I’m all for research and science. We need lots of it in the advertising business; so that we can replace guesswork and trial and error. And the nasty reputations that come along with the combination of media planners, publishers and ad networks using instinct to make plans, rather than hard data. Often-times it’s not their fault. The science is not ready, especially in video advertising, being that it’s a nascent market.

So, I read this article on Online Ad Clicker Demographics recently and they report the percentage of people in various age and income brackets that click on ads. It was interesting to note that younger people were more likely to click on a video advert than a banner, but as they grew older, the propensity to click on an video advert declined to mirror that of other ad units. The report goes on to find similar trends when comparing income.  People earning less than $50K a year, click far more on video adverts than on display, but as they earn more, they fall into line with the other ad units.

So, video ads are more engaging for younger and lower-income people and as engaging for everyone else. Imagine what you’ll get if you’re an advertiser and the video adverts are actually contextually matched to the content with the sophistication that 10 years of display advertising has brought. As I’ve pointed out on these pages before, online video advertising is still very young as an industry.  I’ll bet when this survey is run again in 2 years, video is clearly more engaging across all demographic types.  Assuming it’s done correctly.

- Jayant Kadambi

Tags: banner ads, Demogepahics, Online Video, research

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 11:19 am and is filed under Advertising, Networks & Studios, Online Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.