The Internet Advertising Bureau’s latest Video Ad Spend Study shows a near doubling of marketer investments in original digital video since 2015 and a correlation between the buying activity and the NewFronts.
Eight out of 10 marketers surveyed for the IAB “said they increased their spending on original digital video because of the NewFronts in 2016,” says Anna Bager, SVP and General Manager, Mobile and Video. The new research underscores a “pivotal change in the expand around video.”
While over-the-top and mobile device viewing are big drivers of the expanded investments, “It’s really the whole ecosystem. Marketers are getting that,” Bager says in this interview with Beet.TV.
Original digital video is gaining a greater share of total digital video budgets—its slice of the pie reaching 47% from 45% in 2016, according to the IAB research. Native advertising is increasingly a key part in these original digital video buys, accounting for 42% of investment, up from 32% the previous year.
What remains a “tricky” part of the digital video experience is discoverability, or how consumers find desirable content when there is so much out there, according to a separate study by the IAB.
“There’s so much great content out there, but how do you find it and how do you search between the different platforms” will be the subject of additional research, Bager says.
She believes the solution for consumers might turn out to be mobile. “I think that the phone is potentially going to transform into our set-top box and through that we can search and find the content that we need.”
Video discoverability “is something we need to improve,” she says.
This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the IAB’s Digital Content NewFronts 2017. The series is sponsored by the IAB. For more videos from the #NewFronts, please visit this page.
