Matt Duffy talks about new insights from Pixability’s 2019 State of Digital Video Report.
GUEST: Matt Duffy, Chief Marketing Officer of Pixability, talks about The 2019 State of Digital Video Report. Check out Pixability on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. Check out Matt Duffy on LinkedIn and Twitter.
HOST: The Video Marketing Value Podcast is hosted by Dane Golden of VidiUp.tv and VidTarget.io | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube
SPONSORS: This episode is brought to you by our affiliate partners, including: TubeBuddy, VidIQ, MorningFame, Rev.com, and other products and services we recommend.
PRODUCER: Jason Perrier of Phizzy Studios
TRANSCRIPT:
Dane Golden:
It’s time for the Video Marketing Value Podcast from HEY.com. This is the podcast where we help marketers and business owners just like you get more value out of your video marketing efforts. My name is Dane Golden, and today we have a special guest, Matt Duffy, the chief marketing officer of Pixability. Hello, Matt.
Matt Duffy:
Hey Dane. How are you doing?
Dane Golden:
I’m doing great. Thanks for being on.
Matt Duffy:
Of course.
Dane Golden:
I asked you on today because Pixability has released the 2019 State Of Digital Video Report. Okay if we talk about that?
Matt Duffy:
Yeah, let’s do it.
Dane Golden:
All right, and while Pixability is very well known, there’s still some people that don’t know who you are. Could you talk a little bit about who Pixability is, and what types of services you provide?
Matt Duffy:
Sure thing. So Pixability, we’re a video advertising software company based in Boston. We have offices all over the country and in Europe. And basically, what we do is we help brands and agencies run video advertising campaigns on our platform, our Pixability One platform. Campaigns where they want to reach audiences on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, or other connected TV options. And our platform helps them find the best audiences on those platforms.
Dane Golden:
Excellent. And you guys have been around for a few years, old timers in this industry.
Matt Duffy:
That’s right, yeah. We’ve been around for about a decade, but we started out doing other types of video services, and we moved into YouTube years ago. And now we’re doing, like I said, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and connected TV stuff. So it’s great.
Dane Golden:
Which leads us into the report. Could you give us some of the top takeaways of this report, which can be found on the Pixability website, correct?
Matt Duffy:
It can, yes. Yeah. This report is something we do every year to sort of look at the differences between the major video platforms, The ones I mentioned, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Amazon, and other connected TV options.
Matt Duffy:
And so for takeaways, I mean we have some really, I think, some really interesting takeaways on each of the platforms that we see each year. This year, what was most interesting to me and for some of our friends at Google, were some stats about how the longer the video ad on YouTube, the higher the completion rate.
Matt Duffy:
So a lot of people think, “Hey, I’m putting an ad on a video ad online. It should be super short. And to the point.” Yes, in some cases, but on YouTube people are actually engaging more with longer content. And so a lot of brands we’re working with are creating longer ads.
Dane Golden:
Let me stop you there and let’s repeat that just for emphasis, so people made sure they hear what you said. Do I hear you right in saying that the longer the ad, the more likely it is someone will watch it all the way through?
Matt Duffy:
That’s right. I mean, within reason you’re not going to create an hour-
Dane Golden:
Not an hour long.
Matt Duffy:
But for example, our study showed that 30 second ads [on YouTube] perform way better than 15 second ads, in terms of view-to-completion rates. Whereas on Facebook and Instagram, the opposite is the case. You want to keep your ads very short on those social platforms.
Dane Golden:
Was there a time range? Was 30 seconds … When you say longer, 30 seconds was long, or did you address one minute, or four minute, or anything like that or was that not really part of the metric?
Matt Duffy:
For this study we just looked at 15 versus 30, but we work a lot with Google, and they actually hire us for a lot of insights. And they have that shows for even longer than 30 second ads, engagement is increasing. So it’s a trend that they’re seeing as well.
Dane Golden:
That’s amazing. And was there other top takeaways? I think I interrupted you.
Matt Duffy:
Yeah, I was just gonna say, the same stat does not hold true for Facebook and Instagram, that you want to keep your ads shorter on Facebook and Instagram, as opposed to YouTube. The other thing that was interesting, that some people found surprising, is that Facebook is actually becoming more and more of a place to reach an older audience.
Matt Duffy:
Some people think of Facebook as something that only kids use, but actually more than half of the audience is over 35 on Facebook. So, when we have folks that are running video campaigns and they want to reach an older demographic, we recommend Facebook. And sometimes they’re surprised, but the truth is it’s a good place to reach older demographics.
Dane Golden:
Great. Okay. And there’s a lot of … I mean pretty much almost every platform has native video now, where are most of the dollars being spent? Which platforms?
Matt Duffy:
Yeah, so of the major platforms, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon and other connected TV platforms, they represent more than three quarters of all the ad spend that we’re going to see in 2020. Analyst firms are saying that there’s going to be about $40 billion spent on video advertising in 2020, it’s obviously a very fast growing…
Dane Golden:
$40 Billion.
Matt Duffy:
Yeah. And of that $40 billion, about $30 billion will be on those platforms I mentioned.
Dane Golden:
And let’s talk a little bit more. I’ve been hearing a lot a lot about Amazon video lately, that’s a little bit newer. Does that mean Twitch, does that mean on amazon.Com, what is that exactly?
Matt Duffy:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. So, we work with Amazon. We have a partnership with Amazon where we can help advertisers reach people who have Amazon Fire Sticks.
Dane Golden:
Oh, really.
Matt Duffy:
And they’re accessing their apps on their television through an Amazon Fire Stick. and they’re watching the Food Network, or other network apps, through their Amazon Fire Stick. And the very cool thing about it is, as we all can imagine, Amazon has amazing audience data. So when you’re doing video advertising through Amazon Fire, you’re able to know things like what kind of car these people drive, what searches they’ve done, what they’ve purchased on Amazon. So it’s very, it’s very cool data.
Dane Golden:
Now, how does the industry define what a view is? Is it the same no matter what platform you’re on? Totally different? Some generalities, what’s a view?
Dane Golden:
I’m putting it to you, Matt Duffy.
Matt Duffy:
Yeah. Yeah, so that is something that changes based on platform, and it even changes over time. You know on YouTube, they consider a view anytime someone watches at least 30 seconds of an ad. So it’s a longer ad, they have to watch at least 30 seconds of it. If it’s a 30 second ad, they have to watch the whole thing.
Matt Duffy:
For Facebook and Instagram it’s much shorter. You just have to have watched three seconds of an ad to call it a view. And with connected TV, almost all connected TV ads are non-skippable. So pretty much if you watch the ad you’re watching the whole thing, unless you’ve clicked out of it completely.
Dane Golden:
So maybe, even though a view’s shorter or longer on one, there’s there’s other additional metrics that you should use in your media decisions, right? Not just a view.
Matt Duffy:
Definitely. I mean, we have very few advertisers that only care about views. They’re looking at clicks, they’re looking at – increasingly they’re looking at brand lift. We do brand lift studies with a lot of our campaigns, where we show how a campaign raised brand awareness or interest. And we also do a lot of tracking of business results. Did it drive store visits, purchases, etc. Which is the most important stuff.
Dane Golden:
And which platforms do best with direct response video ad click throughs? So ads that are definitely designed to sell, versus awareness.
Matt Duffy:
Yeah, so so in terms of driving clicks, Facebook and Instagram are the ones that that are best at driving clicks. It’s much more of a channel that people are used to clicking on ads, whereas YouTube has traditionally been more of a branding tool. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re better at driving business results.
Matt Duffy:
We’ve seen some, in some cases, better business results from YouTube campaigns, even if there weren’t clicks. Where we can track people that saw a video, then went into a restaurant, or went to a car dealership.
Dane Golden:
So what I hear you saying is that, regardless of the platform, it’s interesting to track what you are really shooting for, as far as your goals. Both getting engagement, maybe you want to get them on your website to re-market to them. All those different factors come into play. And when you can, track sales as well. I’m summarizing and projecting on you what I want it to be. Is that correct?
Matt Duffy:
That’s absolutely right. I mean, and as a marketer myself, I just think it’s super cool that you can run YouTube advertising, you can be a fast food restaurant, you can run YouTube advertising.
Matt Duffy:
We had one fast food company that was able to track that their ads were driving – it was costing them only 23 cents per visitor to their restaurants through YouTube advertising. So then once you know that they’re generating more than 23 cents of revenue per visitor, you know that you want to do that quite a bit.
Matt Duffy:
So that kind of stuff, to me, is the most important metric. But yes, everyone has different metrics, clicks, views, that they find important. But usually the business results are those are the most important.
Dane Golden:
And Matt, I wanted to ask, I am imagining since Pixability handles all these different platforms, that you have some sort of interoperability between all the platforms. Is that correct? Is there something like that?
Matt Duffy:
Yes. So our Pixability One platform can plug into these other platforms. We have partnerships, we have YouTube and Facebook, Instagram, and with Amazon and other connected TV partners so that we can plug into their platforms, and pull in data, and run campaigns just from our one single platform on their native platforms.
Dane Golden:
Wow, that’s amazing. Well Matt Duffy, I want to thank you for chatting with us today. How can people find out more about you and Pixability, and the 2019 State Of Digital Video Report?
Matt Duffy:
Love the enthusiasm Dane, thanks. Yeah, so they can come to our site, Pixability.com, where they can find the state of digital report in our insights and reports section. They also, feel free to link in with me on LinkedIn if you have any questions about Pixability. But yeah, we’d love to hear from folks, and love people to check out our State Of Digital Report.
Dane Golden:
Fantastic. Thank you Matt Duffy for being on the show.
Matt Duffy:
Thanks so much, Dane. Talk to you soon.
Dane Golden:
Okay. And people will be able to find this episode by searching for Hey and Matt Duffy, Pixability. My name is Dane Golden and I want to thank you, the listener, for joining us today. We do this podcast, the video marketing value from HEY.com, and the videos, because we believe marketers and business owners just like you can grow loyal customer community through helpful how-to videos.
Dane Golden:
Because when you share your expertise in a way that helps your customers live their lives better or do their jobs better, you’ll earn their loyalty and their trust and their business. Thanks to our special guest, Matt Duffy from Pixability. Until next week, here’s to helping you help your customers through video.