CosPro Agency: Top 5 Tips Monthly, Marketing Through Promotions and Sampling

2009-05-21
5 Tips for a Successful Video Ad

Consumers view 14 billion online videos a month! Video advertising revenue rose from 2% in 2007 to 3% of overall online ad spending in 2008. Teenagers, young men and women, and daytime audiences are now hard to capture. When trying to read these audiences, video ads should be a substantial portion of the media budget. In addition, studies show that video ads attract 2-5 times higher engagement and click through rates than banner ads that have the same size and placement on web pages. Another advantage is that video advertising can communicate a lot more than just the name of the business and what it does. You can use video advertising as a powerful branding tool much like television advertising. Here are 5 tips to create a successful video ad.

1. Know how to measure the effectiveness of your ad
To measure the success of a video, find out how many people saw the video ad, the quality and relevance of the audience who saw it, and whether or not the audience went to your website to make a purchase or print a coupon. When you’re counting how many ad views you get, it would be ideal for everyone to look at your entire ad, but most publishers find anything more than 50% to count as a view.

2. Know the available formats for paid video advertising
The Interactive Advertising Bureau has created a set of guidelines for the five most common formats of video advertising:

Pre-roll, the predominant format, is a 15 or 30 second ad that viewers watch before, during, or after a video they selected to watch.

Interactive videos engage the viewer by having them enter in information or playing a game. They are highly customizable, leave viewers with a strong memory of the brand, and can collect data. However, this format is not supported by a large number of web publishers.

Overlays are texts or graphics that appear on the bottom or top of the video for a brief moment during the video. The viewer can usually click on it for more information. This is a commonly supported, but although it doesn’t interrupt the video some viewers may still see it as a disturbance.

An invitation is similar but less intrusive than an overlay; it appears on the side of a video instead of on top. The disadvantage is that it not only is it not supported by as many web publishers, it’s easier for audiences to ignore.

Companions are static banners appearing alongside video players and invite viewers to click for more information. Since not all video players use companions, this is used mostly for customized campaigns.

3. Attract as many views as possible
When using sites such as youtube.com, tubemogul.com, or vidmetrix.com you want as many ‘hits’ as possible. Your video has to be interesting and avoid blatant advertising to make an impact - think shock, surprise, or hilarity and about 15 to 30 seconds long. The more a video feels like a commercial, the less likely viewers are going to share it with friends. Use exciting music in the background and make tight, quick edits – you need to grab their attention in the first 8 seconds. When doing a series post them all at once, don’t make people wait for the next post. Your video is listed with the name and a thumbnail (a small icon of your video). Make sure that it’s clear, more people will want to watch a video if they think its high quality and try to include a person.

4. Target your audience
Online ads can be targeted to very specific audiences by using services like Jivox or SpotRunner. In addition, targeted demographic groups are cheaper and more effectively reached online. For example targeted CPM’s (cost per thousand impressions) for men 18 or older are usually priced at $18 to $35, but targeting men 18-34 can be as high as $75. Online, targeted demographic groups are widely available for CPMs under $25.

5. Know when to use high definition video quality
In some instances, HD (high definition) is best. For content campaigns, such as movie trailers or video games, the highest quality video formats should be used. Household HD television is at 30%. But more than 75% of internet users can view HD content online with broadband connections and LCD monitors. On the downside, HD videos are very large files, so with services like YouTube it will take a long time to upload or you can’t use it at all and many times you lose the quality when it goes on line anyway.