LONDON: Some 60% of UK ad agency executives aged 30 and under regard video as an ineffective medium when it comes to campaign metrics, a new survey has found.

Furthermore, this generation of young professionals account for 57% of agency staffers who largely distrust the video metrics they are expected to work with.

That is according to a survey of 218 agency executives that Morar Consulting conducted in February 2017 on behalf of Turn Marketing Platform, the global media insights firm.

The survey further revealed that just 28% of respondents aged under 30 place viewability as a key requirement on the supply side – a view shared to some extent by older colleagues.

Taking the generations together, the survey found that agency executives prefer to see good audience metrics (56%) and context and quality (62%) from publishers and ad networks rather than viewability metrics (48%).

In addition, it emerged that less than a third (30%) of brands use advanced viewability options, such as AVOC [audible and viewable on completion].

"While only 28% of younger execs who are buying media say viewability is a key requirement from the supply side, the discrepancies do not prove one generation correct and the other incorrect," said Paul Alfieri, SVP at Turn Marketing Platform.

"Where one group has grown up with digital and challenges incumbent metrics, the other has experienced the rise and transformation of television first-hand."

Elsewhere, the survey found that agency executives rank fraud-free guarantees (41%), standardised success metrics (46%) and premium inventory (40%) as the three lowest tactics for getting brands to invest more in online video.

Interestingly, around three-quarters (76%) of those aged under 30 regard ad fraud as a less than crucial concern with respect to video.

Whereas, by contrast, about half (51%) of all respondents see new formats, such as vertical video or 360-video, as being key to encouraging online video spend.

Data sourced from Turn Marketing Platform; additional content by WARC staff