.Fox, Fox International Channels’ global online ad network, commissioned comScore to study the effectiveness of video ads on brand engagement in the UK last year. Four industries, four campaigns and 300 million impressions later, the results are in: video ads provide “significant uplift” to visitor numbers and advertiser search queries, as MediaPost reports.

And by “significant,” we mean significant. Over a four-week period, the average uplift for the four campaigns after users viewed a video ad was a seven-fold increase in site visitors. Consumers were also three times as likely to search on brand terms or relevant generic terms after viewing a video ad.

In the press release, comScore said:

Confirming expectations and previous industry understanding, video was able to generate a more immediate impact in the first five exposures than display ads in terms of increases in site visitation and search queries; however, behavioural response for those exposed to display climbed steadily as the number of ad impressions increased. . . .

The study underscores the fact that consumer search behaviour is positively impacted by the presence of display or video advertising — even in the face of minimal clicks. In each of the four campaigns, search activity increased significantly when consumers were exposed to these online ad formats, suggesting that the last click on a search ad should not be given 100 percent of the credit in attribution studies.

So it looks like it’s another example of the principle we shall now call Avinash’s Wife (you know, like Occam’s Razor?):

Giving all of the credit to the first click is “like giving all of the credit for marrying my wife to my first girlfriend.”

The study also compared the results side-by-side with a print campaign. Compared to print, users were 28% more likely to visit the brand site if they’d seen the video ad, and almost twice as likely to search for the trademark.

The study focused on sites in the Travel, Finance, Government and Utilities verticals and used comScore’s single-source panel methodology. A matched pair sample compared the habits of users exposed to the ads with a control group not exposed to the ads, controlling for behavioral and demographic differences. (Meaning: comScore used its panel of UK users and selected pairs of people roughly the same demographically and behaviorally. One person was exposed to the video ad; the other wasn’t. Then they compared the two groups’ behavior.) The study made sure that users in both groups visited the same sites, but the control group didn’t see the video ads.

What do you think? Have you seen results from video ads—and how many exposures did it take?

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