Online Video Advertising: Who Do You Trust?

Is there a trust gap in online video advertising? A recent study by The Nielsen Company found that, when viewers ranked the trustworthiness of different advertising mediums, online video ads ranked near the bottom, only beating online banner ads and mobile phone text ads. Ouch.

(See the chart at the end of this article for the complete breakdown of the Nielsen survey.)

Analytics firm eMarketer compiled that and several other studies into a report called "Marketing to the Online Video Audience," designed to make advertisers aware of the trust gap and show them what they can do about it.

For David Hallerman, the analyst who created the eMarketer report, the lack of trust is largely due to online video advertising being so new. Suddenly, viewers are getting more ads in their online videos, and they don't like it.

"The trust isn't there, to a degree, because of the way a fair amount of Internet users still see video ads as intrusive," Hallerman says.

An advertiser could run the same ad as a television commercial and as an online video pre-roll, and it would be viewed with less trust online, Hallerman says, simply because of where it's being shown. For many viewers, ads aren't expected or wanted online.

"Commercial advertising is generally more trusted when people are just used to it," Hallerman says. "A familiarity factor is really key."

Viewers are used to being able to select an online video and watch it immediately. Getting an ad first is a nuisance.

"If someone is interested in the video content that they're about to watch, the idea of interacting and being pulled away from what they started to do is a message that takes people unaware and therefore creates a level of non-acceptance or distrust," says Hallerman.

The trust issue isn't about getting messages from unknown advertisers. Most online video ads come from familiar companies, Hallerman says.

What can advertisers do about this trust gap with online video? For one, notes Hallerman, they can create new ads for online, and not just repurpose existing TV commercials. They can also vary their creatives and not simply blanket an online video with the same advertisement several times in a row. Having a program on Hulu interrupted repeatedly by the same 30-second ad, for example, is especially irritating.

"The same creative four times is more 'beat the audience over the head' rather than seduce the audience," Hallerman says. "Good branding is more seduction than conquering."

As for viewer familiarity, that will come, he says. "We're really early for online video. We're like the equivalent of, if you know your TV history, 1949, 1950," Hallerman says.

Not everyone, however, agrees that there's a trust gap in online video advertising.

"We've had essentially zero evidence of trust issues broadly," declares Tod Sacerdoti, founder and CEO of BrightRoll, an online video advertising network. "We have no evidence of any trust issues related to online video in any of the studies we've done."

For Sacerdoti, the question is only what style of ads do viewers prefer. People say they prefer shorter ads, he says, but there's evidence that longer ads are more effective.

Familiarity will certainly come for online viewers, he says, because video advertising will only become more prevalent.

"Realistically, the majority of free content online is going to be monetized with video advertising," Sacerdoti says.

That means viewers will have plenty of chances to get over their skepticism.