Online video ad sales will probably be over $3 Billion this year. And according to the New York Times the majority of that money will be wasted on ads that few people see.
It’s a story that every radio sales person should carry and share with clients thinking of switching radio dollars to digital.
According to The Times:
By many estimates, more than half of online video ads are not seen, either because they are buried low on web pages or run in tiny, easily ignored video players on those pages, or run simultaneously with other ads. Vindico, an ad management platform company, deemed 57% of two billion video ads surveyed over two months to be "unviewable."
So advertisers are essentially flushing $1.7 Billion down the drain rather than spending their money on media that people actually see or hear.
The article goes on to show the numerous ways that advertisers get screwed when they buy video ads. There’s the legal ways that buyers get screwed:
The crux of the problem is that the number of video ads that agencies and brands want to run far exceeds the amount of quality inventory....When the premium space fills up, media buyers start looking for video players in less coveted online real estate.
Then there’s out and out fraud.
An agency working for a “mom-related” product placed an order paying for premium placement on premium websites. Here’s how the story described the schedule they ended up with:
Many of the ads were running in tiny players, 3 inches by 2 inches, on the sites. Some were auto-playing...(and) the list of domain names where the ads were running included pornographic websites.
The agency that placed the business claimed they were shocked, but should they have been?
No. The truth is that years of research has shown that many if not the majority of online ads are never seen.
As eMarketer reports:
Study after study shows that viewability makes for significant ad spending waste. In a survey from Integral Ad Science, roughly half of US banner impressions served on advertising networks and exchanges went unseen....The majority of ads bought never even reached a pair of eyeballs.
Half of banner impressions are illusionary and 57% of video ads unviewable. You’d think that buyers would wise-up to the scam and take their money elsewhere.
Unfortunately, the hype surrounding digital is just too great. Spending is expected to rise again this year. Mobile video ads are the hot new way to waste advertiser dollars, diverting money from effective traditional media like radio and television to digital ads no one sees.
Radio Insights recently noted three new studies highlighting radio’s strengths and its advertising effectiveness.
These studies represent the first serious efforts in decades to illustrate radio’s effectiveness, and neither the National Association of Broadcasters nor the Radio Advertising Bureau participated.
Remember NAB’s Radio 2020 campaign from 2008? Neither does anyone else.
Still use the RAB’s Radio Ad Lab 2008 study on radio spots and emotion in your sales pitches? Didn’t think so.
Radio 2010 and Radio Ad Lab are poster children for leadership's ineffectual efforts to counter digital's propaganda. In the battle to grow radio’s piece of the advertising pie the NAB and RAB are MIA.
Digital is going to continue to eat radio’s lunch until the industry pushes back against the fraud and hucksterism of digital. Is either organization up to the task?
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