Video advertising remains one of the most lucrative niches for brands and publishers, which the record-growing ad spending proves. However, each company’s view on their campaign success may differ, depending on their marketing goals, and measurement strategies, accordingly.

The truth is, while the discussion is still ongoing on which video ad KPIs, affinity or vanity metrics are more valuable one thing is clear: efficient video ad measurement goes way beyond the mere click-through rate (CTR).

Measuring Actionable KPIs

While a conversion rate (e.g. for sales & leads) is rarely included in the video ad platform statistics dashboard by default, there’s a multitude of valuable, actionable metrics to watch out for. Namely, these include fill rate, as well as audience attention and engagement with the ad (to help you qualify sales leads and close deals), among other things.

Audience Attention

Attention measurement is based upon a set of metrics, which enable evaluating video ad viewability and audience engagement. Among these:

  • Impressions – refers to the number viewable video ad impressions
  • Viewed (25%, 50%, 75%, 100%) addresses the quartile-based reporting of the incomplete and complete video ad views
  • Completion rate is a ratio of complete video ad views in relation to the total number of ad impressions, in percentage: Completion rate = complete ad views/total ad impressions*100
  • Ad Clicks refers to the number of clicks on the ad (e.g. on CTA elements included in the video ad creative)
  • Click-through rate (CTR) refers to the ratio of ad clicks in relation to the total number of video ad impressions within a particular time frame: CTR = ad clicks/ad impressions*1000
Fill Rate

There’re several metrics which define the display of video ads on a publisher’s website: ad requests, ad opportunities and fill rate.

Namely, the Ad Requests metric addresses the number calls sent to the ad server (and if filled, the video ad will display), and the Ad Opportunities metric refers to the number of allocated advertising pods with ad display potential (the video ad placement is viewable on the webpage, and if the ad request is filled, the video ad will display).

Correspondingly, Fill Rate refers to the ratio of video ad impressions, in relation to the total number of the ad opportunities (Opportunity Fill Rate) or ad requests (Request Fill Rate) sent to the ad server, in percentage. 

Monitoring Real-time Statistics

While the review and analysis of daily, weekly and monthly statistics reports is crucial for understanding the effectiveness of video ad campaigns, it’s still not enough.

At the same time, monitoring of video ad performance in real time is what enables to capture the so to speak “whole picture”: whether a campaign is configured correctly or not, whether ad requests are being sent, how many ad opportunities are being allocated, etc.

More importantly, the more granular data is acquired in real time, the better.

In this respect, AdPlayer.Pro, for example, enables tracking real-time statistics (impressions, requests and ad opportunities) for a particular video ad placement or a specific Demand Tag  in the past 24 hours, and optimizing their configuration settings in a timely manner, if required.

Third-party Data Verification

Over the past years, the volume of video ad fraud has risen to a staggering level. So has the number of uncovered brand safety incidents, especially in the CTV and mobile video ad segments.

What does it mean? Well, in plain words, the continuously growing number of video ad impressions and clicks, tracked in statistics reports may not necessarily mean all of these are valid, brand-safe and fraud-free. 

Much because of this, an efficient measurement strategy in video advertising also implies the ongoing verification of campaign data by trustworthy third-party providers, like DoubleVerify, MOAT, Integral Ad Science, or Media Trust, just to name a few.