Pre-Cached Video: For a Seamless Mobile

Ad Experience

If you own a mobile device you’ve probably tried watching streaming video content with a weak network signal. It's a user experience characterized by slow load speeds and poor video resolution.

When that slow-loading video is an ad, well, let’s just say you the user are not exactly endeared to the brand that is making you wait.. In fact a slew of recent studies have shown that slow load times lead to all kinds of problems for brand advertisers and may be contributing to the rise in ad-blocking.

What is a savvy marketer to do? Get smart about alternative mobile video technologies of course!

Because with mobile video pre-caching, the same mobile videos could be launching instantly in full HD quality every time. Read on to find out how!

Executive Summary

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30% of consumers abandon mobile video ads that fail to launch within 5 seconds!1

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A brief history of mobile video...

Streaming video is without question the global standard technology for digital video advertising.

It’s important to understand that “streaming” video, or “buffering” a digital video live as it plays, was originally designed for a desktop environment where, it was assumed, the user had a stable high-speed data connection. Streaming is generally great for that particular use case.

The trouble is, when publishers and networks went looking for ways to provide mobile video inventory, they took the same streaming technology they used on desktop and repackaged it as “mobile”. However a mobile device can’t count on the same stable data-connection as desktop. A mobile device is constantly moving around, from home wi-fi, to underground with no connection, to a saturated 4g network and back.

It’s this variable connectivity that is creating low-quality video ad experiences on mobile. Experiences that annoy users and that fail to deliver on the full promise of mobile video.

Pre-caching on the other hand is a truly “mobile-first” technology. Designed specifically to deliver a more seamless mobile video ad experience. Unfortunately, as the industry has moved towards programmatic buying it has continued to rely on streaming video because no standard existed for selling pre-cached inventory programmatically… until now!

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● Videos launch instantly

● HD Quality

● Regardless of connectivity

● “Mobile” streaming

● Leaves people waiting

● Negatively primed audience!

Please Wait...

Vs.

What the difference looks like...

Pre-caching Streaming

Positive Priming with Pre-caching - #userexperiencematters

Priming is a term from psychology describing how an initial experience will influence an individual’s perception of subsequent experiences either positively or negatively.

Priming happens all the time with digital advertising formats and can have a very real impact on important brand metrics. One study from Carnegie Mellon University researchers1 found that negative priming from interruptive ads like mobile streaming actually decreases purchase intent!

Here are two examples of priming with both Streaming and Pre-caching video ads:

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Streaming

Slow-loading ad blocks user

access to content

Negative Posture

towards brand’s message

TECHNOLOGY EXPERIENCE #1 PRIMING EXPERIENCE #2 OUTCOME

Pre-caching

Instant Launch in HD quality doesn’t slow user down

Positive Posture towards brand’s

message

BetterPerformance, Higher Favorability, Higher

Purchase Intent

PoorerPerformance, Low Favorability, Lower

Purchase Intent

User opens an

appUser goes about their business inside the app

User sees HD quality video ad instantly

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Mobile videos that launch instantly and in full HD everytime.

Pre-caching is a very simple concept. It just means that the video ad is entirely loaded in “cache” - a hidden file - before the user ever reaches an opportunity to see that ad unit.

Here’s how it works:

Invisible to user, no interruptions, everything happens in the background

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2b

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App calls Ad Server

Ad Server Serves a video ad

Video ad is fully

loaded in the app

Video Inventory is Opened

in App

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Conclusion… #UserExperienceMatters.

By designing a seamless user experience pre-caching makes the entire prospect of engaging with digital video ads a lot less painful for mobile consumers.

Users don’t want to see that buffering counter while waiting for an ad to let them get on with their life.. They don’t want low quality video either.

Users want high quality video ads that launch instantly and preferably enhance their experience in whatever digital content they are consuming.

As an industry we owe it to users to get smarter about how we deliver mobile video ads and pre-caching technologies are a simple way to do that.

Get in touchhello@smrtr.media

Sources:

1 Krishnan & Sitaraman, Video Stream Quality Impacts Viewer Behavior: Inferring Causality Using Quasi-Experimental Designs, Akamai Technologies, 2012