More Advertisers Using TV Data for Digital Video

Advertisers are increasing coordinating their on-air and online campaigns by using data about TV viewing to target their digital video buys, according to Videology.

Geographical and behavioral data are still used to target the majority of campaigns, Videology said in its fourth quarter report. But 18% of campaigns, up 114% from a year ago, used TV viewing information as a buying criteria.

Most often targeted were people who saw the advertiser’s own commercials on TV, followed by sports viewers, political show viewers and people who saw a competitors’ commercial on TV. Daytime TV viewers, TV drama viewers, adults exposed to children’s programming, cable TV viewers, news show viewers and primetime TV viewers were also audience segments targeted by clients of Videology, which provides software for converged TV and video advertising.

Videology said 39% of digital impressions were measured using Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings or comScore’s Validated Campaign Essentials, which means the advertiser wanted to validate that impressions were being delivered within the appropriate demos.

A graphical view of Videology's data can be found here.

“As the siloes between TV and video continue to break down, advertisers are utilizing the unique attributes of each to bring additional value to the mix.  A big part of this is the use of data to provide deeper insights into consumer targeting and consumption, which we saw in this analysis,” said Videology CEO Scott Ferber. “The big win in this area is to connect these insights across both TV and video, and that’s exactly what we can achieve through our direct integration with Nielsen. The ability to provide bi-lateral insights across digital and TV is changing the game for advertisers and driving exceptional efficiencies.  This is one trend that we can expect to grow big time.”

Videology also said that among its clients running video campaigns were most often in the consumer goods categories (36%), followed by restaurants (11%) and automotive (10%). The number of campaigns that included mobile components increased 700% year-over-year, with 86% of all campaigns employing mobile.

Since last year, the number of cross-screen campaigns has grown more than 50%. Now 4 of 5 campaigns are cross-screen, Videology said.

With digital video, both fraud and viewability of campaign remains a concern. Videology says that 56% of its advertisers optimized its campaigns to optimize viewability rates. And in the fourth quarter, Videology identified and blocked a record number of fraudulent ad requests. Both requests spiked during the weeks before Christmas and in the final days of the year.

“Videology’s findings are directly in line with what we see on the broader Internet,” said Michael Tiffany, CEO of White Ops, which works with Videology on fraud prevention. “Spending levels increased in the run-up to Christmas, and budgets needed to be completely spent before the end of the year. But consumers didn’t browse the Internet more, to view more ads, just because there was more ad budget getting spent. So bot traffic rose to fill in the gap between all the ads that advertisers wanted to buy and the actual number of ads available to show to real people.”

(Photo via Pictures of Money's FlickrImage taken on Sept. 17, 2015 and used per Creative Commons 2.0 license. The photo was cropped to fit 3x4 aspect ratio.)

Jon Lafayette

Jon has been business editor of Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He focuses on revenue-generating activities, including advertising and distribution, as well as executive intrigue and merger and acquisition activity. Just about any story is fair game, if a dollar sign can make its way into the article. Before B+C, Jon covered the industry for TVWeek, Cable World, Electronic Media, Advertising Age and The New York Post. A native New Yorker, Jon is hiding in plain sight in the suburbs of Chicago.