Mobile Video Views Surge 300%; Tablets Fuel Growth And Engagement

It’s no secret digital video consumption continues to increase as TV Everywhere expands and mobile audiences grow. The U.S. Digital Video Benchmark 2012 Review from Adobe looks at digital video trends and ways publishers and advertisers can make the most of their video content and campaigns.

Adobe’s Digital Index team looked at 19.6 billion video starts on media websites and 10 billion ads served by Adobe media customers as well as 450 million Facebook posts.

Mobile Video Takes Hold

Video consumption continued to grow on PCs last year, but 2012 was the year that video on mobile devices gained significant ground. Mobile video views jumped 300% last year, accounting for 10.4% of video starts, up from just 3% in 2011. Tablets are fueling the growth.

Usage habits vary significantly on tablets and smartphones. Tablets see heavy usage on the weekends with Saturdays producing 16% and Sundays producing 17% of tablet video starts. Tablet video views are driven by TV shows, movies and live sports. Users are more likely to watch videos on their tablets at home and through a WiFi connection.

Users turn to smartphones for “content snacking” to watch short segments of news, weather and sports clips. Consumption is spread throughout the week with peaks on Monday, Thursday and Sunday, each at 16%.

Video Increases Social Media Engagement

Although many more people use search or go directly to access video, Adobe found there is significant opportunity in social channels. Socially-referred video starts have much higher completion rates.

Abobe’s study found that users are more than twice as likely to comment, share or like video content than non-video content. Twitter, though it sends just 16% of video social referrals, is three times more likely to generate referral traffic for videos than other content on media sites.

Adobe suggests brands should be creating more video for social marketing, and publishers should be using social media to attract video viewers. According to their research, less than 1/4 of posts by media companies include video.

Ad Performance & Opportunities For Media Sites & Advertisers

Adobe found that mid-roll ads had the highest completion rate at nearly 90% in 2012. Yet, post-roll ads generated three times higher CTRs than pre- and mid-roll ads. Despite these findings, pre-roll ads continued to dominate overall ad impressions with 82% of the total for content that’s longer than two minutes.

And, content duration makes a difference. Content lasting more than two minutes produced higher ad completions and click-through rates than shorter videos.

Media sites can find opportunities to increase both ad inventory and CPMs, particularly for post-roll where inventory is lacking. Adobe makes several suggestions for how advertisers should tailor their ad buys to their goals — for example, running branding campaigns with pre-roll ads on PCs ahead of TV programs, and call-to-action campaigns with post-roll ads on tablets, where viewers are more likely to complete a video and click through.