What's better, in-video or pre-roll ads?

What are the key ROI differences between pre-roll and in-video advertising?

Schuyler Cullen, CEO and co-founder of Keystream, an in-video ad technology company, says the objective of online advertising is to give marketers measurable and high ROI in their advertising by giving viewers content that's engaging, entertaining, builds awareness and elicits an immediate response from them.

According to Schuyler, pre-roll advertising misses the mark on all of these objectives. The main reason for this is because it doesn’t fit the viewing habits of people online.

“Viewers want to have immediate access to their content," he said. "They don’t want to wait 15 to 30 seconds for short clips or even longer clips, and that’s why 45% of viewers abandon their content before seeing it when exposed to pre-rolls."

Further, he points out that pre-roll engagement is very low with the format resulting in just a 0.1% click-through rate. 

And yet with these dismal numbers the majority of marketers still prefer the pre-roll format over in-video. However, this may change with the growing success of Keystream’s in-video technology. ROIs for their customers are impressive. The roll-over-rate (viewers rolling their mouse over the in-video ad) hovers around 20% and their click-through-rate is about 4%; a substantial increase compared to the pre-roll format click-through-rate of 0.1%.

Listen in as Schuyler explains more key ROI differences between the competing ad formats and Keystream’s technology.