ExchangeWire Research’s weekly roundup brings you up-to-date research findings from around the world, with additional insight provided by Rebecca Muir, ExchangeWire, head of research and analysis. In this week’s edition: Are your video ads making an impression?; Annual global advertising spend on mobile devices is expected to reach $105bn by 2019 and the growing popularity of native advertising.

Google’s latest viewability research reveals:

  -- State of Video Ad Viewability - the average viewability of video ads across the web (not including YouTube) is 54%, and on YouTube is 91%.*

  -- Why Video Ads Aren’t Seen - of non-viewable ads, 76% were in a background tab or never on screen at all. The remaining 24% were scrolled offscreen or abandoned in fewer than two seconds.

  -- Player Size Matters - the most popular video ad player size across the web happens to be the least viewable. Large players on video-focused sites, like those found on YouTube, for example, demonstrate significantly higher viewability.

  -- Location, Location, Location - horizontal and vertical positioning matter, and correlate to viewability.

  -- Device Matters - video ads are significantly more viewable on mobile and tablet than on desktop. YouTube exhibits very high viewability on mobile and tablet at 94%.*

*YouTube includes mobile app data

Viewability is not uniform globally:

* Does not include mobile apps

** Also includes data for mobile apps

Whilst viewability is an important metric, it is important to note that many marketers believe that it should not be viewed in isolation, but should be considered along with other metrics such as frequency, cost-per-acquisition and return on investment.

View the infographic here.

Read the full report here.

A new study by leading analyst house, Juniper Research has revealed that annual global advertising spend on mobile devices is expected to reach $105bn by 2019, up from an estimated $51bn this year.

The research – Digital Advertising: Online, Mobile & Wearables 2014-2019 – suggests that this increase in advertising spend is in large part attributable to an attitude shift amongst brands and retailers, who now use mobile as a core channel for consumer engagement. It argues that the ability of smartphones to deliver targeted, personalised and timely advertising – allied to the media-stacking trends amongst consumers – means that mobile advertising offers both high visibility and high response rates.

The research also observes a marked uplift in ad spend within the Far East & China region, fuelled by the dramatic adoption of mCommerce retail activity within China, and claims that the region is expected to account for 43% of global mobile advertising spend in 2019.

'Big Data' fuels concerns around consumer privacy

Meanwhile, the research highlighted increasing concerns around consumer privacy, with advertisers keen to exploit ‘Big Data’ analytics to gain an insight into consumer online and offline behaviour, including purchasing patterns.

It observed that when the device user’s information is shared for advertising purposes, without their prior consent, consumers may feel a violation of their rights has occurred. It therefore stressed the need for consumers to be ‘opted-in’ to any data sharing to avoid both potential litigation and adverse publicity for the brands.

Other findings from the report include:

• Programmatic advertising will drive the growth in digital advertising as the technology advances over the coming years.
• Video advertising is expected to see progressive growth due to the higher engagement rates of the medium.
• Addressing viewability concerns should be at the forefront of issues to tackle within the industry.

The whitepaper, Digital Advertising Gets Personal, is available to download from the Juniper Research website together with further details of the research and interactive dataset.

Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global high-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary.

Native Goes Mobile

As traditional display ads’ performance worsens, and platforms and publishers grow more open to nontraditional monetisation methods, UK marketer investment in native advertising—that is, paid digital ad placements that look like organic content—is rising, according to a new eMarketer report, “UK Native Advertising: Growing Pains as Fledgling Format Seeks Maturity”

Native’s awkward adolescence looks to be drawing to a close. This year, the industry is laying firmer foundations for native trading, including guidelines intended to better ensure practitioners do not mislead consumers with their native efforts. However, among UK marketers, challenges persist in areas like goals, pricing, performance measurement, and scalability.

Mobile devices are changing the way people in the UK access and consume content, as well as expanding the native advertising opportunity and redefining the mechanisms by which marketers must reach digital screens.

eMarketer estimates that in 2015, the average amount of time UK consumers spend daily with non-voice activities on mobile devices will surpass time spent with PCs for the first time. Mobile devices’ touchscreens, which beckon scrolling, are prompting a reshaping of content, increasingly presented in continuously updated, chronologically reverse live feeds. Marketers have noticed consumers’ changing behaviour, devoting a large share of native ad spend to mobile efforts.

According to digital ad spend figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau UK (IAB UK) and PricewaterhouseCoopers, content and native ad spending on mobile initiatives totaled £356.4m ($586.9m) in 2014, or 70% of all digital content and native ad spend. That tally also means content and native accounted for the largest share of all UK mobile display ad spend—46%—outpacing mobile video (21%) and even standard display (32%).

It’s a marker of how quickly these new native formats have developed and how well they fit with mobile consumption patterns and marketers’ goals. In fact, mobile appears to drive native advertising more significantly in the UK than elsewhere. It accounted for 27% of native ads served there in June 2014, versus 20% globally, according to data from native ad tech vendor Polar’s MediaVoice platform, which helps deliver native ads through content streams from premium publishers such as Forbes, Slate, and The Telegraph.

Crucially, native ads catch consumers’ attention. In research presented at the October 2014 IAB UK Digital Upfronts, 85% of UK smartphone users studied by Yahoo noticed such ads served in mobile content streams, a rate higher than the 64% who noticed standard display formats when served on mobile. Likewise, Polar found smartphone-accessed native ads in the UK had a clickthrough rate 64% higher than those encountered via desktop, a rate more than twice the global average. However, outcomes from mobile-delivered native ads may vary significantly.

Much of the content produced by brands today is immersive and engaging—for instance, an article or a video signposted by a native ad unit link. However, the mobile consumer experience is necessarily brief and intermittent, and marketer content delivered in feeds and streams naturally competes with torrents of other links and messages. Marketers, therefore, must work hard not just to reach consumers, but to keep them engaged in an environment that promotes fleeting consumption.