Report: Connected TV continues growth trajectory
March 28, 2019
Innovid has released its annual Global Video Benchmarks report. The latest study reveals another year of significant growth in the Internet-enabled television space, also known as Connected TV (CTV), along with an increase in data-driven personalised video campaigns and short-form mobile video. The year-long study analyses thousands of video campaigns with billions of impressions across 340+ top global companies, providing a critical snapshot of the state of video advertising in 2018, along with insights and analysis designed for the top television marketers. As with past instalments, the report also compares the performance of standard pre-roll video to interactive video across devices and channels, offering benchmarks and overall performance for key video KPIs including click-through rates, engagement, completion rate and time-earned.
“The Global Video Benchmarks series is designed to serve as a video advertising performance barometer, leveraging original data collected through our connected TV and video advertising platform,” said Zvika Netter, CEO and co-founder of Innovid. “This year the barometer has landed on CTV, with its surge in viewership, particularly across premium broadcast content, and growing advertiser appetites. The trend is clear: CTV is now.”
The 2018 Global Video Benchmarks themes and top findings include:
CTV continues growth trajectory – Innovid observed substantial ongoing growth in CTV campaigns throughout 2018 with CTV impressions making up 28 per cent of all Innovid impressions (up from 17 per cent in 2017). Of all Innovid campaigns, 68 per cent contained at least some CTV execution in 2018.
Broadcasters take the lead in CTV – As more viewers shift to streaming content, linear TV viewing is declining while on-demand CTV viewership is surging, particularly amongst broadcasters – and the marketing dollars are following. An incredible 63 per cent of all broadcaster impressions served in 2018 were served in CTV environments. Broadcaster impressions made up 83 per cent of all CTV campaigns.
CTV’s ascendancy raises the bar for engagement – With CTV taking its place as a preferred channel, marketers can put engagement front and centre. Advanced creative units that command greater engagement lift than standard pre-roll and offer the potential for real earned time and attention are delivering on that demand with interactive units producing dramatic figures, such as 71 additional seconds of time earned on broadcast content and more than six times engagement lift compared to standard pre-roll.
Personalisation powers results – In a world of increasing hyper-personalization from social media feeds to the retail floor, advertisers are embracing data-driven dynamic video to keep pace with a personal touch. Use of dynamic video–powered by everything from location and weather to first-party data—jumped 79 per cent in 2018 with the average campaign producing 12,000 unique versions, while the largest campaigns produced more than 200,000.
Short-form rises on mobile – As more impressions shift to mobile channels, the report shows a marked spike in the number videos shorter than 10 seconds, which jumped from just five per cent in 2017 to 11 per cent in 2018. The majority of this growth was focused on social and programmatic channels.
“Streaming has already revolutionized consumer viewing habits, and we see even greater expansion in the years ahead,” said Alan Wolk, co-founder and lead analyst, TV[R]EV. “As CTV/OTT becomes more commonplace, so do consumer expectations around the relevancy and personalisation of advertising. Marketers would be well-served to seize the opportunities available in this still nascent market to deliver video advertising that is more engaging, more personalised and more measurable.”