The ‘DG MediaMind Full-Year 2012 Benchmark Report’ has been released, comparing Australia’s digital advertising behaviours against the world, finding that video ads took centre stage in 2012, up 43.8% over 2011.

A key feature of this year’s report included a change in measurement from ads served to ads viewed (measured by ‘viewability’), indicating that unseen ads have been dragging down the overall effectiveness of campaigns despite technically being ‘served’.

With digital advertising accounting for 19.8% of total media advertising spending in 2012, and expected to account for more than a quarter of all media ad spending worldwide by 2016, the report examines the trends and technologies driving growth. The benchmark is based on analysis of more than 600 billion display ad impressions from 47 countries dating from 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2012.

Key findings for Australia and New Zealand include:

• Average user dwell times in seconds were 47.1 for rich media, 58.5 for expandable banners, 4.2 for floating ads, 25.0 for floating ads with a reminder, 37.4 for the polite banner,
• overall, rich media achieved an 8.1% dwell rate, 65.7 seconds dwell time, 26.9% expansion rate and 108.2 seconds expansion duration,
• for auto-initiated video, the average video duration in seconds was 42.7,
• the started rate was 62.4%, the 50% played rate was 69.8%, and the fully played rate was 54.5%,
• for user-initiated video, the average video duration was 39.3. The started rate was 36.7%, the 50% played rate was 74.9%, and the fully played rate was 62.0%,
• for in-stream video, the average started rate was 98.6%, the 50% played rate 85.3% and fully played rate 78.0%,
• average click through rates were 0.06% compared to 0.10% for North America, 0.12% for Latin America, and 0.9% for Europe, and
• interesting CTR rates according to vertical sector were 0.30% for careers, 0.12% for auto, 0.19% for electronics, 0.21% for health and beauty, 0.20% for restaurants, 0.13% for entertainment and 0.09% for travel

The complete report can be found here.