IAB Europe, the leading European-level industry association for the digital advertising and marketing ecosystem, announced today the results of its annual Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising research. The study found that nearly 60% of advertisers are investing in digital video to build their brand or gain competitive advantage whilst 40% of agencies invest to tell brand stories.

Since 2016, the study has provided insight into the growth and adoption of digital video advertising across Europe, the ways in which video is being traded on both the buy-side and sell-side, and what the future holds. IAB Europe used an online survey with the help of the European national IAB network to ensure a representative sample across European markets. The survey received approximately 300 respondents between March and April 2020.

A key finding of the study is that advertisers not only see digital video as a secondary touchpoint to TV but also to build their brand and drive sales. Whilst both agencies and publishers said that they rely on this secondary touchpoint as a means to achieve reach and scale.

Mobile continues to drive brand spend; advertisers are increasing their spend in mobile video with 75% of advertisers now investing more than 41% of their digital video budgets in mobile compared to 50% of advertisers in 2018/19. Outstream investments are increasing too; 45% of advertisers allocated more than 21% of their video budgets to outstream compared to 36% in 2018/19.

The results also highlight a continued trend towards cross-media planning. In 2020, media agencies stated that 86% of campaigns have at least some aspect of cross-media planning compared to 81.5% in 2019. However, cross-screen measurement is still cited as the top barrier to investment in digital video by buyers hindering further cross-media investment and planning.

Future video advertising opportunities lie in addressable and connected TV viewing with just over 54% of advertisers and 99% of agencies citing addressable TV or connected TV as key digital video growth areas for the next 12 months. Two thirds of publishers also agreed that the key area of digital video growth will be connected TV advertising. To provide more education and insight into this emerging new channel, IAB Europe recently released a Connected TV Guide to help planners and buyers of media, across both linear and digital backgrounds, navigate the opportunities that this new living room platform creates for marketers.

Phil Sumner, VP insights Northern Europe, Teads commented: “The Attitudes to Digital video report once again highlights how digital video has become an essential brand and sales building vehicle. Unsurprisingly, mobile continues to drive digital video forward as the user experience and level of creativity available continues to flourish. Formats such as outstream now form an essential part of advertisers’ creative arsenal. Increased levels of cross media planning reflect its increased importance but once again, cross screen measurement is highlighted as a major miss and barrier to growth.”

Emma Newman, CRO EMEA at PubMatic added: “It’s exciting to see the strong connected TV growth highlighted in the study. Without question, OTT is ripe for innovation and we expect to see programmatic gain ground in the coming years. Programmatic technology will enable publishers to respond to real time changes in viewer behaviour and increases in inventory availability, while providing advertisers increased scale and flexible, transparent, automated buying models. All while delivering a great, TV-like experience for viewers.”

Fal Patel, head of business development, Nielsen said: “It is interesting to see that digital video advertising continues to mean a different marketing opportunity for advertisers compared to publishers and agencies and this disparity can lead to confusion on how you would measure the effectiveness of a digital video campaign. What is absolutely critical for the industry is to align on a single metric which measures digital video, consistently across publishers and devices to future proof this media channel.”

The Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising Report and Infographic, which includes further insight into the digital video advertising market in Europe can be accessed here.