A new study by video analytics firm TubeMogul reports that 1 out of every 6 viewers won’t even bother to watch a video if it’s preceded by a video ad. The numbers get even worse for newspaper and magazine web sites, where 1 in every 4 viewers will click away from a video, if a video ad appears first.
TubeMogul performed the study by examining 1.8 million video streams over a 48-hour period.
As bad as these numbers sound, Hulu also did a study recently where they let viewers choose whether they wanted ads to appear before a video or during a video. Viewers chose ads before a video by a margin of 2 to 1. In other words, if people want to see ad’s in videos at all, they want to see them at the beginning.
Personally, I think part of the issue is video ad length. Most video ad’s run 30 seconds long…and that’s an awful long time to wait just so you can watch a two-minute video (after all, TubeMogul has also reported that 81% of viewers bolt if a video even stops to buffer).
But that’s my opinion. Want to share your opinion? Then vote below:
I don’t think using the Hulu study as evidence that people prefer ads in the beginning of videos works. People will stick through a Hulu ad because a) the content is better and longer and b) they were given a choice in how they would consume the ad. I think video ads in front of short video cause those 1 in 4/6 to leave because they feel assaulted by the ad. I do think if it’s a 5 minute video and you stick a 15-second break in the middle of it that people will be more likely to sit through it than they do at the beginning.