June 2014

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As TV budgets continue to drive VoD, media buyers have started placing greater emphasis on aligning their TV and online video campaigns to choreograph a message across screens. We have seen this with the rapid uptake of our new TV Accelerator (TVA) targeting technology that combines BARB and online data to deliver incremental reach, additional frequency or sequential messaging.
The results of our latest media buyers survey show that online video advertising is continuing to grow at a rapid pace with 56% of buyers saying that they will increase their VoD spend by more than 25% over the next 6 months. 52% also said that video now appears on more than half of their campaigns.
The average VoD spend has now exceeded £50k.
The survey also explores attitudes to programmatic video, measurement, data and what buyers would need to see happening for them to allocate even more share of their budgets to VoD across
2014.
Our study focuses on video advertising placements around professionally produced content on the web. This is dominated by pre-roll ad placements, usually a 10 to 30 second audio-enabled video advert that is played when a user clicks to view a video online.
For the sake of clarity, this report refers to VoD throughout - Video-on-Demand. It is important to highlight that most media buying agencies refer to online video advertising around content as VoD.
The VoD media buyers’ survey intends to provide advertisers, publishers, content owners and media buying agencies with valuable insight. After analysing the results from our latest survey, completed by over 100 media buyers, we are confident that investment into the online video market will continue to rise throughout 2014.
Simon Stone
Commercial Director, Collective

Who is buying pre-roll advertising?
As the VoD market continues to grow so too does it’s footprint within agencies. 56% of digital media buyers now claim to be responsible for both digital and VoD spends, with 39% saying they buy TV and
VoD.
This is due to the the wider role that VoD is taking in the digital planning process, with agencies increasingly thinking about how they align their broadcast and digital teams to create integrated campaigns across devices.
While TV budgets are still being used to deliver incremental reach to broadcast activity, online video is now a regular feature in the digital planning process.
Average campaign budgets
We estimate that the average campaign budget for VoD is now £56,000, up £6,000 from our last survey. This figure has been derived by taking an average from over a 100 buyers who responded to this survey.
The increase is encouraging as it represents continued growth in the sector and marks the first time that average spends have exceeded £50,000. However, when we consider this number alongside the overall investment into TV there is clearly still scope for the market to grow even further over the course of 2014 and beyond, particularly if the right targeting tools and reporting metrics can be made available to the buying community.
VoD as part of the wider media mix
The importance of VoD continues to be highlighted by the number of media buyers who expect to include it in their plans, with 39% saying that it features on 75% or more of their campaigns, up 7% vs. the previous survey.
A quarter of buyers also claim to include it on over 90% of their plans. Considered in conjunction with the mix of buying points this is extremely positive in terms of potential future growth - not only is online video commanding an increased average level of investment, it is also a firm fixture on a vast majority of media plans.

Where are budgets being allocated?
Media buyers continue to see the value of video content available outside of long-form broadcast channels, with 60% of buyers now placing more than half of their VoD campaigns on non-broadcast sites (up 5% vs. the previous survey).
Views on non-broadcaster inventory
There has been a significant increase in activity being actively planned away from broadcast content, with a third of buyers putting less than 25% of budget in to broadcaster video, a growth of 19% over the past 2 years.
While broadcaster platforms will always remain strong in terms of share of spend, the results seen here highlight a trend of using short-form video content to help drive incremental reach alongside TV, with brands and agencies alike recognising the role that short-form content is able to play in the wider mix.

Projected growth
Growth in online video shows no sign of abating. The majority of respondents expect to increase their
VoD spend by at least 25% over the next 12 months. This is in line with the results seen from the last survey, suggesting that VoD continues to grow at a steady rate despite reaching larger average volumes in 2014.
TV money continues to drive online video forward, and with advances in technology now helping agencies to prove the effectiveness of online video and allowing them to choreograph messages across screens, this will only fuel further growth.
Programmatic buying – views on the latest trading route for video
This year our survey explored the subject of programmatic buying for video, where price is determined by supply and demand and activity planned through automated interfaces.
Over half of all respondents said they rarely use programmatic buying tools when implementing VoD activity, indicating that there is still perceived value in buying on a campaign by campaign basis with media vendors directly.
Programmatic buying has been a hot topic for the industry going in to 2014, but while the buzz surrounding it may be large the current desire to implement campaigns in this manner is still relatively small, with many agencies still in a test phase to establish the best way to make it work on a larger scale.
What is the primary measurement for judging an engaged viewer?
52% stated their primary means of measuring an engaged viewer was by using view-through rates, vs.
48% in the last survey. 16% said that unique users are their primary focus.
View-through rates are now the common currency for buyers in measuring the success of campaigns and the quality of video inventory they are buying. The importance placed on CTR has dwindled since the last time this survey was carried out, with a greater emphasis now being placed on the level of unique reach that online video campaigns can deliver. Direct interaction with a video advert online has now taken a less prominent role as advertisers become used to the idea of using online video for driving engagement metrics and incremental levels of reach and awareness.
The increasing importance of data
Another new question for 2014 focussed on what media buyers are looking for when planning online video campaigns.
49% said that audience demographic and behavioural data is the most valuable tool when thinking about how to reach a target user, with 20% placing the emphasis on context targeting.
The importance of using data is more prevalent with every survey, as targeting techniques become more sophisticated. But while agencies recognise the importance of finding the right user, there is still

spend. a desire to ensure that brands are associated with the right kind of content, a legacy likely left over from broadcast teams (used to planning by programme) controlling the majority of online video campaigns.
Finally, 12% said they want to use TV audience data to align pre-roll with TV, another sign that agencies are looking for targeting tools that allow them to plan the mix of TV and digital alongside one another in a more intelligent manner.
Market advances to facilitate increases in VoD spend
20% of participants said that the ability to bridge the gap between TV and digital was the most important factor in driving increased VoD spends for 2014 and beyond, while 35% said that proof VoD delivers incremental reach vs. TV schedules was key.
With 55% of all respondents therefore placing an emphasis on the need to link TV and digital campaigns its clear that the VoD industry has to demonstrate qualified proof to advertisers that digital video is adding value alongside their significant broadcast TV investment.
With levels of digital investment reaching new highs, advertisers are looking for intelligent solutions that work across screens to deliver audiences they haven’t already reached and sequential messaging solutions that engage users more than ever before. Making TV and digital campaigns work better together can only be achieved with audience targeting solutions that recognise likely exposure to one element of a campaign in order to shape the other.
As agencies integrate multi-discipline teams to deliver these choreographed campaign executions, tools that utilise TV data points to inform digital planning will be key to driving increased levels of VoD

Although online video sits in different departments within each media buying agency (broadcast, digital or screen teams) it is still predominantly driven by TV budgets.
For many years TV advertising has been considered the most powerful branding opportunity for advertisers, taking the bulk of marketing budgets. With digital's significant growth advertisers are increasingly faced with the challenge of how to efficiently choreograph their activity across screens and reduce media wastage. A more sophisticated approach is required for TV and digital to work together more intelligently.
As TV budgets continue to drive VoD, media buyers have started placing greater emphasis on aligning their TV and online video campaigns. We have seen this with the rapid uptake of our new TV
Accelerator (TVA) targeting technology that combines BARB and online data to deliver incremental reach, additional frequency or sequential messaging.
TVA uniquely links BARB’s consumer viewing panel to Collective’s Audience Cloud of more than 25 million active online consumers finding the online audience segments that have/haven’t been exposed to a brand’s TV advertising. Utilising Collective’s market leading capabilities this multi-screen audience is then delivered relevant and targeted cross-platform advertising across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices.

About Collective
Collective is a leading programmatic, multiscreen advertising company that connects brand marketers to audiences with personalized ad experiences across screens and formats. Collective's unified view of the consumer platform breaks down traditional media silos and enables brands to control audience reach & frequency and choreograph messaging across TV, PC, tablet and smartphone devices. Headquartered in New York with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, London and Bangalore. Collective is backed by Accel Partners, Cox Media
Group, Greycroft Partners, iNovia Capital and Samsung Ventures. To learn more about Collective, visit www.collective.com
.