Analyst Speak: Display ads reach more users but pre-roll video has better recall

28 January 2010

Are pre-roll video or display ads more effective? Nielsen undertook a cross-media campaign with ad network Smartclip and a major computer hardware manufacturer to determine this for reach, frequency, cross-media brand awareness and brand attitude.

The campaign, aimed at 20-49-year-olds, ran for six weeks, reaching one in five internet users, delivering 6m impressions via pre-roll ads and 57m via display. Three groups were compared: people only exposed to the display ad, those only exposed to the pre-roll, people exposed to both types of ad.

More than 8m people were exposed only to the display element, 838,000 only to the pre-roll element and 626,000 were exposed to both. Average frequency across the campaign was 5.2 ads served per person. The pre-roll-only audience had the lowest frequency at 2.2, while the display-only group averaged 5.4. Those exposed to both types had the highest frequency, 7.0 ads served per person.

The pre-roll element of the campaign had good reach and relatively low frequency - 70% of people who had contact with the pre-roll ad saw it only once, compared to 32% for display. This means this element could be easily extended to increase reach rather than frequency.

Those exposed to both pre-roll and display ads had the highest aided brand awareness (49% of men and 36% of woman) followed by those exposed only to pre-roll (39% and 35%) and the display-only group (28% and 15%). The strong performance of pre-roll was surprising and encouraging, given the frequency of exposure was so low.

The online campaign performed better when combined with TV, with 31% of respondents who saw only the online elements of the campaign remembering it, compared with 37% of respondents who saw both the online and TV campaign elements. Pre-roll performed better than display when combined with traditional media ads. Those only exposed to pre-roll had higher recall for ads in other media - for example, 41% for TV) than those exposed only to display (30% for TV) - but less recall than those exposed to both pre-roll and display (49% for TV). The inclusion of pre-roll in the overall campaign increased the effect of TV spots and print ads, in many cases, by several percentage points.

It’s also worth pointing out that the campaign increased traffic to the computer hardware manufacturer’s website by 350% and caused searches for its brand to double.