Over 50% of mobile video traffic
2012 was the first year when mobile video traffic exceeded 50% of all mobile traffic, according to Cisco. What does this mean for mobile advertising? It means that mobile video ads may be just the thing that will enable mobile advertising to reach its full potential. Especially if the predictions of mobile video making up over 66% of overall mobile data traffic by 2017 come true.
Is standard mobile video ad enough?
Mobile video has been a standard part of ClickAttack’s mobile ad portfolio since the beginning. We have been using standard mobile video ads on mobile web sites and in mobile applications. The advantage of these mobile video ads is mainly the price when compared to the cost of TV commercials.
This kind of ad increases the level of interactivity and grabs end users’ attention much more than a standard mobile ad. But is that enough?
Pre-roll video
In order to make the mobile video virtually impossible to miss, pre-roll videos were introduced. However, end users were starting to get bored (if not irritated) with having to watch a commercial almost every time they wanted to watch a video. With end users’ satisfaction in mind, pre-roll video experience was enhanced adding the skippable pre-roll video.
Skippable pre-roll video allows users to skip a mobile video ad after 5/10/15 seconds. Furthermore, advertisers were charged only for the videos that were watched completely. If users chose to skip the video, advertisers were not to be charged.
Is that all mobile video has to offer?
Of course not. As the mobile video traffic increases, we are witnessing new ways of using mobile video in branding and advertising purposes. Every major video sharing site is making its content available on mobile through mobile optimized web and mobile applications, thus constantly increasing the “mobile video inventory”.
New mobile video formats
We can surely expect innovation in mobile video formats. One example is Vine on Twitter. This 6-second video loop was designed to “help users share moments of their lives”. However, startups are already experimenting on how to best use Vine for advertising and brand promotion.
Veni, vidi, vici
Let’s sum it up. Mobile videos offer higher visibility and interaction, lower price than TV commercials, higher CTRs, real time statistics and they are not so hard to create using numerous video creation tools available. And if you manage to score and create a video that goes viral, your brand will be seen literally all over the world. So, what are you waiting for?