One of the compelling reasons that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are turning to online video advertising in such large numbers is because they can measure its effectiveness.
As Stephen Condon, Vice President Sales and Marketing at PixelFish wrote recently, “The old adage that ‘50% of my advertising works; I just don’t know which 50%,’ is especially true with television advertising and represents an unacceptable risk to SMBs with limited marketing budgets.”
That’s why we recently refined the way the Mixpo platform tracks and measures VideoAd performance.
Our refined approach is more consistent with online ad tracking standards and gives advertisers a more accurate picture of VideoAd effectiveness.
In this article, you’ll discover:
- What new performance measures we added.
- How we improved data presentation.
- How the changes benefit you.
New performance measures
To more accurately express viewer response to VideoAds, we renamed one existing performance metric and added two new ones.
- What we used to call conversions we now call Clicks. We count a Click each time a viewer clicks an overlay to display a webpage, submits a lead capture form, or clicks a More Info or Inquire call to action on the Player’s INFO menu.
- Engagement rate (a new metric) is an overall measure, expressed as a percentage, of a VideoAd’s ability to capture viewers’ attention and interest. We calculate Engagement rate by adding together the total number of views, interactions, and clicks and dividing that total by the number of impressions.
- % Completed (a new metric) measures your VideoAd’s ability to hold viewers’ interest. We calculate % Completed by dividing the number of viewers who watched your entire VideoAd by the total number of viewers.
Tell me more about the INFO menu.
Changes in data presentation
We made significant changes in how we present performance data to make it easier for you to track performance in the Dashboard and optimize your VideoAds in response.
Summary data
Summary performance data
The summary data now includes Engagement, the new metric, and Exposure, a metric previously available only in Advanced Analytics.
Exposure, which we calculate by adding up the total number of minutes all viewers of your VideoAd spend watching it, provides you with a measure of overall brand exposure.
If you hover over the summary statistics, you see more detail, including the new metric, % Completed.
Hover over the summary stats to see more
Viewer Activity
The Viewer Activity section of the Dashboard, which measures activity over time, now displays clicks along with impressions and views.
Viewer Activity section
Hover over an orange bar to see specific click numbers and dates.
Playthrough and Engagement
In the Playthrough and Engagement Profile, you see the same green bars you’re used to. These bars show you where in your VideoAd viewers stop watching.
Playthrough, interactions, and clicks
We now accompany the green bars with both red circles, which represent Interactions, and orange circles, which represent Clicks. Hover over a circle to see specific details.
This gives you a clearer picture of exactly what actions viewers are taking throughout your VideoAd. The more you know, the easier it is to optimize VideoAds to perform better.
Web Activity
We’ve renamed the bottom-right section of the Dashboard and reorganized it to show Top Embeds by default.
Sites where the VideoAd is embedded listed by views
Top Embeds shows you the URLs for the webpages where the VideoAd is embedded listed in descending order by number of views.
Tip You can still see the search engines and search terms viewers used to locate your VideoAd landing page by clicking Recent Referrers.
How you benefit
The refinements to our performance measures:
- Make online video advertising even more accountable by presenting you and your advertisers with clearer indicators of a VideoAd’s performance.
- Give you and your advertisers a more accurate picture of a VideoAd’s ability to attract, motivate, and hold viewers.
- Make it easier for you to collaborate with advertisers to optimize VideoAds, target what works, and develop more effective VideoAd campaigns in the future.
I’d like to read detailed definitions of all performance measures.
