Canadians are a-okay with ad-supported video content if it means they don’t have to pay for it, according to new research from Videology and Marketing magazine.
When asked if they preferred paying to access videos with no ads or accessing free video with ads, 72% of Canadians polled said they preferred the ad-supported option.
While a vast majority of respondents said they felt as though they had “an abundance” of media options in Canada, money played a factor in deciding what to tune in to — 87% said they “considered the cost when choosing what to watch and how I watch it” (48% said they “strongly” consider costs).
These findings are now available in Videology’s white paper “Consumers lead marketers on path to cross-screen convergence,” which is based on two studies conducted by Rogers Connect Market Research and Client Services (Marketing is owned by Rogers Media). The first study involved 1,011 Canadian consumers polled online in the Fall of 2014.
People’s willingness to sit through ads to get to free content bodes well for an ad industry diving head first into digital video (eMarketer estimated $255 million in digital video spending in 2014, more than a 50% bump from the year previous). However, the white paper also includes a survey of markters’ opinions of video content, and said “few of those [marketers] surveyed had a deep understanding of the tools and technology currently available to help reach consumers along the new multi-screen, multi-device media path.”
Videology commissioned a survey of 104 executive-level marketers. Fifty per cent of them said they did not have a video marketing strategy despite it being a part of their day-to-day jobs. An additional 42% said they only had an “informal” strategy in place. They indicated that several challenges block a fuller understanding of the space, with 48% saying campaign performance measurement was their biggest obstacle.
