Research: MSN Pre-roll video ads very effective

28 March, 2008

Through a colleague at Microsoft Netherlands I recently came across some interesting results of research by MetrixLab showing that pre-roll advertising is very effective in premium video environments. The results of this Dutch quantative research, which was funded by RTL Nederland, Universal Media and MDAS, clearly show that 74% of all pre-roll ads were being watched actively and completely by the respondents.

The research itself focused mainly on 15, 20 and 30 second ads, shown before premium video content of commercial broadcaster RTL and on MSN Video. Over 9.000 respondents saw 15 pre-roll commercials by 5 different brands, preceding premium video content of either 1,5 minutes, 2,5 minutes or longer duration. None of the spots used in the research had run on TV or other websites in over a year. So, on to the conclusions;

A recent Rexona campaign on MSN.nl caused a considerable increase in brand awareness of the deodorant. Te results of this ensuing research seem to indicate that was not just a one time-hit. In fact, it looks like the consumer considers the transaction where watching one pre-roll commercial is the admission price for watching free on-demand content to be a fair deal.

Longer spots seemed to worked better to get the message across. It was clear from the results that there is no direct relation between spot length and content length. Even with short content clips, longer commercials were deemed acceptable by the respondents. “This is a finding that seems counter-intuitive” according to Lucas Hulsebos of Metrix Lab; “many of us wrongly assumed that the ad messages needed to be as short as possible - fifteen seconds at best - in order not to irritate the consumer.”

The main conclusions are;

74 percent of the pre-roll ads are watched completely, from start to end.
There is no difference in attention or behaviour in different respondent age categories.
Pre-roll advertising leads to a high spontaneous recollection of both the ad itself and its message.
The likeability of pre-rolls is about the same as with other ad forms, even with the forced exposure.
Whether the pre-rolls are watched completely is mostly determined by the length and content of the pre-roll. The length of the content following it is hardly a factor to consider.

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