Video advertising: a long way to go
Posted by Melissa Fillau on 09 Apr 2008 at 08:48 am | Tagged as: Social Media
Online video advertising is definitely on the rise.
Recently, Warner brothers signed a deal with YouTube to advertise an upcoming movie, Get Smart.
According to reports, the deal is only worth around $750,000, which is a pittance in comparison to what Google originally paid for YouTube ($1.6billioin), and the amount they spend on bandwidth on a daily basis ($1million).
Research suggests that advertisers in the US are only spending $1.3billion on online video advertising in comparison to the $27billion spend overall on online advertising.
Even though more than 57% of internet users watch online videos, only 10-20% of the videos on YouTube are professionally produced. This makes it difficult for advertisers to know who they will be advertising alongside, and YouTube can’t easily categorise and monetise from those ads.
YouTube are hoping that this new deal with Warner brothers will change things. Get Smart will be advertised alongside any videos categorised as ‘comedy’.
This is great for US advertising, but what about South Africa? Bandwidth is not as affordable here.
Most people limit their online video streaming to save that precious capped Gig or two.
I think that until the price of Bandwidth is decreased dramatically in this country, online video advertising isn’t going to produce worthwhile ROI.
I agree that the price of bandwidth is somewhat inhibiting in SA.
My aunt in the US accesses the Net via her cable TV connection. She says it’s uber-fast and super-reliable.
We could do with that kind of competition. Of course we could do with that kind of technology first.
Good point
I totally agree, South African web users will want to be economical with their internet spending.
I reckon that online video advertising is a viable way to reach your target market in order to increase your ROI… only if you are targeting internationally. The amount of online video exposure in SA is no where nearly close to that of the US or even Europe I would say.
We may enjoy our online videos here, but we sure don’t have the endless funds to pay for all that pricey bandwidth required to watch the thousands of YouTube videos which often distract you from one to another one, and another one, and another one…
Interesting post Melissa.
I think that video advertising will become a big thing in the years to come and lots of businesses will start to use this. A video easily draws more attention than a whole lot of words or posters advertising your product. And i totally agree with the bandwidth point in South Africa.
Indeed, online videos are great exposure. It will be phenomenal for SA businesses to use this opportunity to publicise their product or service to a (hopefully) much wider audience. This line of advertising hasn’t really taken off in SA, but I’m sure as time passes and bandwidth (again hopefully) becomes less expensive, this technology will be exploited for all it is worth.