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?