Get ready for more mobile video ads in the next five years
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Mobile video ads are poised for massive growth in the next five years.
Revenues from these ads will grow from $3.54 billion in 2015 to $13.3 billion in 2020, which marks a 30% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), according to PwC's annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report.
This means that mobile video ads will be the fastest-growing digital ad segment in the next five years. They will easily surpass desktop Internet video ad revenues, which are expected to grow at a 19% CAGR through 2020.
Furthermore, revenues from mobile ads are set to surpass revenues from desktop video ads this year, with $5.6 billion for mobile and $5.1 billion for desktop, according to the report.
Digital content producers have been heavily investing in original video content. A survey from the 2016 Reuters Institute Digital Leaders found that 79% of those polled plan to invest more in online video than they did in 2015. And the competition among these networks and publishers to attract eyeballs will generate even more ad spend growth.
Views on original digital videos (professionally produced content that debuts on ad-supported over-the-top services) have risen from 45 million per month to 63 million per month in the last three years, according to the IAB.
Social media platforms have been a major reason for this surge, as Facebook and YouTube each have more than one billion monthly users. Snapchat and Twitter have also become increasingly valuable to disseminate videos to mass audiences.
These social media channels have also spurred the creation of new video formats on mobile. Twitter-owned Periscope was a pioneer of live video, Amazon-owned Twitch led the way in eSports broadcasting, and Snapchat made vertical video the standard.
The emphasis is now moving toward 360-video and virtual reality thanks to Facebook and Google, so the potential for more video productions and more creativity is increasing as more video formats emerge.
One of the more popular forms of mobile ads today are native ads, or ads that take on the look and feel of the content surrounding them. And they are taking over digital advertising.
By 2021, native display ad revenue in the US, which includes native in-feed ads on publisher properties and social platforms, will make up 74% of total US display ad revenue, up from a 56% share in 2016, according to new BI Intelligence estimates based off historical data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PwC, as well as IHS.
The rapid uptick in native's share of display ad revenue can largely be attributed to the dominance of social platforms like Facebook and Twitter — which were early champions of native and rely almost entirely on native formats — as well as the introduction of new programmatic technologies that are making it easier for publishers and advertisers to scale native campaigns.
Margaret Boland, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on native advertising that breaks out native ads into three categories: social native, native-style display, and sponsored content (also referred to as premium native). It provides forecasts for how revenues from these formats will grow over the next five years and looks at what factors, in particular, are driving up spending on each of these ad units. As a note, because revenues from these three types of native content can overlap, it does not provide an overall native forecast. Finally, it lays out some of the challenges that face properties that rely on native ads, namely ad frequency and scalability issues.
Here are some key takeaways from the report:
- Native-display ads, including social native and native ads in-feed on publisher websites, will make up the bulk of native ad revenue from 2016-2021. Native display ad revenue in the US will rise at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17% during this time period to eclipse $36 billion. The rise of native video ads, particularly on social platforms, will be one of the main drivers of this growth.
- Social platforms generate most of their revenue from native ads and will continue to dominate overall native ad spending through 2021. The dominance of social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat on mobile devices, where the entire experience is within a feed, will help propel social's contribution to overall native ad revenue through 2021.
- Sponsored content, which is categorized separately from native-display due to the direct relationship between publishers and brands in creating the format, will be the fastest-growing native format over the next five years. However, the high cost to produce these ads and the limitation in inventory will limit the format.
In full, the report:
- Forecasts US native ad revenue growth from 2016-2021 through three separate forecasts: native-style display, social, and sponsored content.
- Identifies the major drivers of native ad revenue growth.
- Discusses key players within each category that are contributing to the rise of native.
- Presents some of the challenges of wide-spread native adoption with BuzzFeed as a prime example.
- Lays out future opportunities for native ads, including virtual reality, messaging apps, and TV.
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