TidalTV Study Asks the "Click" Question: How Well Did Your Video Campaign Really Perform?

NEW YORK and BALTIMORE, July 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- TidalTV, a leading video advertising network and platform, today released a new study demonstrating the importance of click through rate (CTR) norms when evaluating a video campaign's performance. The study unveils dramatic CTR variations across a variety of sectors and demographics, offering advertisers new insight into the effective evaluation and application of digital performance metrics within the burgeoning media sector of online video.  

"This study quantifies within the online video space what we have known about overall digital metrics for some time: all CTRs are not created equal. When norms are applied to CTR performance evaluations, better decisions will ultimately result in greater campaign success," said Kevin Haley, Chief Scientist for TidalTV.  "Although there is a lot of debate around the relevancy of CTR to video, the majority of advertisers still considers CTR an important metric across all digital investments. That said, we believe this research shows that CTRs can be a valuable metric for video advertisers when viewed within a more fully informed context."

The study found that for online video, CTRs vary across sectors, age, content, daypart/day of week and geography. These variations must be taken into account to gain a true assessment of performance, and more importantly, should be applied to achieve optimal campaign success. For instance, though a CTR of 1.2% is above the industry average -- only an analysis of specific norms will reveal if that goal is high or low for a sleep aid targeting 55+ consumers on weekday mornings.

CTR Norm Findings:

1. Category Performance

Across 10 sectors, advertisements for the financial category performed best, with CTR rates 15% above the norm for all video advertisements.  Home improvement and entertainment/movie advertising also exceeded CTR norms. With more than a 45 percentage point differential between the highest performing category and the lowest performing category, it is evident that a clear understanding of CTR rates by sector is crucial when evaluating campaign performance for diverse products and services.  In other words, a financial services ad and a pharma ad must be evaluated differently, according to different category benchmarks.

2.  Demographic Performance: Gender and Age

The study found that when it comes to gender, men and women show only a 2% point variance in CTRs for video advertisements.  Age proved to be far more variable, showing an uptick on both ends of the age spectrum, with CTRs indexing 12% above the norm for both adolescents ages 15 to 17 and those over 65 years of age.  The flattest CTRs come in key target demographics - those falling between 18 and 64 years of age - and perhaps the busiest and most message fatigued of all consumer groups.

3. Day of the Week/Daypart Performance

The data showed that higher CTR levels correspond to traditional Monday-Friday work hours, peaking at 9:00 a.m. and remaining strong throughout the late afternoon, with Wednesday's CTR as much as 27% higher than weekend CTRs.  Interestingly, although this study does not specifically address video completion rates (VCRs), a related analysis found that Saturday has the highest VCRs, suggesting that if an advertiser is able to capture a consumer's attention on a Saturday, that consumer is more likely to take the time to listen to the entire message.  While a marketer's decision to place media on a given day is clearly driven by objectives beyond CTRs, knowledge of daypart norms is an important consideration when evaluating expected and actual performance.  

4.  Contextual Performance

As expected, publisher content genre had a tremendous impact on CTR performance, supporting the notion that contextual relevance is an important factor to consider within a campaign.  Following the analysis of 18 content genres, comprised of 259 specific sites, the top performing content genres for CTR included (in order): health, community, men's lifestyle, technology, food, portal, gaming and entertainment.

5.  Geographic Performance

A geographic analysis of the U.S. shows clear differences in click through norms nationwide, with Illinois, New York, Texas and Wyoming among the top performing states.  The findings went against the logical assumption that states with the largest metropolitan centers would perform best, as CTR performance in states including Alaska, Georgia and Minnesota outpaced one of the nation's largest technology centers, California.  Geographic norms are particularly relevant to regional advertisers that can optimize direct engagement and response from consumers.

"This research provides insight to help advertisers properly use and improve CTR video metrics to optimize performance," said Haley.  "Of course, CTRs are never an advertiser's end goal.  But achieving "the click" can be the start of deeper consumer engagement that many advertisers desire. The application of CTR norms will help bring them closer to achieving that goal."

The study is based on statistical analysis of TidalTV's online video network in January 2011, which included 165 advertising campaigns from 101 different advertisers across 10 business sectors.  To view a full copy of TidalTV's white paper, "Video's Great CTR Debate," visit: www.tidaltv.com.

About TidalTV

TidalTV is a video advertising network and solutions provider that flawlessly connects some of the world's most powerful brands with their targeted consumers. Working with over 1,000 premier content creators and publishing partners, TidalTV has access to an online addressable universe of over 80 million unique viewers per month. The network is the largest aggregator of 1:1 addressable audience data from third-party providers, with the ability to target precise consumer segments by demographic, psychographic and behavioral metrics. TidalTV leverages the power of consumer data and ad decisioning to increase accountability, optimize performance and maximize advertising ROI within video campaigns.

TidalTV is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and London.  For more information, visit: www.tidaltv.com

SOURCE TidalTV