How Relevant is the Internet for Video Advertising Exposure?

There appears to be so much media coverage these days (read: hype) about digital media, the impact of Internet advertising, the importance of on-line buzz, and so on, that I wanted to better understand a recent email from AdAge about the best ads found on YouTube - "AdAge Picks YouTube's Best Ads (or At Least 20 of Them)" - posted April 7, 2010. I wanted to learn what these `best ads' might actually be achieving.

Although it is hard to find data on the sales impact of these ads, it is relatively easy to find the viewing count on YouTube. There is also www.visiblemeasures.com which claims to be a leading measurement of online brand-driven viral videos. What struck me when viewing these sources was the number of `hits/views' for the top video commercials.

Among the top 20 video ads selected by AdAge, the average viewing count on YouTube for the ten ads with the highest number of `views' was about 11.3 million, with many adverts having been around for over a month. The tenth ranked advert had less than 5 million hits. These are English language ads. So to put these levels into a fair perspective, let's look at some English populations. There are approximately 255 million adults in North America. This increases to 325 million adults in the four main English-speaking nations (USA, UK, Canada, and Australia). If we use the cut-off for the top ten ads, we note the count to be about 5 million views. If we assume none of these are duplicated views among the same people (likely, a weak assumption), this volume of 5 million hits represents less than 2% reach of adults in North America, and 1.5% of the four English-speaking nations. And clearly teens and non-English speaking audiences are helping to boost the view counts. All to say, that despite the emergence and popularity of the Internet, and the related hype one sees in the marketing/advertising industry, it is hard to get excited about such low levels of reach and exposure for any one brand's branded video on the Internet.

However, do not get me wrong. I am not against posting branded ads online. It costs virtually nothing to post a branded video on websites such as YouTube, and any viewings are likely helpful. It is just that I think we should all keep in mind that advertisers need to have a realistic expectation about the amount of exposure and `reach' an average advert will likely achieve on the Internet. A quick random tour of YouTube, for many day-to-day brands, indicated that most brands do not surpass 100,000 views of their posted ads. This is a drop in the bucket in terms of media exposure. But at least it is a free drop!

John Hallward is a member of the Ipsos ASI global team, our brand for advertising research. John is responsible for Ipsos ASI's global product development and product management.

A published author - "Gimme!" (2007) - and the 2008 winner of the ARF's "Great Minds Award" for Innovation (New York), John often writes and presents insights on how advertising works, based on the extensive ASI databases of pre-tested ads and tracked campaigns.