Most Ad Execs Say Duration-Weighting Is Best Method, Will Benefit OTT

• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 18, 2019

The Media Rating Council's new duration-weighted impression standard, which will become the currency for valuing video advertising across media in 2021, is confusing and controversial to most ad execs, but to the extent that they understand it, they believe it is the right way to go.

Asked what effect it will have on how they value discrete media, the ad industry believes it will have the greatest positive effect on online and over-the-top (OTT) video and the most negative impact on mobile video.

Those are two important findings of a study of advertiser and agency executives conducted by Advertiser Perceptions for MediaPost in May.

As we reported Monday, two-thirds of the ad execs said they were either unaware of or did not understand duration-weighting, but overall felt that "time" was the best denominator to use for ads across screens.

The study also found that to the extent they understood the new MRC standard, they believe duration-weighted impressions are the right way to measure video ads across media.

Interestingly, agency executives were far more confident about the value of duration-weighting than marketers (see tabs below).

Asked how the transition to duration-weighted impressions would impact the underlying value of media when it is rolled out in 2021, nearly two-thirds of ad execs said it would be a benefit to online video and/or OTT.

TV was deemed the next most likely beneficiary from the shift, but mobile is the laggard with only 51% of ad execs believing it will benefit and 13% seeing it as hurting the underlying value of mobile video advertising.