Mumbai: The Asia Video Industry Association (AVIA) has released the second phase of its research into differences between advertising in premium OTT and mass streaming video environments (UGC / video sharing services). While phase 1, completed in 2022, looked at consumer usage and attitudes towards advertising in both environments, phase 2 gauged consumer attention and recall to ads in both a premium and mass environment. Research was conducted between January to April 2023, and conducted by Milieu Insight.

In line with the findings from the first phase, phase 2 established that both product recall (10% uplift) and brand recall (12% uplift) were significantly higher for the same ads when shown in a premium OTT environment over a mass environment.

In terms of actions taken, from searching for more information about the product to visiting the brand’s website, reading reviews etc, there was not a notable difference between behaviour of those seeing ads in a premium or mass environment.  And given the higher recall, this still demonstrates that there are likely to be higher conversion rates from ads shown in premium environments.

Phase 1 of the research established that consumers clearly felt that premium OTT was higher quality (58% OTT vs 36% mass) and commanded higher attention than mass streaming video environments (49% OTT vs 35% mass).

Commenting on the findings, AVIA CEO Louis Boswell said, “The results are definitive and support what we have long felt obvious – ads that are shown in premium OTT services are more effective than those you see in a social media or video sharing services.  We believe there is a huge opportunity for brands to increase the efficiency of their advertising and rethink the allocation of spend across premium and mass video environments.  OTT is growing in leaps and bounds, and provides a unique and not sufficiently exploited opportunity for advertisers of all sorts to increase the efficiency of their campaigns.”