If you are one of the many video advertisers who utilizes YouTube and Facebook for your video hosting, you may have noticed that the view counter on the two players can’t be compared. Both companies are meant to host your content and measure views on your videos. Yet, both tools have very different definitions of a “view” which is why the numbers just don’t add up.
Digital video is the fastest growing form of advertising in the world, yet we are still in flux about a fundamental pillar of video advertising: we simply cannot agree on the definition of a “view”.
A YouTube “View”
YouTube’s view counter has become a de facto measurement for whether a video went “viral”, and has been used by agencies and brands as a simple way to measure the efficacy of their online video efforts. Looking closer, YouTube is completely opaque about how long someone needs to watch a video in order to increase the counter. The only thing we know is that YouTube counts a view if the viewer clicks ‘play’ but we don’t know how many seconds must pass before it counts as a view. Some say six, some say nine, but no one really knows the answer.
While the search giant claims that it remains vague in order to fight fraud, you should be skeptical of that claim. When searching YouTube support forums to better understand how they define a view, a strange pattern begins to emerge. Rather than offer explanations and clarity on their policies, Google instead chooses to advertise their TrueView paid product offering as, “the only service that we can recommend and trust to provide real traffic.” Reading further, YouTube uses the lack of transparency on view counts to hard sell their TrueView service, citing that Trueview, “builds view counts that creators care about at an extremely cost effective rate.” This may lead one to believe that Google may be intentionally hiding their definition of a YouTube view as a sales effort to bolster TrueView revenue.
A Facebook “View”
After launching native video ads into the Newsfeeds in December 2013 via their own player, it was only a matter of time before Facebook started publicly counting and recognizing which videos were being seen the most across their properties. In September 2014, Facebook rolled out a public view counter for all videos on their site. Unlike YouTube, Facebook has chosen to be completely transparent about what it does and does not count as a Facebook video view. As posted for the world to see on Facebook’s site, a “‘video view’ is defined as a view of three seconds or more.” That’s it. Plain and simple.
While Facebook says that they now have 3B video views per day, this claim is a race to the top rather than an accurate portrayal of viewership. Facebook silently autoplays the videos in the Newsfeed while YouTube requires the user to actually click to watch the video (unless it is bought via TrueView). Facebook counts multiple views by one person as multiple views, YouTube does not.
So what’s the big deal if these definitions don’t align?
For starters, it becomes impossible to accurately evaluate which channel is driving the highest ROI if you are using a multi-vendor approach. If you spend $100,000 on both Facebook and YouTube, and you are purchasing on a Cost-per-View (CPV) basis, it becomes impossible to understand exactly what you are getting from each channel.
Without a standard definition of a “view”, video advertisers are left confused and, often times, mislead by inflated numbers. Which is exactly what happened in September 2014 when Facebook announced that there are more than 1 billion daily video views on the social network. That number put them ahead of YouTube for the most video views of any web property in the world. However, this claim has caused a media storm as many marketers were quick to point out that comparing one YouTube view versus one Facebook view isn’t fair.
We need industry regulation on what is a “view”
The standards for interactive advertising are governed by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), however, the IAB takes no official position on how long a video must play to go from “impression” to “view”. In fact, the IAB does not distinguish at all between a video impression and a video view. The only requirements they have set is for a viewable video impression. The IAB has formally stated that a video must play for 2 consecutive seconds with 50% of the ad’s pixels in view on the screen. That’s it. Just two seconds with half the player on the screen and the video ad has been termed “viewable.”
With more than 97% of videos run on the Virool platform spanning over 30 seconds in length, this definition will hopefully evolve. As one of the most well-respected authorities in the advertising space, we’d love to see the IAB step in and oversee this issue – bringing together key constituents who can shape the future of these definitions.
Join the movement towards the 30 second view
With the rise of digital video, advertisers are no longer confined to the 15 and 30 second TV spots that once governed our industry. Take a look at AdWeek, which recently released their annual Top 10 Best Video Ads of 2014. The average length of these videos is 2 minutes and 17 seconds. At a time when marketers are constantly bemoaning the short attention spans of the average consumer, and trying to package their brand message into six second Vines, the most successful brand ads of the year were long-form content, or what we like to call “Advertainment”.
The 30 second view is a standard that we hold ourselves to at Virool* and it resonates well with our clients who want to know that their videos are actually being viewed for a meaningful amount of time. For any videos that are shorter than 30 seconds, we think a view should be counted upon completion.
If we can adopt this definition across the industry, the future of online video could combine the promise of TV with the capability of digital tracking. All publishers would be competing on an even playing field and advertisers would be able to accurately measure the performance of the work they put into creating amazing content. Vendors would start to charge only based on 30 second views, all videos would be measured on one clear standard, and there would finally be transparency and clarity in online video advertising. And that is at least something we can all agree on.
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*The 30 second view standard pertains to ActivStream and ActivSocial products at Virool.
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