Video ads are fastest growing online advertising sector

November 12, 2009

Online video advertising is booming, with major news websites giving increasingly prominent position to video bulletins that generate advertising revenue.

The New York Times reports that ever more internet users are seeking out breaking news stories in the form of streaming videos, which can include advertising content. President of MSNBC.com, Charles W. Tillinghast, observes: "Every watershed event leaves video more popular than before."

Video is now the fastest growing sector of internet advertising, with the Internet Advertising Bureau revealing that digital video generated $477 million in the first half of 2009 - a 38 per cent increase year-on-year. Figures published by comScore indicate that news websites operated by major publishers such as The New York Times, Gannett and Tribune attract more than one million viewers each month for breaking news stories, and these news stories present an ideal opportunity for advertisers.

One form of video advertising that can help online news publishers to fund costly video production is pre-roll ads. Often criticised, these ads that appear before the major news story are reportedly gaining acceptance among viewers. According to Brian Quinn, vice president and general manager of digital ad sales for The Journal: "It actually works really well.

"[A 15-second pre-roll] followed by two to five minutes of high-quality content is a fair-value exchange."

With the dominant $5 billion online advertising market of search expected to grow only marginally, advertisers are looking to video as the major growth sector for the next five years. eMarketer predicts 35 to 45 per cent growth each year until 2014, by which time video advertising is expected to account for $5.2 billion.

Source:  bigmouthmedia.com