TV content categories. Viewer preferences across platforms, in terms of content type and duration, is not driven purely by screen size or device portability, but rather by the convenience and configuration to lean-back linear-style viewing.