eMarketer interviewed industry pros for its recently released, Digital Video Advertising Best Practices 2018: Connecting the Dots Across Screens & Formats, and here’s what our VP of Media Strategy, Danielle Krauter, and we believe are the top five video advertising recommendations from the report:
- Run on real inventory.
Real, quality video inventory has long been in scarce supply on the open exchange, and now it’s even more so. Up until now, buyers have only been able to gauge whether inventory is real based on indicators like price and player size. With the Authorized Dealer Sellers (ads.txt) launch in May 2017 – the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB’s) Tech Lab initiative to combat counterfeit inventory and increase transparency in the programmatic advertising ecosystem – advertisers and marketers now have another tool in their arsenal to root out ad fraud. Danielle, our in-house expert, talks about its value in eMarketer’s report: “[Ads.txt] allows publishers to declare who their authorizers are, so then as buyers we can choose to just buy from those sources. That one action alone is really going to help clean up some of the fraud we’re seeing today.” To reduce the risk of buying fraudulent inventory, here are some steps you can take: Be wary of cheap inventory on the open exchange. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Pick your website placements carefully or consider going with PMP deals or direct placements. And keep a whitelist of the sites you want to run on, and a blacklist of the sites you don’t.
- Get to know your audience on a deeper level.
You know your customers and prospects; you know their demographics, their age and gender. But with people-based marketing, you can now go deeper and get insights into their behavior, their hobbies, their quirks. You can learn the tiny details to really bring them into focus. And using this new data can help you craft video advertising that is more personalized and persuasive. With people-based marketing, you can match your CRM data (such as every customer’s email address, phone number, job title and purchase history, etc.) with your customers’ online activity to learn more about the people you want to reach most. Simply upload your CRM data to our secure platform, and we’ll match your CRM data to the digital data on each person — like their device IDs, browsing habits and social logins. (And, of course, in the process, we’ll anonymize the data so PII, personally identifiable information, is removed to protect privacy.)[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ spacing=”” center_content=”no” link=”” target=”_self” min_height=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”left top” background_repeat=”no-repeat” hover_type=”none” border_size=”0″ border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=”” last=”no”][fusion_text]
- Match your creative to your platform to your audience.
Before you craft your creative, you’ll want to know the end before you begin. Do your research and learn about all your video advertising platforms and your audience’s behavior on these platforms first. With the ever-increasing video platforms, types and formats, you’ll likely need a lot of permutations to make your message effective. Don’t auto-play your ads in case viewers are on their phones or in situations where they have to be quiet. Auto-playing with sound will annoy your customers and is misguided given today’s media consumption habits. Subtitles are a nice quiet way to get your message across easily. And remember to set a frequency cap. No matter how innovative or entertaining your videos are, you want them to stay fresh. You want viewers to have a good experience, not feel negatively about your brand because they must suffer through watching them over and over.
- Get your timing right.
Per Ad Age, 33% of viewers will stop watching a video after 30 seconds, 45% by one minute, and 60% by 2 minutes. It’s clear timing is key when it comes to video advertising. You can’t repurpose a 30-second TV spot and call it done. It just won’t work in digital. Even the 15-second spot struggles, especially as attention spans continue to shrink. Realistically, you’ve got 5 seconds of storytelling max so make the most of it: Showcase your brand and get your message out there before someone skips your ad.[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ layout=”1_1″ spacing=”” center_content=”no” link=”” target=”_self” min_height=”” hide_on_mobile=”small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility” class=”” id=”” background_color=”” background_image=”” background_position=”left top” background_repeat=”no-repeat” hover_type=”none” border_size=”0″ border_color=”” border_style=”solid” border_position=”all” padding_top=”” padding_right=”” padding_bottom=”” padding_left=”” dimension_margin=”” animation_type=”” animation_direction=”left” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_offset=”” last=”no”][fusion_text]
- Increase your ad value.
Before going live with your video ads, be sure your customers and prospects can find them. Include keywords and titles and descriptions when naming your video files and add video tags so they’re easily searchable. This will go a long way. The more metadata you can include in your video content, the better it can be searched and monetized. If your video ads rank higher in search results, you have the potential to reach a much larger audience effortlessly. And if you include links in the videos so your customers can email, embed or share your videos easily on social media, this could give you a lot of unexpected free exposure. After you go live, keep gathering your first-, second- and third-party data to gain new insights. Keep doing your legwork. Test your video advertising executions and pore over the analytics to determine the top performers. Then optimize based on what is winning to further boost your video campaign to succeed, and do this often since the industry is always changing. Using the power of sight, sound and motion can be powerful. In fact, Forrester Research says one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words. So, don’t underestimate video advertising’s ability to emotionally connect with your customers. Now that you know what the pros know, you can start harnessing this important tactic. Find out just how to put these video advertising recommendations into action.