To increase attendance at a 2-day warehouse sale, fitness equipment industry leader SportsArt re-purposed existing video creative to run an Xspot campaign on two local media websites. More than 2,400 people viewed the Xspot and watched a combined total of 12.5 hours of SportsArt content. Part way through the campaign, SportsArt changed the play mode from click-to-play to rollover-to-play. This change increased the number of viewers substantially, resulting in an overall active view rate 16 times greater than the standard display ad clickthrough rate.

These success stories show the key role that accurate and detailed performance data plays in online video ad campaigns. Advertisers rely on the data not only to measure the success of completed campaigns but also to optimize campaigns while they’re running and run better campaigns in the future.

Through its Dashboard and Advanced Analytics, the Mixpo platform has always provided a wealth of performance data. Now, a Reports Wizard makes that data easier than ever to access.

Click to see a larger custom reports list

A user-friendly interface guides you through the process of setting up and scheduling fully customizable Xspot, placement, conversion tracking, and geotargeting reports that you and other recipients receive automatically in email. For example:

To compare ad performance across advertisers, schedule a weekly Xspot report that includes:

• All of the Xspots in your Group.
• All of the available performance, click, and interaction data.

To compare ad performance across domains, schedule a monthly Placement report that includes:

• Two Xspots in a specific advertiser’s account.
• All of the placement domains where the Xspots are running.
• Only engagement rate, views, view rate, clicks, and click rate data.

To see the total of number of conversions a campaign generated, run a one-time conversion tracking report for a specific Xspot that includes:

• Total conversions.
• Number of conversions attributed to consumer impressions, views, and clicks.
• Number of conversions per webpage.

More information

Read more success stories now.

Mixpo customer? Learn more about the Reports wizard. Sign into your account today, open the Client Resources home page, and search for “custom reports.” Need a little guidance on how to interpret the performance data? Search for “performance glossary.”

To increase holiday donations, the Salvation Army rotated 3 Xspots and 1 rich media ad without video in the same banner ad space on Comcast Online. While all of the ads helped raise dollars, performance data showed the power of compelling true-story video content. The Xspot engagement rates outperformed the rich media ad rate by 38 to 1.

These success stories show the key role that accurate and detailed performance data plays in online video ad campaigns. Advertisers rely on the data not only to measure the success of completed campaigns but also to optimize campaigns while they’re running and run better campaigns in the future.

Through its Dashboard and Advanced Analytics, the Mixpo platform has always provided a wealth of performance data. Now, a new Reports wizard makes that data easier than ever to access.

Click to see a larger custom reports list

A user-friendly interface guides you through the process of setting up and scheduling fully customizable Xspot and placement reports that you and other recipients receive automatically in email.

For example, you can schedule a weekly report organized by Xspot that includes:

• All of the Xspots in your Group.
• All of the available performance, click, and interaction data.

Or, you can generate a one-time report organized by placement domain that includes:

• Two Xspots in a specific advertiser’s account.
• All of the placement domains where the Xspots are running.
• Only engagement rate, views, view rate, clicks, and click rate data.

Coming soon: The addition of conversion tracking and geotargeting to the Reports wizard.

More information

Read more success stories now.

Mixpo customer? Learn more about the new Reports wizard. Sign into your account today, open the redesigned Client Resources home page, and search for custom reports.

New Mixpo data, however, contradicts that perception. People ARE choosing to watch political and advocacy TV spots online.

An analysis of performance data based on 90 million video ad impressions across 17 2010 political campaigns reveals that viewers averaged more than 24 seconds of view time.

In addition, the view rate for the ads (2.41 percent) was slightly higher than the industry standard DoubleClick benchmark rate for rich media ads with video (2.29 percent). And, active viewers (those who actively chose to play a video ad) were 24 times more likely to click in a video ad compared to the standard click rate for static banner ads.

Another recent study overturns a related assumption: that the shortest ads will have the highest completion rates.

Based on a sample of 100 video ad campaigns that spanned 19.7 million views, video ad and analytics firm TubeMogul found that the completion rate was highest for mid-length (30 seconds to 1:30) stand-alone video ads.

On average, 32 percent of viewers watched mid-length ads all the way through. Only 17 percent completed ads shorter than 30 seconds.

Findings like these, in combination with new purchasing options for online in-banner video placements, make this an ideal time for politicians and advocacy organizations (as well as other advertisers) to extend their TV campaigns online.

Advertisers can:

• Reuse 30-second TV spots online without editing them down to 15 seconds.
• Achieve multiple goals (for example, raise donations, build lists, recruit volunteers, and gain Facebook fans and Twitter followers) with a single, re-purposed ad.
• Build an even stronger brand and messaging impression by redirecting engaged viewers to more in-depth or locally relevant video content.
• Deliver millions of impressions by running video ads across the Internet in existing display spaces.
• Target specific audiences by publication and through ad serving networks that deliver ads based on demographic, geographic, and other characteristics.

That’s what Peter Kim of Yahoo! Smart Ads found when he started introducing Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) programs to advertisers.

DCO allows advertisers to dynamically serve different ads to different consumers based on each individual consumer’s location, age, behavior, and other characteristics. Given the power of this ad technology, Kim expected to have to work to keep advertisers’ creative variations within reason.

Instead, as the orders rolled in, he discovered that advertisers hadn’t created too many variations. Restricted by the “one identical ad for everyone” ideas that have dominated “their collective industry norms for over a century,” advertisers had created too few.

The beauty of dynamic technology such as Mixpo’s XspotGEO is that it allows advertisers to start with what they know—high-quality, generic, or “vanilla,” as Peter Kim describes them, TV spots aimed at everyone.

After uploading the generic spots into the Mixpo platform, advertisers can add custom interactive overlays that dynamically display literally thousands of different messages to viewers based on DMA, zip code, and other geographic parameters.

For example, a retailer might leverage a national TV spot to publicize local promotions and send foot traffic to individual stores.

One Xspot dynamically delivers different messages based on viewer location (click for larger image)

A regional auto association might drive viewers to the nearest dealer showroom. A statewide insurance company might use zip code radius to show viewers the contact information for local agents. The possibilities are endless.

Visit the Mixpo gallery to experience a geotargeted Xspot for yourself.

Learn more about boosting performance with XspotGEO.

Barriers to display ad buys are disappearing

During the first quarter of 2010, online display ad impressions were up 15 percent compared to last year. Some analysts have even gone on record predicting that display will be larger than search within the next 5 years.

One explanation for the growth in display ads is that technology now exists that removes barriers previously encountered by advertisers. In this post, we list those barriers and describe the ways in which Mixpo dynamic video ad technology eliminates them.

Barrier: Ad creation consumes too much of the media budget

Solution: Mixpo is the antidote to expensive rich media ads. It’s easy to upload existing creative assets into the Mixpo platform and transform them into dynamic video ads for the web.

Mixpo VideoAds run in all IAB standard ad banner units.

To respond to breaking events or introduce new offers, advertisers can update VideoAds on the fly without retrafficking ad tags.

Barrier: It takes way too long to buy display ads

Solution: No long-range strategic planning required. No waiting in line. Two to 3 days is all the time we need to take existing advertiser creative (for example, video footage from a TV spot or a series or product or employee photos or images) and turn it into a dynamic VideoAd for the web.

Barrier: There is no easy way to buy

Solution: Through its VideoMedia solution, Mixpo takes the burden of buying media out of an advertiser’s hands. After working with the advertiser to clearly define the campaign goals and target the appropriate audience, Mixpo traffics the VideoAd, tracks performance, and responds to any developments. The advertiser pays only for performance, on a cost-per-view basis.

Barrier: Advertisers want immediate returns and ROI is hard to measure

Solution: Businesses, particularly small businesses, tend to want immediate returns in the form of sales increases. In addition, clickthrough rate may be the only performance measure they know.

In the Mixpo platform, advertisers can set up conversion tracking to measure the number of visits from a live VideoAd to landing and conversion pages on their sites.

They can also insert a range of clickable actions, such as lead capture forms, printable coupons, surveys, and more, directly into their VideoAds.

But a wealth of additional performance data is also available, including active view rate, average percent viewed, total hours viewed, and more. Research shows a direct relationship between higher view rates/durations and more brand awareness and favorability. Studies also indicate that consumers’ buying processes are typically long and that sales can’t reliably be tied to the last click before purchase.

As advertisers discover how quick and cost-effective it is to buy and run online video ad campaigns, perhaps they’ll be more open to exploring the longer- as well as the short-term rewards.

Learn more about Mixpo dynamic video advertising technology.

(Photo credit)

In a recent article on ClickZ, Sean Carton puts some valuable perspective back into what he calls The Great Click Debate.

Carton compares the Click debate to the Mac vs. PC debate. Techies argue over which operating system subtleties are superior but, Carton says, these subtleties aren’t what matters. The key issue is “whether or not you are using the right tool for the job that’s in front of you.”

Similarly, in the Click debate, the metrics question isn’t a “matter of holy doctrine.” In any campaign, performance metrics should be based on what the advertiser is actually trying to accomplish.

A presentation at the Brightcove Video Monetization Summit points out how interactive video can “perform throughout the sales funnel.”

Source: Brightcove presentation on online video ad strategies customers want to buy

As this Brightcove slide indicates, an advertiser’s goals—what the advertiser wants viewers to do after watching the video ad—affects both how the video ad’s content is designed and the metrics used to determine how successfully the ad performs.

To demonstrate this point, compare the following demo Scott Brown for U.S. Senate Xspots. (Note: These Xspots are for demo purposes only. They never ran in this specific form during the actual campaign.)

Xspot 1. Goal: Brand awareness.

In keeping with the campaign’s brand awareness goal, this Xspot:

• Includes minimal interactive elements to distract viewers from Brown’s message.
• Offers viewers the opportunity to hear more of Brown’s message by telescoping to a more detailed video at the end of the Xspot.

Metrics used to evaluate this Xspot’s performance:

• Brand exposure duration.
• Average percent viewed.
• Percent of viewers who watched the entire Xspot.
• Number of viewers who chose to telescope to the more detailed video.

Xspot2. Goal: Build lists

In keeping with the campaign’s build lists goal, this Xspot:

• Includes an overlay with a lead capture action, as well as image overlays that send viewers to Brown’s Twitter and Facebook pages.

Metrics used to evaluate this Xspot’s performance:

• Clickthrough rate.
• Number of lead capture forms submitted.

Source: Eyeblaster Research. Data: Q1 2009 to Q4 2009. Worldwide.

In a previous post, we talked about approaches to measuring display ad effectiveness that go beyond clickthrough.

In this post, we’ll look at one of those approaches, the concept of Dwell, in a little more detail as it’s described in an Eyeblaster Benchmark Insights paper. And we’ll touch on how you can measure Dwell performance for your own Xspot campaigns.

What exactly is Dwell?

Dwell as a performance metric was developed, in response to research by Eyeblaster, Microsoft Advertising, and comScore, to capture the branding effect of display ad campaigns.

You calculate Dwell in two different ways:

• Dwell Rate measures how successfully an ad captures viewers’ attention. Dwell Rate equals the number of viewers who physically touch an ad divided by the number of ad impressions served.
• Dwell Time measures how long viewers were exposed to an ad. Average Dwell Time equals the total amount of time all viewers spent engaging with an ad divided by the total number of viewers.

What does Dwell affect?

Based on comparisons of high and low Dwell campaigns, researchers found that viewers exposed to high Dwell campaigns are significantly more likely to:

• Search for brand-related keywords.
• Visit advertiser websites and, during those visits, spend more time and view more pages.
• Convert.

What produces better Dwell?

Given Dwell’s affect on branding and conversion, advertisers may want to take concrete steps to improve Dwell performance for their campaigns. The research data provides advertisers with some specific actions to take:

• The Dwell research found a direct correlation between the length of time an ad is presented and Dwell Rate. This means advertisers are likely to see higher Dwell Rates with ads placed on pages, such as news sites, where viewers spend more time.
• Video ads perform better than ads without video. On average, adding video to ads increases Dwell Rate by 29 percent and also nearly doubles Dwell Time.
• Polite and expandable banners typically have relatively high Dwell Time but relatively low Dwell Rate (as compared to commercial break and floating ad formats). To increase banner ad Dwell Rate, make the starting images that initially load as engaging as possible.

How can I measure Dwell for an Xspot campaign?

Dwell Rate In the Mixpo platform, Active View Rate is equivalent to Dwell Rate. Active view rate is calculated by dividing the number of times viewers play or replay an ad by the number of impressions served.

Performance statistics in the Mixpo Dashboard

Average Dwell Time In the Mixpo platform, you have three ways to measure time spent with an Xspot:

• Avg. Viewed = percentage of an Xspot viewers are watching averaged across all viewers.
• Percent Completed = percentage of viewers who watched the entire Xspot.
• Exposure = the total number of minutes all viewers of an Xspot spent watching it.

Video ad views and clicks by geographic location

In a thought-provoking article in the New York Times Magazine, Gary Wolf examines how technology has made it feasible for people to measure and evaluate their most basic habits.

For example, enthusiasts that Wolf describes as “trackers” are measuring how much they sleep, exercise, and eat, how productive they are, where they’re located, and even how their moods, alertness, and spiritual well-being fluctuate.

Wolf acknowledges that “technical people are often painfully aware how much of human behavior is a mystery. People do things for unfathomable reasons.” And yet, he points out, trackers believe that they can gain self-understanding, not just by interrogating inner worlds through talking and writing, but also by using numbers. “They are constructing,” Wolf says, “a quantified self.”

In a similar way, advertisers construct quantifiable campaigns. People buy things for what may, in fact, be “unfathomable reasons.” But, as Stephen DiMarco points out, in Campaign Attribution Isn’t A Zero-Sum Game, advertisers rely on data to refine campaign strategies and maximize each dollar they spend.

In the process of tracking his work hours, Gary Wolf learned, much to his chagrin, that the amount of uninterrupted time he was able to muster in a given work day totalled about 3 hours. Once he got over the humiliation, he realized his measurement experiment had turned him into a “mean-spirited, small-minded boss” who was making an unnecessary concession to a worthless stereotype. “Does anyone believe” Wolf asks, “that long hours at a desk are a vocational ideal?”

Like other trackers, Wolf discovered that the true value of a tracking system is as a source of critical perspective, not on one’s performance per se but rather on the assumptions about what it is important to track.

“Self-tracking,” Wolf concludes, “is not really a tool of optimization but of discovery.”

In arguing for an integrated approach to measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, DiMarco makes a similar point. He advises against falling in love with 1 or 2 specific metrics and for going beyond ad server and site data to include direct marketing emails, organic search, and even consumer panels.

“Experimentation” says DiMarco, “is key to lasting success. Attribution isn’t a zero-sum game; it’s your best way to learn more and earn more.”

Grungy social media icons from WebTreats etc.

Kimbal Musk, CEO of OneRiot, claims that brands or websites that want to connect with users in a social or realtime environment need to advertise in realtime.

According to Musk, realtime ads are ads that “are created as they become relevant across the realtime web. Realtime ads” he says, “can be Tweets, search ads or display ads that contain content that is relevant right now.”

Indeed, one of the keys to the success of the Scott Brown for U.S. Senate campaign was the campaign’s ability to immediately capitalize on audience reaction to the final Brown-Coakley debate.

Immediately after the debate, without retrafficking any ad tags, the campaign replaced the creative in a video ad running on BostonHerald.com with “Momentum” creative that stoked the building enthusiasm.

Voters chose to watch Brown’s video ad nearly twice as often as the industry average for video ads. They engaged twice as often as viewers engage with video ads overall. The campaign’s click through rate exceeded the industry standard for display ads by almost double.

Read a case study about the Scott Brown campaign.

Learn more about the realtime power of dynamic video advertising.

Chart showing viewer engagement over the length of a video ad

As studies increasingly show (for example, see comScore’s Whither the Click in Europe?, this .Foxnet-comScore study, this VideoEgg-comScore study, and these reported results of a Nielsen IAG-Microsoft study), engaging video ads, even in the face of minimal clicks, effectively drive visits to advertisers’ websites and increase the number of trademark searches.

Given this data, click-through rate is not a terribly meaningful measure of an online video ad campaign’s success. But if not click-through, then what?

Here are some ways researchers are answering this question.

Dwell time

Using data sets from comScore and Eyeblaster, Microsoft found a “clear connection between the amount of time that a user spends actively engaging with an online ad and a consumer’s subsequent online behaviour with that brand.” Higher dwell scores mean more branded search queries and more visits to and engagement with the brand website.

Engagement mapping and view-through conversions

For several years, online marketers have been struggling with the disconnect between the knowledge that consumers visit multiple sites before conversion and metrics that focus on the last-seen or last-clicked ad.

For example, a study conducted by Microsoft’s Atlas Institute of advertising campaigns run by 250 advertisers across thousands of sites showed that most consumers make contact with advertisers months before they actually convert. Using a 90-day history window, consumers experienced a median of 18.5 ad events.

In response, Atlas introduced Engagement Mapping technology that allows advertisers to fold all types of events, including passive events such as views and impressions, into their ROI calculations.

Google recently announced view-through conversion reporting on the Google Content Network, which allows advertisers to tie conversions to display ad views within a 30-day window even when no clicks occur.

Engagement rate and conversion activity

In a June, 2009 benchmarks review, DoubleClick suggested that “the objective of rich media ads isn’t always to drive clicks.” Therefore, engagement metrics, such as interaction rates and times and video completion are important success measures.

In addition, DoubleClick argued, conversion activity can happen within an ad unit itself. For example, while watching a video ad, viewers might open and submit a lead capture form, take a poll, locate the nearest retail outlet, or play another video.

A wealth of data

In the Mixpo platform, you have access to a wealth of real-time data related to the performance of video ad campaigns. For example, you can:

• See how much of your video ad viewers watch on average and what percentage of viewers watch the entire ad.
• Track clicks, views, and interactions individually, or see an overall engagement rate that divides the total of all of these measures by the number of impressions to calculate an engagement percentage.
• Track conversions, either by counting actions viewers take within a video ad or subsequent visits they make to the advertiser’s website.

How do you see it?

Let us know what you think. What results should advertisers expect from video ad campaigns? What metrics should they use to judge campaign effectiveness?