Video Advertising: Growing trend in the mobile internet market

A few years before, it wasn’t a reality to witness a speaking newspaper. Newspaper was a printed material and had always been known for its colour and monochromatic letters. But almost 6 years ago in September 2010, newspaper spoke. The famous name amongst cars “Volkswagen” a beautiful outcome of innovative engineering let the newspapers speak through a voice activated chip attached on each newspaper. Every newspaper spoke as it was opened. It was an enthralling experience: something that had left an indelible imprint on all the readers who had just become active listeners of their newspaper. The sales of the newspaper soared along with its glory after bringing revolution in the print media. The same level of innovation and breakthrough is been witnessed as video advertising in the mobile internet industry. It has not only been introduced but also has gained a huge fame amongst the world population. As per a study, consumers are 27 times more likely to click through online video advertisements than standard banners. Social and mobile gaming video ads also have a 91 per cent completion rate: (Source: CMO.com August 28, 2013). The reason behind the fame is not difficult to understand. A human mind gets involved and engaged by something which appeals to most of its senses. Our degree of impact enhances when we are able to experience an object through image along with sound in comparison to a few set of words stated on paper. To understand this phenomenon better, let us go back to our kindergarten classes where we were asked to learn “A for Apple”. Only reciting was one of the first methods to learn. It became more exciting for us when our books showed a very beautiful apple beside the “A” letter. Now it has become rather more exciting when a video is shown to the children in which a person, impersonating an apple, says “Hello kids, I am an apple and you should eat me everyday” Likewise, the video advertising having an effect on most of the senses, attributing to a customized theme for each advertisement, creates a huge impact on the observer, no matter the age. This is the reason that it is a pertinent solution for monetizing almost free internet services. There is no wonder that Mobile internet Ad spending has grown leaps and bounds as shown in the graph. Thus we can see that video advertisements have already gained fame on the mobile internet industry which is one of the most known comfortable virtual spaces. Adding to that comfort, there are various mobile applications like Mobi Screen which has made an endeavour to bring in additional convenience for the subscribers of the video advertisements. The best aspect of these applications or their likes is their ability to regulate the video viewing at the subscribers’ end. The subscriber can view the video as per their convenient schedule. Also, they can exercise their control over its access via incoming calls or SMS or both. It has created a win-win situation for most of the stakeholders. The internet industry could earn through advertising via various readily available options on these applications such as image, voice, effective SMS campaigns through Campaign manager and the subscriber can earn rewards by just viewing the advertisements.

Though a little while ago, it was perceived that traditional media whether print or TV has an upper hand due to its wide and deep customer base throughout the world, but within no time of introduction, mobile internet have achieved a wider and a deeper customer base. The same has happened with video advertising on mobile internet which is about to become a synonym for advertising. A report by Forrester indicates that spending on online advertising is supposed to surpass TV spending by 2016 itself. (Source: Adclick Africa Media Group). According to a new survey from BrightRoll, 72 per cent of ad agencies say online video advertising is as effective, if not more effective, than television.

As the video metrics (eye balls’ measurement through clicks, likes and comments) have become an important feature for popularity of video advertisements against TV advertisements, applications as Mobi Screen present itself as a powerful reporting engine available to generate reports to claim ad revenues. Their reporting engine can effectively capture not only delivery of new videos or images but also number of video and image views.

Even if we compare amongst digital advertising sources, mobile internet comes out with flying colours. Let us consider the statistics from Marketingland.com:
Google research found that video ad viewability on smartphones was higher (83%) than that on desktop (53%) or tablet (81%). Mobile ad viewability on YouTube was even higher at 94%.

Having said regarding the soaring fame of online video advertisement, there are few challenges which don’t allow it to become complacent. One of the prominent challenges in developing countries is low speed internet leading to buffering of videos and lot of frustration amongst subscribers. But having the ability to avoid buffering during video advertisements, Mobi Screen application and their likes comes out as an effective viable option for subscribers as well as advertisers.