If you recognize the advantage of reaching a targeted audience by running digital video advertising, is it best to opt for only the biggest name sites? Or is it best to include in your digital video campaign, a series of lesser-name but more targeted "long tail" sites?
Conventional wisdom would suggest opting for the short tail--which appears to be the sure bet. But a study recently conducted by BBE proves the opposite.
Doesn't it stand to reason that the highest traffic sites make the most sense for an advertiser? In order to answer the question, we at BBE decided to analyze the data that we have been collecting for 5+ years. We reviewed the view-through (VTR's) and click-through-rates (CTRs) for virtually all of the ad campaigns that have run over our network of sites. And while CTRs are much maligned in industry blogs, they remain a solid measure of audience engagement and are seen by our agency clients as a reliable data point.
After analyzing CTRs on all BBE campaigns, over the 14+ billion impressions BBE has served, we discovered something startling. Nearly one-third of the long tail sites on BBE's 2400-site network had higher CTRs than did the short tail sites, some by as much as 30 percent. This holds for virtually all categories of advertisers that ran on the BBE network.
The implication? Long-tail audience targeting can trump short-tail "blasts" by a statistically significant margin. And, reinforces the reason advertisers come to digital media in the first place: to find and engage specific audience segments, and be able to measure that engagement quickly and effectively.
Also, when analyzing another key data point, View Through Rate (VTR's) roughly 40% of BBE's long tail sites performed in line with, or better than, the short tail sites on the network..
Our conclusion is that digital video advertising is all about sites that target the right audience demographics and generate the desired consumer behavior, rather than only relying on bold face "short tail" names.
Something to think about when you're planning your next digital campaign.
Steve Yanovsky is VP Marketing of BBE and can be reached at syanovsky@bbe.com
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