As Mixpo’s VP of Marketing, Glenn Pingul, points out in a MediaPost Online Video Insider article, “at the end of the day, effective advertising is really all about the message.”

Glenn’s point is that, while online video technology is “poised to be the next driver of change in advertising,” it, like all technologies, is only “an enabler” that can never ultimately drive a VideoAd’s effectiveness.

Unquestionably, technology can’t compensate for poor content.

However, one of the truly powerful aspects of online video technology is its ability to teach. The Mixpo platform allows advertisers to closely monitor VideoAd performance and make changes on the fly in response to performance data.

Over time, this analysis-based experimentation can give advertisers a sophisticated understanding of the types of “messages,” to borrow Glenn’s word, that drive engagement and response.

In this article, part 1 of a 2-part series on performance analysis, we’ll take a guided tour of the Mixpo Dashboard and examine how the Dashboard’s data displays help advertisers become more knowledgeable content creators.

In part 2, we’ll go deeper with a look at Advanced Analytics.

Here’s what we’ll cover in the rest of this article

• An overview of the Dashboard
• VideoAd Activity
• Playthrough and Engagement Profile
• Viewer Locations
• Website Activity
• Wrap up

An overview of the Dashboard

The Dashboard functions as the home page for a Mixpo account. It’s the place where you manage the account’s VideoAds and get a real-time, at-a-glance appraisal of how each VideoAd is performing.

In addition to graphical displays of performance data (each of which we’ll discuss in more detail below), the Dashboard provides you with a performance summary for each VideoAd.

Tip Pausing your cursor over the summary list opens a small window that contains more detailed performance data.

Let’s spend a little time with the summary shown above to see what it tells us. If you’re a little fuzzy about what terms like Engagement and Exposure mean, you might want to read What do terms like engagement rate and exposure mean?.

This VideoAd is doing a pretty impressive job of holding the attention of viewers who decide to watch it. On average, viewers watched 88 percent of the VideoAd and 75 percent of viewers who started the ad watched it all the way through.

In addition, of the almost 210,000 people who landed on the page where the VideoAd is embedded, .50 percent took some action with the ad by viewing it, clicking a link or lead capture invitation, or interacting with the Player controls.

Given that typical click rates for display ads average around .10 percent, a .50 percent engagement rate is pretty impressive.

While this VideoAd is performing well, the advertiser might consider testing a different thumbnail image or initial call to action to try to boost the views-to-impressions rate even further.

I’d like to read more about thumbnail images.

VideoAd Activity

The VideoAd Activity section of the Dashboard displays impressions, views, and clicks over time.

Hover over a line or bar to display specific numbers and dates.

Hiding impressions gives you a clearer sense of the number of views.

The power of this time-based display is that it uncovers patterns. For example, suppose, in response to the summary data we discussed above, an advertiser switches thumbnail images. View and click patterns in the Video Activity section will show whether or not the new thumbnail had any effect.

Careful scrutiny of impression patterns might also help advertisers develop a sense for the best times to run ads in online publications.

Playthrough and Engagement Profile

While the VideoAd Activity section displays chronological time, this profile presents viewer actions in relationship to the length of the VideoAd itself.

In the Playthrough chart on top, the green bars show the percent of viewers who stopped watching at specific points throughout the VideoAd. For example, approximately 620 viewers stopped watching this VideoAd almost immediately while 1500 watched it all the way through. More than 200 viewers liked the VideoAd enough to replay it.

In the Engagement chart on the bottom, red circles represent interactions and orange circles represent clicks.

Looking at the two charts together suggests a relationship between the large number of interactions viewers are taking at the beginning of the ad and the number who stop watching.

An examination of the VideoAd content shows that the advertiser placed a lead capture overlay at the beginning of the ad inviting viewers to sign up for a special offer. From the data, it appears that many viewers opened the lead capture form and instead of signing up for the offer, stopped watching the VideoAd.

Based on the Playthrough and Engagement profile, the advertiser might decide to move the lead capture overlay closer to the end of the VideoAd. This would increase brand exposure and, as a result, increase the likelihood that viewers would not just open the lead capture form but also fill out and submit it.

Viewer Locations

In the Viewer Locations section, advertisers can track, worldwide, where views and clicks originate.

Tip To expand the Viewer Locations section, click the blue plus icon in the upper right corner. To see other parts of the world, place your cursor over the map and drag.

Blue labels represent views. Orange labels represent clicks or clicks and views. Pause your cursor over a label to see specific numbers.

At its simplest, Viewer Locations shows advertisers where their viewers are coming from and might help them better target their content.

The location-based data also allows advertisers to compare the performance of ads published in regional online publications.

Website Activity

The Website Activity section compares VideoAd activity across all of the sites where the ad is embedded. It also provides advertisers with a picture of the ways in which viewers are discovering their VideoAd through Internet search.

On the Top Embeds tab, you see the sites where a VideoAd is embedded listed by number of views. For example, this is the Top Embeds list for one of the Mixpo product tour VideoAds. The highest number of views originated on the Mixpo website where we embedded the VideoAd.

The second highest number originated on a popular technology trends blog called TechCrunch. This is an excellent example of how advertisers can benefit from the viral spread of a VideoAd.

While viewing the product tour VideoAd on the Mixpo website, the blog post’s author clicked Embed on Your Site, optionally available on the INFO menu in the Player, to copy the VideoAd’s embed code and paste it into the post. Thousands of people viewed the VideoAd in the TechCrunch blog post who would never have discovered it on the Mixpo site.

I’d like to know more about the options on the Player INFO menu.

Tip From the Top Embeds tab, you can navigate directly to the webpage where a VideoAd is embedded. Open the website folder, and then click a URL.

On the Recent Referrers tab, advertisers see a list of webpages that viewers visited before viewing the VideoAd landing page. When the webpage is a search site, hovering over the URL displays the search query, including the search terms viewers used to locate your VideoAd in search results.

For example, the image above shows how a viewer discovered a local opera company’s VideoAd for a production of Phantom of the Opera by searching on video.google.com.

Advertisers can use this data to refine and improve the keywords associated with their VideoAds and increase the likelihood that potential customers will discover the VideoAds through Internet search.

Tip When viewers navigate to your VideoAd by clicking a link in an Internet search engine results list, they open the VideoAd landing page. I’d like to know more about landing pages.

Wrap up

Compelling content, not technology, is what sells services and products. But, as Glenn Pingul put it, technology is an enabler. By taking full advantage of the performance analysis tools available in the Mixpo Dashboard, advertisers can become compelling-content creators over time.