As web video matures, mid-rolls booming

The web video industry is finally starting to matter—at least that’s what recent studies would lead you to believe. eMarketer forecast that the space will grow over 40 percent annually for the next three years. Online video “represents the most explosive growth area in the digital space in the next three years,” David Cohen, chief media officer at Universal McCann, told Ad Age’s Michael Learmonth and Nat Ives. A recent report from FreeWheel backed up that claim. The research firm said that mid-roll video ads are on the rise, mostly due to more long-form video content being available. Mid-roll inventory grew 115 percent year over year versus pre-roll video ads, which grew 45 percent in the same period. The FreeWheel report also indicated that mid-roll completion rates held stable at 85 percent, meaning that consumers didn’t find the ad loads to be too off-putting. And mid-rolls make up about 23 percent of all video ad views, so the sector is still maturing.

But Ad Age’s Learmonth and Ives warned that such booms are never evenly distributed. They noted that half of the robust $1.8 billion online video market went to just two players: Hulu and YouTube. “Simply producing high-quality video doesn’t automatically attract vast sums of TV dollars,” they wrote. “Those dollars also want TV-like scale, and not many players have both: mainly YouTube and Hulu.”

• The Rise of Mid-Roll Means Good Things for Video Advertising (ReelSEO)

• What the Web Could Learn From Dawn of TV (Ad Age)

• Rise Of The Mid-Roll Shows That Online Video Is Maturing (MediaPost)

• For Many, Web Video’s Actual Value Trails Its Massive Hype (Ad Age)