Brands and agencies prefer social media for digital video campaign
Facebook is giving YouTube a run for its money when it comes to attracting video advertising dollars, with 65 percent of marketers saying social platforms are their most important digital video campaign partners over YouTube and Vevo, according to a new report from Trusted Media Brands.
Live-stream video advertising, which Facebook is reportedly testing, has caught marketers’ attention, with 89 percent considering using it in the next year. The June 2016 survey of more than 300 agency and client-side marketers on where they plan to spend their video advertising dollars found that Facebook Live and in-feed video are having a big impact.
“The big news is that Facebook, which has most of its traffic on mobile, has pulled a real coup,” said Rich Sutton, chief revenue officer at Trusted Media Brands. “In a very short period of time, it has video buyers saying that Facebook is the most important video platform. Not just social platform.
“[The most surprising finding is] that Facebook has come such a long way in such a short period of time and that Facebook Live and in-feed video seem to be catalysts in that growth,” he said.
The Future of Digital Video study was commissioned by Advertiser Perceptions on behalf of Trusted Media Brands.
Social meets video
As Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter each quickly accelerates its video offerings, consumers and marketers are taking note.
A key takeaway from the report is that marketers find social platforms more critical to the success of digital video campaigns than YouTube or Vevo. The findings show that 65 percent of marketers think social platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter are the most important partners for digital video campaigns while 59 percent favor video platforms such as YouTube and Vevo.
The preference for social platforms over video platforms is evident among both agencies and marketers.
Social platforms are also preferred over video demand side platforms such as Tremor Video; full-episode players such as Hulu; ad networks, publishers, and multichannel networks such as Awesomeness TV.
Live streaming
Facebook, as the biggest social media platform, is poised to be a big winner as digital video advertising dollars are funneled toward social.
Further underscoring Facebook’s potentially significant role in digital video going forward is the finding that 40 percent of respondents believe Facebook should set the stand for the future of the video industry.
The importance of video is clearly not lost on Facebook, with the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently saying that video will soon be at the heart of all the company’s apps and services (see story).
Facebook is moving quickly to take advantage of this opportunity, with reports this week indicating that it has started to test ads in Live video streams.
In the coming year, 18 percent of marketers definitely plan to use live-stream video advertising while 71 percent said they might use it, according to Trusted Media Brands’ report.
Additional findings include that 41 percent of respondents plan to run short-form video content in the next year while another 55 percent are considering it.
Overall, budgets for digital video advertising spending are rising, with 65 percent of agency respondents predicting an increase in the use of digital video over the next 12 months and 32 percent of the digital video advertising spend overall being transacted programmatically.
“Mobile video is growing so fast that marketers should be moving full speed ahead,” Mr. Sutton said.