A new report from Diffusion Group confirms some of what we've been hearing about online video ad rates. Namely, rates are high for long form professionally-produced video, ie TV on the Web. User-generated video? Not so much, but better than than nothing.
This is very good news for Hulu.com and the TV networks' efforts to make money online, and pretty good news for those producing short-form video for the Web. But we take them with a grain of salt: ad rates vary widely based on the amount of inventory available and numerous other factors. We've heard rates in the $45 - $65 CPM (the cost to reach 1,000 people) range for video on TV network players/sites, for example, and we've heard YouTube is having trouble getting even $15 for overlay ads on the few videos it can actually sell.
All this could change next year if advertisers embrace user-generated video or long form video ad rates go down a bit and become more comparable with TV. Still, these seem like reasonable benchmarks. What's more speculative: Diffusion Group is projecting CPM growth in the future. Nevertheless, here's the data, via TVWeek:
Today's average:
Professional long form video: $40 CPM
Professional short-form: $30 CPM
User-generated video: $15 CPM
Projected for 2013:
Long form: $46 CPM
Short form: $34 CPM
User-gen: $17 CPM
