Putting users in control can put publishers at an advantage, it seems. Google’s TrueView video ad format may let users skip YouTube pre-roll ads – but that doesn’t mean reduced engagement, says a company exec.
“One of the most interesting findings that we’ve gotten from TrueView, both on YouTube and also off of YouTube and on the publishers that we have TrueView extended to, is we see a 50% … increase in retention for those publishers – people that come back to the site over and over and over again,” Google’s media platform sales head Jay VanDerzee tells Beet.TV.
TrueView ads let users skip to actual content after a set number of seconds have elapsed. If users skip, advertisers don’t pay.
“All too often people get consumed by those notion of ‘What percentage of people skip the ad?’,” VanDerzee says. “What you really should be thinking about is, ‘What percentage of people didn’t skip the ad, and what is the value created for those publishers and users?’ It’s obviously tremendous.”
VanDerzee was interviewed by Furious Minds CEO Ashley Swartz at Beet.TV’s TV Programmatic Summit, hosted at Xaxis and presented by Videology.
