Start the year with new video measurement and reporting features

by Jan 2, 2021Analytics, Behind The Code0 comments

As 2021 begins, we’re still adapting to new ways of life, whether it’s working from home or streaming the latest TV shows and movies directly from our living rooms. In this new environment, businesses are also learning how to achieve goals while working more efficiently across distributed workforces, and it’s no different when it comes to publishers’ video monetization goals. As viewers spent 57% more time streaming video content this past year, video publishers and TV programmers adjusted quickly to measuring ad performance across screens to understand how to meet their goals, grow revenue and deliver a good viewing experience.

However, video and over-the-top (OTT) measurement hasn’t always been easy due to the variety of devices and platforms, the lack of standardized signals and the reliance on traditional TV data and reservations. To help our partners more efficiently and effectively measure video and OTT inventory performance, we’re launching a suite of new video-first measurement and reporting tools in Google Ad Manager so they can understand what’s working best and earn more money.

Better understand your true video inventory availability

Video True Opportunities Reporting enables partners to understand the true inventory potential of every commercial break using time-based metrics that are built specifically for video. With this feature, you can easily define the ad duration which you consider to be an ad opportunity, let’s say 30 seconds. Then, you can report on the total number of ad opportunities in a video stream, the number of capped opportunities based on your max ads per pod settings, and the number of matched opportunities that were filled by direct or programmatic demand sources. Video True Opportunities will only measure commercial breaks that viewers actually watch, automatically adjusting for user drop-off that occurs on on-demand content. With a more accurate view into inventory availability and fill rates, you can understand mid-break drop-offs, unfilled ad time, and slate in live broadcasts, so that you can better optimize your video inventory.

You can also use this report with Ad Break Templates, a feature that enables you to use granular advertising rules to create a customized commercial break, so that you can understand ad opportunities based on how you sell your ads. Easily break down Video True Opportunities metrics by custom spots to see how your inventory is performing—whether it’s programmatic, sponsorships or inventory-shared ads. This information can help you determine where user drop-off or empty ad breaks have occurred, optimize your max ad settings and understand where fill rates may be low so that you can improve ad break performance and monetize more effectively across all of your demand partners.

We’ve also made enhancements to TV Forecasting that allow partners to more accurately project available video inventory and account for seasonality complexities like those caused by the unpredictable nature of COVID-19. First, we’ve integrated Video True Opportunities metrics into TV Forecasting, like ad duration and ad opportunities, so that partners can use these new data points to understand future inventory availability. Next, partners can now customize and adjust ad requests based on reference points. For example, if you’re planning to premiere a new season of an existing show in January 2021, but the previous season premiered in November 2019, you can tell Ad Manager to use the traffic spikes or ad request characteristics from the 2019 premiere as a reference point instead of the previous year’s January to more accurately inform the forecasted inventory availability in 2021.

Explore, measure and package your inventory based on content insights

Content has become an even more critical inventory signal across OTT devices due to device fragmentation. To give partners a new content-aware way to explore, measure and package their video inventory, we’re making the Video Content Explorer UI more widely available and adding new insights cards. The new audience insights card offers demographic breakdowns of content based on your first-party audience data so that you can understand what audiences are watching your content and more effectively value your inventory. Additional insights cards also reveal details into the top devices your content was viewed on, which content is driving the highest impressions, and the sell-through performance of ads on your content. This information can help you optimize your ads across devices and demographics, and understand where there are opportunities to increase monetization of specific content. Moving forward, this screen will be Ad Manager’s primary content hub, where we’ll add more content packaging capabilities, audience insights sources and monetization features.

Video Content Explorer

Increase OTT impression value with Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings

Part of what makes TV content so valuable is the fact that it’s often a shared viewing experience, with families and friends viewing together in the same room. To help our partners accurately measure this viewership, we’ve integrated with Nielsen’s Digital Ad Ratings product suite, which provides OTT measurement of select platforms that is inclusive of co-viewing. Using Nielsen data, you can measure and receive credit for multiple impressions on your OTT inventory that reflects co-viewing. Additionally, using Google Ad Manager’s demographic pacing features, it’s possible to have your line item impression goals update automatically based on Nielsen in-demo rates and advertiser requirements.

As we look at the year ahead, we’ll continue building even more advanced video measurement and reporting features, like automated video notifications, new insights cards and video content packaging, so that you can have more actionable insights and sell your video inventory as efficiently as possible.

Digital iamge of rocket shooting out of a laptop with a xblu logo and a litespeed logo
Feb 27 2023

The SEO Advantages of using LiteSpeed Web Server for WordPress sites

A LiteSpeed server is a type of web server software that is designed to handle and serve web pages and other internet content quickly and efficiently. It is a popular...
Feb 23 2023

Is ChatGPT a good tool to accomplish digital marketing objectives?

As an AI language model, ChatGPT is not a tool designed specifically for accomplishing digital marketing objectives. ChatGPT is designed to generate human-like text...
Abstract vivid colors landscape of desert mountains
Feb 23 2023

Creative Growth Ideas For A Small Digital Marketing Agency Startup

Partner with other small businesses: Partner with other small businesses that complement your services. For example, if you specialize in social media marketing,...
Abstract vivid colors landscape of desert mountains, dunes and clouds in a pink sky
Feb 21 2023

Digital Marketing Strategies for Start-ups

Get the most out of your digital marketing with Xblu - the smart and witty digital marketing agency. At Xblu, we understand that for start-ups and medium sized...
Google Maps on Mobile Phone in Hand
Sep 09 2021

Best practices in UX for dealer locators in 2021

Dealer locator software has significantly evolved in sophistication over the last 5-10 years. Historically, a relatively stagnant feature set dominated the user...
A spoon with little dots
Sep 03 2021

Replace your complex bar chart with a dot plot to make it better understood

Replace your complex bar chart with a dot plot to make it better understood The alternative to bar charts that works well with complex data Photo by Sharon McCutcheon...
people looking at stage with cell phone cameras
Aug 30 2021

Global Insights Briefing: Cautious optimism

Global Insights Briefing: Cautious optimism Each month, the Google Ads Research and Insights team analyzes data sets of billions of recent search queries and consumer...
A Blue Lemon
Jul 08 2021

Investing in creativity: A necessity for business transformation

Investing in creativity: A necessity for business transformation Susie Walker / March 2021 Susie Walker is the Head of Awards at Cannes Lions International Festival of...
Jun 10 2021

Maximizing every click

“Maximizing every click” is the name of a strategy I employed at G2, intending to capture users when they landed on our site. I’ve been a big advocate of the notion...
May 21 2021

What is Web3? The Decentralized Internet of the Future Explained

The Evolution of the Web The web has evolved a lot over the years, and the applications of it today are almost unrecognizable from its most early days. The evolution of...

xblu2019