Weekly Wrap Up: Mobile Video on the Rise

This week the spotlight was on mobile video consumption.  Nielsen announced their Q4 report which saw more than 100 million people watching videos on their smartphones.  Even more interesting, they compared the increase in time on smartphones and tablets to find not only a decline time on PCs, but also a peak in mobile video consumption during TV’s prime time.

We’ve heard a lot about mobile video over the years, but it looks like advertisers are really putting some investment behind these trends now.  Live-streaming for video game service Twitch has launched a smartphone SDK to extend their capabilities to games played on these devices.  While this will serve as a valuable differentiator for them, the technology offers intriguing possibilities itself.  The Millennial generation prides itself on individuality and having a voice.  This technology managed with integrity could give brands the ability to identify with this audience by providing a platform for personalization and expression.  From an optimization perspective, could we gain more insight as to how consumers engage with our properties on these devices?

Apple has also announced full-page video ads will be available soon via iAd.  While this will no doubt be enticing to advertisers, there are still some turn-offs mobile video ads.  For one, not much has been done to diversify these units.  For the most part, the same formats and skins that exist in desktop have been rolled over to tablet devices and even more barebones are those for smartphones.  Though the tablet device may create a more attractive display of video content, advertisers will need to be sure of promoting quality.

Potentially the most aggressive hypothesis I’ve read this week however, is that by 2020, TV & digital ads will be bought together.  Despite the obvious challenges (different objectives, varying metrics, tracking across devices), advertisers aren’t ready to unify, both internally and externally.  Look at mobile and desktop.  Most mobile plans suffer for lack of dedicated time as most planners focus on tracking-friendly desktop.  For desktop publishers that have tried to acquire mobile capabilities, some suffer from biases that they don’t know mobile well enough to be effective and worse, many prove that bias.  If we can’t converge just digital platforms, assuming TV will slide easily into the mix is far-fetched.  We can agree however, that users are consuming any content on any device and the need to leverage each of these effectively is imperative.

When it comes to mobile video then specifically, advertisers will need to be careful about the content they release.  Does it serve as a valuable extension of TV content?  Does it give the viewer an opportunity to become a part of the story?  That is how they will engage audiences from one device to another.