IAB Canada... Video In Canada Event 2009 - Part One...

It was standing room only at the IAB Canada Video In Canada Event in Toronto yesterday. Hundreds of marketers attended the event to get some insight into the current state of online video marketing in Canada.

I've split my report into 2 posts. Here is the content that was covered in the morning.

Canadian Online Video Stats

Canadians are world leaders in video consumption. Paula Gignac, President of IAB Canada connected this to our high early penetration of cable. Although the consumers are showing tremendous growth in video consumption, only 1% of media budgets (at last count in 2008) are allocated to online video. Sound familiar?

Here are a couple of comScore charts on Canadian Online Video Consumption:




Discussion on the recent ACTRA agreement.

Chris Williams, Managing Director, Media Contacts presented a street level breakdown of what the agreement means to marketers in terms of dollars citing that the biggest advantage to getting involved in production is the reduced cost of talent. Prior to the agreement, residual fees for commercials made for new media increased proportionately to the number of web sites the production would be viewed on. Today, the cost reflects the nature of Web 2.0 and as such, is reduced to the same one time fee over a one-year period. Shorter run times are prorated accordingly. For further information on costs, contact your local ACTRA office.


Applying a GRP to Online Video – Comparing Apples to Apples

Peter Farfaras, Solutions Specialist at Sympatico/MSN led a discussion with Peter Vaz, VP Director Digital Communications, M2 Universal Digital and Darren Hardeman, Group Director at Mindshare Excelerator Media about the demand across buying communities to apply standardized measurement to video.

There was some discussion on the agency perspective of how online video is purchased. Hardeman pointed out that most agencies are becoming fully integrated leaving the planners responsible for all media planning and buying. Darren also talked about the retrofitting factor of applying GRPs to the digital planners' learning curve. To date, digital media has been bought without the use of traditional measurement definitions, GRPs need to be learned.

Vaz discussed the value of having cross-disciplines collaborate to present solutions to their clients. One of my favourite lines was “I think we need to remember that digital specialists don’t know everything and that there is value in the experience other, more traditional disciplines bring to the table”.

The discussion revealed just how early we are in the development of truly integrated media plans. Clients are becoming more savvy and are demanding more metrics to justify their spending while agencies are grappling to find effective ways to show value prior to the investment. The bottom line was that we are working towards finding a standardized way to calculate online video so that it can be monetized and marketed accordingly. We need to apply a media score to every element of the media mix and video is just another piece of that pie.

Farfaras noted that in 2009, we are seeing some movement and collaborative efforts to identify the viability of Video GRP calculations.

A great example of these models comes from YuMe and Mindshare. The two companies just (April 6th, 2009) announced their partnership to launch a “GRP audience measurement metric for video ad campaigns.”

Here’s a snap shot at the formula:

• GRP= Reach x Frequency x 100
• Frequency = the number of times that the average household or person is exposed to the advertising schedule
• Reach = Target audience segment/Target Universe size
• The denominator for reach is the universe size such as the number of video viewers online or total US population.
• The numerator is actual impressions delivered or the target audience reached.

Here’s an example using the formula:

• A campaign delivers an average frequency of 4 to 100,000 people 18-34, and there are 4,000,000 A18-34 year olds in the US population.
• GRP= 4 x (100,000/4,000,000) x 100 =10

Online Video Ad Formats – Creative is King

Renee Hill, President, eye Return presented some interesting usage of video in ads that have been recently been served through eye Return.

Hill offered some visual examples of engaging creative that nicely showcased the use of video. Here’s a great Cirque du Soleil Example

Here were some of the tips shared with the audience:

• If consumers engage with your ad – your job is done
• Play the video without sound before any interaction - entertain while it’s loading
• Short captivating loop – encourage further interaction
• Encourage click with a mouse over using animation – show large play button, freeze the video play – give the consumer direct rewards for interaction
• Engage the user with the first frame – show the value proposition faster
• Use video created for the Internet (resolution and formatting issues)

After all the measurement talk, Renee ran through the metrics that are available today. They include:

• Time spent on ad
• Time spent on ad before conversion
• % of video played
• % of video played before conversion
• ad views before interaction
• ad views before click
• automatic optimization based on any metric
• any action within an ad ie. CTR, video play time spent, interaction etc.
• any post impression conversion point, ie. Purchase

and my personal favourite…

• Real-time dynamic benchmarks by vertical to compare your campaign performance against billions of other ads.

My questions/observations on these sessions...

• It occurs to me that the topic of online video is one that can take up 5 minutes in top line discussion or 2 full days of conference sessions and workshops.
• Is engagement really an indicator of intent to purchase? Video networks like VideoEgg have created a cost per engagement model - is this the answer? I reflect on the amount of video content I consume each month - at least 80% of it is completely untargeted. The chart above shows that the average Canadian video consumers viewed 147 videos in January - how many carried a brand message? How many were intended for the recipient?
  
• What about clickable content within the videos and the influence that players like Overlay.tv have brought into the market?
• While the debate on agencies focused on the measurement of video in general, what about the finer details of video advertising like product placement?
• We swept over cookie deletion during the sessions but when it comes to reach and frequency calculations, these are a critical factor.

Stay tuned for what the broadcasters had to say…and more questions/observations...