What's the consumer threshhold for online video ads? Apparently, it's three minutes every hour, according to research from Murdoch University. And here's how print publishers can line their depleting coffers.
Any hour of broadcast commercial television is interspersed with 18 minutes of ads, which the public finds acceptable. Or maybe it's the public used to find it acceptable but that's a whole other article.
But consumers are much less inclined to put up with online ads, especially given the plethora of online content choice. But research from Murdoch University's Audience Labs has concluded the sweet spot of online video ads is six 30-second clips, or three minutes. Anything over 10 30-second videos was deemed “significantly intrusive”.
Dr Steve Bellman said: “TV viewers have a fairly high tolerance for what we call 'clutter' – that is, non-program and ad content – but online is different in that people are more sensitive to ads.
“However, online is a high-quality, uncluttered environment for advertisers. Three ad-minutes per hour online results in high product recall, especially if there is only one ad per break.”
So how does this all benefit newspaper companies? Bellman said it could all be adapted as a monetisation model by publishers. And more successfully than paywalls ever will, he predicted.
“Some Australian outlets have turned to paywalls – and others are rumoured to be ready to follow – but the paywall experiment has been tried in the industry before, here and abroad, and hasn't worked,” he argued. “Unless you're the Wall Street Journal, which has exclusive content valued by business, you're better off looking at a new approach.”
“With broadband, newspaper content online is looking more and more like TV, perhaps it's time for outlets to test the waters of showing TV ads that interrupt online content. If its works for YouTube, there's no reason to think newspapers would be different.”
Hang on a tick, don't newspapers already do that online? And referring specifically to “interrupt online content”, who hasn't experienced the joy of autoplay?
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