The Ice.com and Neiman-Marcus YouTube advertising campaigns got me thinking about what it takes to put together a successful video advertising campaign. I am sure that this is a question on many marketing executive’s minds especially as Advertising Age reported recently that online video advertising could be worth more than $775 million in 2007.
A recent study by Google and AOL showed unsurprisingly that online-video viewing steadily increases throughout the day, peaking in the evening. The study also identified six steps to successful online video advertising. Those steps are:
1. Have Strong Calls To Action:
After running your video advertisement, make sure your ad includes strong and clear calls to action. The study showed that after seeing video messaging, consumers take 1.6 actions were performed in response to online video ads.
2. Make Ads Clickable:
Make sure that the call to action includes some level of Interactivity, preferably a link to your web site. 43% of those surveyed said it was important to be able to click through an ad to a brand’s website. So even though the video appears on a 3rd party web site like YouTube, consumers expect that the eventual transaction will take place on your web site.
3. Go Where Your Audience Is:
The key to any social media marketing campaign, including video, is to make sure that your video can be found by your target audience. If you’re gearing branded content toward a given audience, know how that crowd likes to find video. For example Men in th3 18-34 range are most likely to use search engines; 18- to 24-year-olds with lower incomes (under $50,000) are most likely to talk offline; and females 18 to 34 with lower incomes are most likely to share videos. Understand these demographics and tendencies and use them to your advantage.
4. Consumers Like Video Advertising:
One interesting take-away from the study was that consumers understand the tradeoff between free content and advertising. 63% of those participating in the study said that they prefer online-video sites to have an ad-supported model vs. a subscription model. And 57% said they understand that online-video advertising is important for keeping websites free. Unlike other types of online advertising, consumers have not grown “blind” to video advertising. As a result, video advertising should provide a higher ROI than other display advertising for the next 9-12 months at least.
5. Fit Ads To Site And Content:
Producing one Ad and covering the Net with it is not the approach to take. This is where you can use behavioral and contextual targeting to your advantage. 52% of respondents said it was important for online-video ads to fit their interests. And 46% said it was important for the ad to be relevant to the website’s content.
6. Don’t Be Annoying:
One reason that consumers are still receptive to video advertising is that we have not yet reached the threshold where consumers feel pestered by ads. By it is a small leap from engaging to annoyed. 41% of consumers thought that the brands they saw in online-video ads had strong internet presences. Just behind this, were 38% of consumers who thought online advertising was “annoying”.
Follow these six steps and your video advertising campaign should be a success with consumers associating your brand with having a strong online presence. Fail to follow these steps and your brand might be viewed as annoying by consumers.
I am getting ready to do this, so the timing was perfect.
I wonder how soon it will be before we cross the threshold, and the majority of people start to feel that video adverts are annoying.
Now is the time to get in on online video advertising. If you wait too long, you might be too late (since it’s probably inevitable that, eventually, people will start to find video adverts annoying).