Mathias Blüm is the Managing Director of clipkit, a content syndication platform that also enables publishers to monetise the content programmatically. The company is headquartered in Berlin and has across Germany and in Istanbul. Prior to co-founding Clipkit, Mathias was CEO of RTL’s video platform Clipfish.de. Here Mathias identifies five trends we’ll see in the German video advertising in 2014, some of which he says we’ll see mirrored in other European markets.
1. The race to catch up with TV: content syndication is the key to relevant reach
The gap between TV and online video consumption becomes most obvious with the help of a simple calculation: the average German user spends 25 hours per month on the Internet. Just one hour out of this – in spite of some strong gains – is dedicated to video.
In contrast, people watch on average about 3.5 hours TV per day, which accumulates to more than 100 hours per month. In order to become a viable competitor, video content needs to be made accessible on every website. The key to achieving this is data-driven video content syndication. Higher reach, more frequent and longer use values are realised once more and more publishers embed video players, which are equipped with the right content already.
Another advantage is the fact that the online video market will lose its dependency from dominating video portals. Benefitting from this are not only mainstream videos but also more and more niche content providers. Thanks to context-sensitive delivery they will be matched perfectly with relevant website content, which makes it also highly attractive to advertisers.
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2. Moving images on the move: mobile video places new challenges for publishers
Higher smartphone penetration, wider mobile bandwidth and increasingly cheap flat rates for data, will all boost mobile video consumption in 2014. By 2017, 30 percent of video budgets will be spent on mobile channels.
Nevertheless, many publishers have failed to prepare for the mobile migration when it comes to video content, and many are still losing revenue potential every time a video clip is displayed incorrectly or on a limited number of mobile devices. Publishers need to act immediately by updating their infrastructure for both content and advertising to benefit from the money that will be spent by advertisers looking for incremental reach on mobile.
3. Automated buying complements personal media consulting: programmatic trading will continue to advance
What has become an essential part of online ad spending in the United States and UK markets will also be a driving factor in the German video advertising market next year. The triumphant procession of programmatic buying can’t be stopped and will generate revenues of up to 1.4 billion US-Dollars worldwide in 2014.
Media buying will not yet become completely automated, but automatic buying will grow in popularity. Most important arguments for this trend are: the huge efficiency gains that come lower transaction costs, new targeting options, highly intelligent algorithms, and transparency. Programmatic buying combined with the possibility to consult a personal point of contact will get both advertisers and publishers to their destination in a much faster way.
4. Video on all screens: cross-platform marketing gets the message across
Video and TV consumption have completely changed in the past couple of years. Younger users especially prefer to watch video content on online or mobile devices, partially to complement – but also to replace – TV content. In order to reach that target group, video advertising needs to be conceptualized and delivered across all devices.
5. Content meets information: The Big Data wave will wash ashore new possibilities for online video
‘Big Data’ have been a the buzzword of the year, but the reality is that the online video market won’t be able to hide from the shift towards data-driven advertising. Over the coming year we’ll start to see more companies starting to process the massive amounts of data available out there in more innovative ways. The possibilities are endless, for publishers and advertisers alike. Video content will be analyzed more and more in-depth and automatically matched to the right website for the right user to see. The same counts for perfect ad delivery, which will hopefully eliminate ‘bad ads’.
