Webcasters Spread the Gospel of Webcast Advertising

Eighty-five percent of Webcasters have sold at least one Webcast advertising buy in the part year, according to a survey by Arbitron, which calls it proof that Webcasters have embraced the ads as a revenue-generating business model.

Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of Webcasters have been called by agencies placing webcast ads, the study found.

“In a study we conducted last year, nearly half of the agencies said they had never been approached by Webcasters trying to sell advertising,” said Bill Rose, general manager and vice president, Arbitron Webcast Services. “Our latest study shows how much has changed in the last 12 months. The overwhelming majority of Webcasters are actively selling advertising today. Webcasters agreed that the medium’s greatest strength is its ability to deliver a targeted message.”

More than half (51 percent) of Webcasters said that advertisers should run Webcast ads to target an attractive audience. Forty-five percent of Webcasters sell a combination of Webcast ads, sponsorships, in-stream ads and gateway ads. A majority (80 percent) has sold in-stream ads — ads within the streamed content.

A high percentage of Webcast ad dollars come from direct advertisers (42 percent) with one-third from interactive agencies and 25 percent from traditional agencies. Two-thirds of Webcast advertising is sold to brick-and-mortar companies and 34 percent is sold to dot-com companies. Automotive companies are the No.1 target for Webcast advertising sales, followed by entertainment (24 percent), music (20 percent), dot-com companies (15 percent) and alcoholic beverage companies (13 percent).

According to Rose, Webcasters said the biggest obstacles to growth were the need for credible third-party metrics and the need to continually educate advertisers and agencies about the value of Webcast advertising. Thirty percent of Webcasters feel that the lack of metrics is the biggest obstacle to selling advertising, followed by advertiser awareness and interest (24 percent), lack of coherent sales message (23 percent) and technology issues (10 percent).

The Arbitron survey was conducted from February to April, and it consisted of 62 interviews with senior
executives at Internet-only Webcasters, representative firms, content delivery networks, technology companies and broadcasters.

Further proof of the educational efforts of Webcasters is evident in a study by MeasureCast and The Yankee Group, which found advertising agencies consider streaming media a viable advertising medium, and that streaming media ads are effective corporate and product branding tools.

One hundred advertising agency executives were interviewed for the study for the MeasureCast/Yankee Group study. Fifty of them worked for traditional ad agencies (including media buying services) with online media
capabilities, and 50 were with online, or interactive, agencies.

Among the findings of the study:

• 61 percent of respondents have recommended streaming media advertising to clients in the past 12 months.
• 65 percent of the respondents are likely to recommend streaming media advertising to clients in the next 12 months.
• 47 percent said clients who have not previously invested in streaming media advertising will allocate dollars to streaming ads during the next 12 months.
• 56 percent of those who previously purchased streaming media ads expect to spend more on streaming media advertising in the next 12 months
• 69 percent agree that audience demographic data is crucial to making ad purchase decisions
• 54 percent said clients’ perceptions that streaming media ads are too expensive keep them from purchasing those ads.