Executive Summary

As US digital video advertising continues to scale and TV holds its own despite unfavorable market conditions, it’s more important than ever for marketers, agencies, TV networks, publishers, streaming platforms, ad-tech and analytic firms, industry trade organizations and other practitioners to follow current best practices for video and TV advertising.

How have video advertising best practices changed in the past year?

After the implementation of GDPR, privacy concerns have put a wrinkle in advertisers’ and publishers’ ability to leverage user data, so some experts discussed ways to ensure privacy compliance while still harnessing the power of the data they collect. Industry practitioners are also increasingly focused on cross-platform measurement, connected TV advertising and looking at completion rates and other metrics that reflect overall quality of the user experience, as opposed to checking off boxes.

Conversely, which best practices from previous years recurred in this report?

Experts spoke of continuing to focus on viewability, shorter video durations and contextual placements; importance of creating platform-specific ads; ongoing challenge of frequency capping across platforms; and the need to reduce ad loads on commercial TV. In some cases, their recommendations echoed previous points, but for the most part, experts are focused on attacking these problems in new ways.

What trends do industry leaders envision for 2019?

Experts foresee an acceleration of cord-cutting and the increasing use of smartphone apps to stream video to other devices, including connected TV screens.

WHAT’S IN THIS REPORT? This report compiles best practices in digital video and TV advertising from industry experts. Their insights are grouped into categories that span cross-platform measurement, privacy, frequency capping, contextual relevance and ad loads on network TV.

KEY STAT: US digital video advertising will reach $53.39 billion in 2023, continuing a growth pattern that by then will stretch several years. In the same forecast period, TV advertising will trend slightly downward but show resiliency amid challenging market conditions.