To inform the launch of our new advertising platform, PodZinger did extensive research on consumer behavior and online video advertising viewing preferences. With increased discussion on video advertising, we thought we’d share some of the behavioral patterns of our users and the research highlights.
The Topic Matters
It turns out that approximately 85% of all online activities were concentrated on Entertainment, Technology, News and Politics, Music and Sports. As these top 5 verticals draw in the most audience, they will also be the top categories on which advertisers should focus on.
While technology is by far the most popular audio content, entertainment dominates the total % of video plays.
Average Play Time
Consumers typically play only 15 percent of an entire online video or audio. The average run time for video is 7.5 minutes and audio is 22 minutes. The following shows the average play time according to the top played categories we identified.
Other notable patterns indicate that:
- Consumers will listen to audio for almost 3 times longer as they will watch a video – an average of 3 min. versus 1 min.
- Consumers are more likely to play content online than they are to download it by a factor of almost 6 to 1.
Market Research
In addition to the data crunching above, we partnered with market research firm Pathfinder Innovation to conduct one-on-one interviews in three major U.S. markets including Chicago, Los Angeles and Cambridge, MA. The interviewees were given comprehensive in-dept questionnaires and presented with demonstration sites to gauge their reaction to the length and format of video ads.
Highlights of the market research:
- Not only do consumers tolerate advertisements that appear during their search for online audio and video content, they also willingly accept that short 10-15 seconds ads are “part of doing business” on the Web.
- Consumers prefer 10-15 second ads in comparison to the typical 30-second television commercials. However, many expressed concern about frequency of video ads and were considered “annoying” if repeated often.
- A high percentage of respondents viewed targeted advertisements that were relevant to their online search as positive and more personal
The combined research results emphasized the importance of streamlined and targeted, non-intrusive video advertisements. We’ve built these considerations into our new advertising platform where we classify all audio and video content through our speech recognition technology and tailor advertising to consumer interests.
We are continuing to improve and as always, we welcome and are very interested in all comments and feedback.
