The “year of mobile” isn’t a real thing. Remember how 2010, ‘11, ‘12, ‘13 and ‘14 were all supposed to be the year of mobile? One need only look at this year’s major news stories as evidence that the way that we consume and produce media has irrevocably changed: every year for the foreseeable future will be the year of mobile.
Research agrees. Depending on what study you look at, mobile isn’t so much a year as it is an era. Zenith forecasts a 34% yearly average annual growth rate in mobile advertisements between 2015 and 2018 globally. And here in Canada, eMarketer estimates mobile will grow 55% from 2015 to 2016, reaching $3.2 billion – and is expected to continue to grow at double-digit rates until 2020.
Mobile video is a major contributor to this growth. The full-screen nature of mobile content means ads on smartphones and tablets are immersive and less likely to be avoided or ignored by consumers. However, there is still a lag in mobile investment. Despite the growth rates forecasted, there remains a significant gap between the amount of time Canadian adults spend consuming media on their phones (25%) and the amount of total ad budgets marketers devote to mobile (17%). In mobile video, this gap exists in large part because many marketers refuse to buy mobile video ads that cannot be measured by 3rd-party viewability vendors.
Much of the gap has to do with standards – or the lack thereof. In June 2014, after much debate, the U.S. Media Rating Council (MRC) defined what constituted a viewable desktop video ad and how it should be measured. They also passed technical guidelines for publishers, asking that they implement VPAID (Video Player Ad-Serving Interface Definition), the technology required to enable viewability measurement.
Two years late in June 2016, the MRC issued their long-awaited Mobile Viewable Ad Impression Measurement Guidelines, extending the standards earlier from desktop to mobile devices. This mobile guidance was welcomed by marketers who had steadily watched mobile media consumption skyrocket, but hesitated to shift meaningful budget without official industry guidance.
Still, advances in mobile video viewability measurement are lagging more than they should – but a seemingly minor technical announcement that went overlooked by many will actually help significantly accelerate adoption. Most desktop websites currently use Flash-based video players, many of which cannot handle video assets built in VPAID Javascript (JS) – which is the technical framework that enables viewability measurement on mobile devices. As a result, most marketers don’t build their video ad creative to be VPAID-JS compliant, which is why most mobile websites haven’t needed to support that format. However, with Chrome and Safari’s announcing that they will end support for Flash-based players on desktop computers, websites will have to shift to HTML5 players, and marketers will have to build video ad creatives in VPAID-JS format.
As VPAID-JS becomes the norm, mobile websites gain the demand –and the revenue— they need to make their mobile sites and video players VPAID-JS compatible. Concurrently, third-party viewability measurement companies like Integral Ad Science (IAS) and MOAT are introducing their own mobile viewability measurement offerings, which will further drive adoption.
Mobile publishers transitioning to VPAID-JS will spur mobile ad spend growth and close the gap between the amount of time spent on mobile media and mobile ad budgets. Major publishers and major advertisers alike know that mobile traffic is trending up and to the right – and deservedly so. The full-screen, lean-in mobile experience provides an as-yet unmatched investment opportunity, and the sooner our industry broadly adopts VPAID-JS, the sooner that opportunity will translate to real business results.
Dana Toering is managing director, TubeMogul
