Leveraging video ads to increase revenue is a powerful strategy for publishers. More people are interacting with videos today than ever before and advertisers are pouring money in this format. Canada is a great example of video’s strength where the ad spending on digital video has surpassed television.
Videos are known to have a compelling way to boost engagement, yield higher CTRs, and vCPMs. Due to this fact, some publishers are exploring video ads with the waterfall method whereas others like LittleThings have skyrocketed their ad revenue via video header bidding.
For the last couple of years, many top publishers have been leveraging header bidding to boost ad revenue. But when it comes to video header bidding, the same uplift isn’t prevalent. Of course, header bidding is going to hold onto its share of the programmatic advertising, so why are publishers still lagging when it comes to video?
We have compiled some intriguing statistics and facts that show how many publishers have implemented video header bidding and leveraged the benefits. Though there are a few challenges in video header bidding, benefits will bolster your confidence to get started with the technique.
Note: Facts and data used in this article have been compiled by taking reference from Pubmatic’s latest report on video monetization.
Table of Contents
Video Header Bidding Adoption Rate
Header bidding has been a success for both publishers and advertisers as they don’t have to sell and buy a bundle of ad impressions at a time and deal with the sequential auctions.
For desktop video inventories, almost 67% of publishers use header bidding, and half of them have also planned to increase the usage in the upcoming 12 months. However, 11.70% of publishers haven’t implemented video header bidding yet. But the positive aspect is that they have planned to get started with the strategy for video ad inventories.
In the case of mobile web inventories, 59% of publishers have implemented video header bidding for a year and plan to increase usage in the next 12 months. On the other hand, 25% of publishers are still confused about whether to start with it or not. However, they have planned to get started with video header bidding for mobile web inventories by the end of 2020.
Header bidding is changing programmatic advertising as we know it. The ability to connect with several SSPs, ad exchanges, and ad networks in real-time is probably the biggest advantage of running header bidding on the inventories. Still why publishers are hesitant and have second thoughts about video header bidding?
Challenges in Video Header Bidding
Implementation:
Implementation of header bidding for video inventories is quite difficult. While 31% of publishers find the implementation of video header bidding difficult for desktop, 38% of publishers find the technology extremely difficult for mobile web inventories.
In Pubmatic’s survey, 47% of publishers (who are monetizing desktop video inventories) cited that they find implementation difficult due to the lack of knowledge and skill set.
Demand optimization tools:
With the rapidly changing video ad formats and programmatic techniques, 49.8% of publishers face challenges to finding the right video demand optimization tools and 40.5% of publishers aren’t even able to understand the use cases of VAST/VPAID.
Display header bidding isn’t as complicated as video header bidding. Publishers can simply paste the usual ad tags on the header of the web page and start running the auctions. However, in video ads, it is VAST/VPAID tags that create trouble for the publishers.
Moreover, for 46% of publishers, it is the video player compatibility that keeps them away from getting the header bidding for video ads.
Despite the challenges of video header bidding, publishers have still planned to get started with it in the next few months as we stated above. And the reasons are quite obvious.
Benefits of Video Header Bidding
1. Video header bidding maximizes the ad revenue. 61.3% of publishers accepted that header bidding increases the ad revenue across all channels including video inventories. The technology flattens the daisy-chaining process and creates a unified auction in real-time which further increases the bid opportunities and revenue.
Besides, due to a limited supply of video inventories, and a higher engagement rate with video content, the value of video impressions is much higher than display impressions. Thus, driving more revenue for the publishers.
2. Video header bidding increases the ad fill rate by 57.7% and bid rate by 51.6%. If we look at the waterfall method, a handful of auction participants are allowed to sell or buy the ad inventories in a sequential manner. Until a buyer accepts the inventories, the publishers have to stay in the queue.
And in the worst-case scenario, publishers are left with bundles of unfilled ad inventories. This is where video header bidding becomes a viable option for them. The unified auction lets publishers connect with multiple programmatic video demand partners and make them compete for in-stream and out-stream ad impressions.
3. Video header bidding improves the user experience. Many people believe that implementing the technology will cause latency issues, and thus a bad user experience.
But, 51.8% of publishers accepted that header bidding for video ads hasn’t interrupted the user experience. In fact, it improved the user experience because video header bidding runs the auction in parallel with the video player is loaded.
What’s Next?
Now that you know the facts about video header bidding and how it offers benefits to a video publisher, it is high time to get started with video monetization. Today, video content isn’t limited to just websites. With the growing popularity of CTV, OTT, and DOOH advertising, publishers are leveraging video ads and exploring header bidding to monetize their content across different channels.
So, what are you waiting for? Let us know what is stopping you from the video header bidding and we will help you to proceed.
