By the time you read this line (approximately 3 seconds); 75,000 videos will be uploaded on YouTube alone. That is a simple indication that we live in a world dominated by video. Not surprisingly, this isn’t limited to entertainment.
Short-form video advertising has taken the marketing world by storm.
Brands are investing in video advertising, to promote their products and services. Distributed across social media, websites, and streaming services — video is easily able to capture your customer’s attention. With greater engagement and memorability, videos can drive action such as clicks or purchases.
Irrespective of the years in the industry, keeping up with the changes in marketing isn't always easy!
So stick till the end, because we will break down everything about video advertising campaigns to grow your business.
Recap: What is video advertising?
Video advertising simply refers to the promotional strategy a brand makes using wherein they use video content to highlight the products and services being sold. The goal of video advertising is to enable the brand to share more information about their products/ services while keeping their target audience visually engaged.
What are the benefits of video advertising?
When you have the option to use images, free stock visuals and other formats in ad campaigns, why use videos? Here are some of the key benefits of video advertising:
- Keeping pace with customer habits
- Targeting and personalization
- Creates brand awareness and trust
- Increased engagement and retention
- Boosts sales and conversions
- Better return on investment
When customers today want something, they reflexively reach for their phones. Brands can shine in these moments. Since more than 90% of people watch videos on their phones, it becomes a prime opportunity for brands to showcase their products and build a connection with their audience.
In digital marketing, data is at your fingertips. Marketers can make use of this information to target specific demographics, interests and behaviors to create a personalized shopping experience. Many brands like Sunfeast, Oreo are utilizing AI and machine learning to build a personalized approach to video content. This leads to delight and greater recall.
People purchase from brands they trust. A well crafted video can convey brand value and messaging easily. By watching user generated, influencer and/or brand content, people build awareness and emotional connections, which helps facilitate their purchase decisions.
Timothy Childs, senior product manager for Adobe Advertising Cloud says that moving images are easier for customers to recall than static images or text. The combination of visuals, music, and narration, makes video content inherently dynamic and engaging. They are able to pack in a story and information at one go. A 10 second video can perhaps be more impactful than a 10 minute article.
People spend more than 88% more time on pages with video. With increased view time, brands are able to convey a lot more information in an engaging manner. The persuasive power of video, helps to boost sales and conversions.
Videos are able to move beyond the limitations of traditional advertising. Video content is far superior in explanation, distribution and connection building. Moreover, a wide range of tools available online makes creating video content easier and cheaper than ever. For example - Videomagic can help generate innumerable videos for every URL for less than $5 per piece - keeping your ad campaigns fresh and engaging.
What are the different type of video ads
Nearly 80% of marketers say their industry changed more in the past three years than it has in the last five decades. Even in video advertising, marketers can experiment with different formats or styles based on platform, audience and marketing objective.
Some of the types of video ads include:
- In-Stream Video Ads
- Outstream Video Ads
- Interactive Video Ads
- 360-degree and Virtual Reality Ads
- Social Media Video Ads
- Bumper Ads
- Masthead Ads
You know those ads that pop up every time that you watch a video on Youtube? Those are instream video ads, which can be both skippable and non-skippable. There are three types: (1) Pre-roll ads are played before your video. They are short and engaging to capture attention quickly. (2) Mid-roll ads are played during a break in the main content: It is similar to regular commercial breaks on TV. (3) Post-roll ads are played after the video ends. These ads are used to establish brand awareness, reach customers, and drive organic traffic to a website.
These are mobile-only ads, in non video environments such as apps, websites, articles, etc. They start playing automatically when the customer scrolls, but usually on mute. If the video is catchy enough, then the viewer can tap and receive all information. The best part is that it allows for a broad range of placement options at an affordable price.
Viewer participation can help increase engagement and memorability in the minds of the customer. Interactive video ads include polls, quizzes etc which can help to capture feedback and data on customer behavior. Interactive videos go one ahead with shoppable video ads. They allow you to purchase directly from the video which can significantly boost conversion rates.
For product demonstrations, 360 degree video advertising campaigns create immersive experiences. You can control the perspective by dragging the video around or even using virtual reality headsets for a better experience. Storytelling in 3D, what could be better!
When scrolling on Instagram, TikTok or any such social media platform, you might have noticed video ads. They can be in-stream or standalone as you scroll, which results in high visibility. Bonus points to you, if your online video advertising can seamlessly blend with the organic content. By providing entertainment or valuable information, in less than 60 seconds, you can appeal to a large audience.
With videos of 6 seconds or less, these videos focus on short, memorable messages. Viewers are also unable to skip your ad and hence can build brand awareness. To reach your target audience with a clear and short message, bumper ads are a perfect choice.
If you want to showcase your product or service in a prominent space on the YouTube Home feed, then mastheads is an ideal choice. It helps to drive massive reach and awareness amongst your audience. The video automatically plays for 30 seconds at the top with the sound off.
How to make a video ad?
65% of consumers who have made 10 or more purchases online in the last three months report that they look for video content before swiping their credit card.
Because, people trust videos.
Hence, figuring out how to create powerful video ads can feel both exciting and challenging. Here are some of the best practices that you should keep in mind, when creating a video advertisement:
- Define your goals and metrics
- Conduct basic hygiene checks
- Always start with a bang
- Share your USP clearly
- Add a clear Call To Action (CTA)
While this may seem like a no-brainer, you need to be absolutely sure about why you are making the ad. Is the goal awareness, or lead generation or conversion? Keep the end goal in mind and identify key metrics to understand failure or success.
Choose an appropriate setup to shoot your content, with great lighting, visuals and audio. The script must be prepared well in advance, with a clear storyline. Most importantly, the video must not be more than 90 seconds, to keep it engaging for your audience.
Or you could always use tools like Videomagic to automate generating videos - based on the URL you input, the AI video generator quickly suggests and generates the videos that are best at presenting the content, images and clips available.
The AI video generator renders the most popular three ratios used across devices, making it easier for you to scale the platforms you run ads on.
The number one concern that all marketers face today is the low attention span. Perhaps even less than a goldfish. The first three seconds need to be so good that your consumer is forced to stop and pay attention, rather than skipping or scrolling past. Hence, a strong hook becomes an absolute must.
In an extremely competitive and crowded market, brands need to showcase their value clearly. Highlight core benefits, strengths and achievements to show that your product/service solves a problem. Testimonials, success stories or similar social proof can help build trust and customer loyalty.
This acts as a signpost about what your customer should do next. This could be to sign up for a waitlist, purchase your product or even give you information. A clear CTA, encourages people to move in the right direction; and take deliberate action.
How to measure success of video advertising?
Unfortunately, brands don’t have fairy godmothers who can make everything perfect with a flick of their wand. Hence, marketers need to rely on data.
There are various metrics that brands can focus on, to measure the effectiveness of video advertising. These include:
- Views
- Engagement
- Clicks and Click-through Rate (CTR)
- Play Rate
- Conversion Rate
- Return on Investment (ROI)
- Sentiment Analysis
- Audience Insights
This refers to the total number of people who viewed your content. However, please bear in mind that different platforms count views differently. Example - On Youtube, when someone watches a video for 30 seconds counts as a view. On the other hand, on Instagram, video views count after 3 seconds. However, this is primarily a vanity metric, since it may not lead to any action.
Interactions with the video are valuable ways to understand audience reaction. This includes the number of likes, comments and shares on the platform. Social shares can be extremely valuable since it helps generate brand awareness and brings in new leads. Along with this, marketers should focus on average watch time and completion rate; which indicates level of engagement and relevance to the audience.
Video ad campaigns can be run with a CTA button, to get people to click and visit your landing page. This is an important metric to understand audience interest in your product and intrigue generated by the ad. Click-through rate refers to the number of clicks divided by the number of times your ad is seen.
This is an interesting metric to measure on landing pages with embedded videos. Here, people need to actually click for the video to start. This metric requires action and can be a good indicator of interest/intrigue. You can calculate play rate by dividing the number of people who clicked play by the total number of visitors who visit the video landing page.
The most important metric that you need to keep an eye out for is the number of conversions from the video ad campaigns. This indicates how well you were able to persuade your audience with your script and visuals. UTMs can be used to identify the source of conversions.
To understand financial viability, you need to compare revenue generated vs amount spent. A positive ROI indicates profitability, while a negative ROI should be a cause of concern and a need for a pivot.
Video advertising can help brands build awareness, trust and loyalty. Sentiment analysis tools can help understand how video has influenced public perception of the brand. Positive indicators of success include increase in brand searches, mentions on social media etc.
Most platforms can provide data on different demographic factors like age, gender, location etc. By understanding your audience better, you are able to refine your targeting strategy and increase personalization. This metric helps to create future ad strategy.
Why does video advertising work?
90% of marketers using short-form video will increase or maintain their investment next year, and 21% of marketers plan to leverage short-form video for the first time in 2023.
This is because you can create videos, to accomplish virtually any goal. It is a mixture of visual, auditory and sensory components, seamlessly blended to influence emotion, thought and behavior. Here are key reasons why video advertising works:
- Storytelling and Human Connection
- Multi-Sensory Experience
- Brand Trust and Social Proof
- Effective Use of Psychology
In the pursuit of viral video glory, marketers realize that stories and emotional connection is the only way to reach an audience. Humans are drawn to stories and everyday emotions like happiness, sadness, frustration, love etc.
By incorporating these elements, people are likely to create positive association with the ad, and by extension with the product and brand. Eg - Ikea’s Proudly Second Best campaign, that shows the bond between parents and kids.
Our brain processes visuals in less than 13 milliseconds as compared to text. A human figure and direct eye contact can further lead to a sense of connection which makes for persuasive content. This helps in information retention in comparison to traditional methods of advertising. Moreover, the right narration and background score enhances the story, can evoke emotions or even build urgency.
Recall how the tick-tock of the clock makes us want to spring into action? That is the power of music. A video advertisement seamlessly brings in video and audio together, to create a multi-sensory experience for different customers.
With video, brands can provide free and valuable content to their customers. This can lead to loyal fans, who would be more receptive to purchasing from brands they trust.
Social proof like testimonials, case studies, influencer and user generated content in the form of videos are highly persuasive. People tend to be influenced by the behavior of others, especially celebrities; which makes it an effective marketing strategy.
Psychological principles of colour to influence emotions or pricing strategies can help drive demand for product/services. Video advertising can be great in building urgency and fomo through the right visuals and content.
With video advertisements, you are able to effectively use the power of psychology to drive conversions.