Latest IAB Europe research reveals digital video advertising is now an integral part of cross-screen campaign strategies

IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising ecosystem, has today published its latest ‘Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising’ Report which provides insight into the growth drivers and adoption of digital video advertising across Europe, the ways in which video is being traded on both the buy-side and sell-side, and future trends.

Now in its third year, the 2018 Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising report highlights that digital video is now an integral part of marketers’ advertising plans. Indeed, digital video is a key driver of the digital advertising market which is now worth €48bn in Europe.

The Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising survey was first developed by IAB Europe’s Video Task Force and Research Committee in 2016. The study asks advertisers, agencies and publishers from across Europe about their investment and revenue levels by device and format, their objectives and measurement needs, the trends they are seeing in inventory supply and cross-screen planning, and how they see their investment levels evolving in the future.

The report highlights that investment in digital video advertising is increasing:
● Investment in digital video advertising is set to increase in the near future. Over 90% of respondents cite an increase in the next 12 months.
● The share of digital video traded programmatically is growing - approximately 90% of all stakeholders are using a Private Marketplace (programmatic direct) and a quarter of advertisers buying more than 60% of their digital video inventory via open RTB.

“As the re-alignment from linear video continues, IAB Europe's 'Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising Report' highlights the rapidly changing face of our industry. Significant year on year trends such as the continued rise of RTB and the growing adoption of the Out-stream format, show that this flourishing industry is rapidly maturing and our understanding needs to keep up with this pace of change.” said Phil Sumner, Global Media Insights Director, Teads

The findings demonstrate that advertiser KPIs are evolving:
● Digital video is an integral part of multimedia planning and buying adding effectiveness (incremental campaign reach) and efficiency (decreasing cost of contact) elements to Linear TV campaigns. More than half of advertisers believe that combined TV and video campaigns help to drive incremental reach.
● Advertisers are using a more sophisticated range of metrics to assess media effectiveness (brand awareness, cost per completed views, deduplicated reach and frequency, audience and brand safety verification), and the impact of digital video on brand- and sales-related outcomes.

Further, whilst advertisers are embracing newer formats and ‘digital first’ video content, the industry is still reliant on in-stream formats:
● Out-stream video formats continue to increase but in-stream video formats still dominate spend. Whilst out-stream video advertising investment continues to grow for advertisers and agencies in 2018, in-stream and in-banner video advertising still attract the largest overall investment.
● Decline in the use of repurposed TV content for digital video advertising campaigns. This decline has been counterbalanced by many more advertisers opting for a blend of both repurposed TV content and original content. Surprisingly though, almost 20% of advertisers are still solely using repurposed TV content for mobile video.

Finally, the report shows the reliance on video advertising for publishers’ advertising solutions:
● Publishers are embracing video formats to support growing user and advertiser demands, attracting more brand spend. The number of publishers reporting that over 80% of their inventory was video grew by 72%, from 16% in 2017 to 28% in 2018.

“We clearly see from the research the big shift into video, with publishers ramping up the volume of video inventory they carry. While generating higher CPMs for publishers, video delivers the impact and engagement that brands crave, helping persuade marketers to invest more in digital.” said Roger Williams, VP, International Marketing, PubMatic

IAB Europe’s members Adform, Nielsen, Teads and Pubmatic contributed to the latest report.

“This report forms part of IAB Europe’s objective to explore the video advertising landscape in Europe and drive the uptake of digital video branding campaigns. Related resources from IAB Europe include a Connected TV White Paper, the measurement of video ad spend in the AdEx Benchmark report and a library of ad effectiveness case studies”, said Marie-Clare Puffett, Business Programmes Manager, IAB Europe
www.iabeurope.eu