Last year was a great year for online video, 6 months into 2013 and it is clear that the rise in popularity of online video advertising will not stop there and is likely to rise exponentially in the coming months. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau's (IAB) Digital Adspend report, online video advertising has grown by a massive 46% year on year, now worth over £160 million and the third largest display format in the UK.
But it's not just online video that's booming, social has become a marketing staple.
Facebook hit 1 billion active users last year and PSY's Gangnam Style became the first video to hit a billion views on Youtube. More branded videos went viral than ever before. The most viewed branded video ad of last year by Turkish Airlines: Kobe vs. Messi: Legends on Board has been watched over 104 million times and liked 1.2 million times. Social video now makes up 13% of online video and is worth a staggering £21million.
Social video advertising is going to make up a huge portion of online video advertising in years to come. Brand engagement with audiences has become an essential part of online video campaigns and social video advertising guarantees engaged viewers, consistently outperforming up to 88% of traditional in-stream campaigns.
And it's only just getting started, 2013 has seen exciting developments in the world of social video. Emotion-sensing technology is now at the forefront of the industry. It is now possible to track a viewer's emotional response, with their permission of course, to an online video using facial coding software. For the first time ever brands can assess users' reactions and responses to an online video, whether they laugh, cry or get bored, before, during and after launch. These results can then be overlaid with typical campaign metrics like CTR and completion rates. By using these technological innovations brands can optimise their creative content and ensure they produce and distribute an optimised video for a successful social video campaign.
With more and more brands, like Red Bull, Heineken and Adidas, embracing social video and producing original, interactive, engaging content we expect to see this area of the industry claim an even larger market share in H1 this year.
