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Ramesh Sitaraman's research quanitifies the effectiveness of video ads

Online video is a "killer application" of the Internet, predicted to soon make up 86 percent of consumer traffic on the web, says Associate Professor Ramesh Sitaraman. But advertisers who want to capitalize on it face a huge question: How effective are video ads?

"Video usage is growing so rapidly," says Sitaraman, "but making online videos economically sustainable and profitable is a burning question of key importance to the future economics and evolution of the Internet." He and research partner S. Shunmuga Krishnan of Akamai recently completed perhaps the largest-ever scientific study of the effectiveness of video ads, a fundamental question for business. Sitaraman presented their findings at the ACM Internet Measurement Conference in Barcelona on Oct. 24.

Sitaraman, who led the study, says a simple, well-accepted measure of ad effectiveness is whether viewers watch the video ads to completion or not. "Our goal was to scientifically understand what factors influence people to complete watching video ads and what contributes to them abandoning the ad before it completes."

Full UMass Amherst News Office article on the research results.

Source: UMass Amherst News office