Online Video Summit: Why is the UK’s spend on online video still so low?

Speaking at the Online Video Summit in London yesterday, Tremor Media’s VP Europe Dan Ruch suggested there were two main reasons why Europe lags so far behind the US in online video advertising revenues – accountability is much more deeply researched in the US; and creative treatments for online video are more developed. Others might add lack of quality inventory to the list.

Ruch illustrated the discrepancy in spend by comparing proportions of unique users and spend. The UK has 21% of the US’s unique users, but the video spend to-date in the US is one billion dollars,
compared to just $56 million in the UK (under 6% of US spend). In Germany the spend is only $47 million.

Tremor Media – and ad network – bought Scan Scout earlier this year and now claims to offer real-time scaled accountability against any chosen KPI. It also produces creative (video) at no cost for its clients – which sounded like a dangerous or very confident business model.

Other ad networks “selling their wares” at the event, run by CSquared, were YuMe, Smartclip and Adconion.

The UK video market is dominated by You Tube (47%) and the long tail (much of it UGC) at 44%. The BBC has just 2.5% currently and ITV less than 1%, according to figures provided by Smartclip.