Marketing directors with money to spend take note.  Forget the measly 0.2% click through rates, online advertising really does work!

…or so says .Fox Networks which unveiled a ‘ground breaking‘ piece of research with Comscore to show that consumers exposed to video advertising (as opposed to online display advertising) were 28% more likely to visit a site and 2x as likely to conduct a brand search.

In addition, Comscore and .Fox found that video and display advertising saw “site visitation increase by more than a factor of seven over a four week period following exposure to an ad.”

A note of scepticism to start off with: Does an online ad really have a residual effect of four weeks? (the allotted time for people to take action).  And what about other brand messages that a consumer may have seen during that period to drive site visits as advertising rarely works in isolation.

However, Comscore’s findings that online video advertising is mildly less annoying for consumers and more effective than display is supported by other research.

Last month TubeMogul found that 16% of viewers click away on seeing a video pre-roll ad, which leaves 80%+ of the audience still intact…though for newspaper and magazine sites, exactly the ones who need to sell ads online, the news is worse.   There a quarter (25%) leave when the pre-roll starts.

Meanwhile as long as three years ago, Doubleclick found that click through rates for video advertising ranged from 0.4 to 0.74% as opposed to the 0.1 to 0.2% for normal display or banner ads.

Another finding from Comscore is also worth noting.   Only 38% watch TV online to avoid ads.   By comparison 71% do so because they missed an episode while 57% cite convenience.   Apparently people who watch online TV would also be willing to tolerate six or seven mins of ads per hour, compared to the four mins they are currently served up.

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