Visible Measures Blog

Yesterday, CNBC reported on the most-watched campaigns of Q2 2011. The data come from our latest report on quarterly performance in choice-based video advertising, which shows that audiences chose to watch advertisements nearly 600 million times in Q2. All views in the report are user-initiated, where a real person needs to press the “play” button to watch an ad. Pre-roll, auto-play, and other interruptive formats are not included in this report.

Choice-based video advertising returned to its steady pattern of growth in Q2 2011. Audiences chose to watch advertisements nearly 600 million times, an increase of over 15% from one year ago. Q2 2011 also saw campaigns from T-Mobile and Dirt Devil rise to the top, Google take second place among brands, and the beverage category become the most-watched vertical.

Consumers chose to watch ads nearly 800 million times in Q1 2011. This is over a 90% increase from Q1 2010. These are user-initiated views – not interrupted impressions – where a person has to press the "play" button to watch an ad. After consumers choose to watch these ads, they share them with their friends and family, blast them across Facebook and Twitter, copy and repost them across the Web, and more, dramatically increasing their view counts. But which campaigns, brands, and industries are capturing the most consumer choice?

Today we enter a new paradigm in advertising. This is a paradigm where audiences are in control of the advertisements they watch. Not only can they choose which ads they watch, but they can amplify a brand's reach by sharing those ads with friends and family, blasting them across Facebook and Twitter, embedding them on their blogs, copying and reposting them to hundreds of video sites, and more. The result of this activity is called Earned Media, endorsed brand reach – the highest impact views available in online video. Choice is what makes this shift towards Earned Media in advertising possible. We believe the revolution of choice is now.

Advertising exists to influence consumer choice. Everyday, consumers are interrupted by thousands of images and sounds with the goal of affecting how they choose the brands they buy. From television, to radio, to magazines, to billboards, to online video, and many other mediums, advertising is designed to snatch our attention away from whatever it was we set out to do and refocus it on the ad. Over the years, the formats have evolved and the delivery has become increasingly diverse, but the raison d'être remains the same.