Brands boost investment in online video advertising

March 27th, 2012

The majority of brands and agencies are planning to step up their investment in online video advertising during 2012, new research has found.

Nearly 87 per cent of US brands and agencies are including online video in their content marketing strategies this year, with many already investing heavily in digital video production, according to Outbrain, a content discovery platform that drives traffic to publisher websites through personalised recommendations.

The rise in investment in online video comes as figures from eMarketer reveal it is set to be the fastest growing advertising format in the US in 2012, with growth predicted to reach nearly 55 per cent over the year.

The next most common form of content after online videos was blog posts, which are being used by two thirds of marketers. This was followed by articles, slideshows and photo galleries, which were important to 44 per cent of respondents.

Outbrain’s research found almost all of US brand and agency marketers (96 per cent) using social media to distribute and share content such as videos, articles and blog posts. This compares with just over three-quarters of respondents who said they used paid search and display advertising (78 per cent and 76 per cent, respectively).

When measuring the success of their content marketing campaigns, the majority of Outbrain’s respondents (89 per cent) looked at the number of social media engagements and referrals. Other popular metrics used to quantify content marketing success were content views and downloads (75 per cent), number of leads (53 per cent) and search referrals (51 per cent). Only a third of respondents used direct sales as a measure of success.