Businesses that aren’t yet taking advantage of video as a form of advertising, are missing out on a huge chunk of their potential market and a ton of sales opportunities. Video is the most common form of content consumed online today, making video advertising worth its weight in gold (if you get it right).
As consumers, we’re not afraid to admit that we would all likely rather watch a video than read a piece of content providing the same information. A whopping 90% of people have stated that watching a video demonstrating a business’ product or service helps them along their journey in making a buyers decision. Businesses simply cannot afford to be missing out on the opportunity for monetisation that video ads can provide. What’s more, it’s now far easier and more affordable than ever before to create video ads, with a smartphone and an online video platform being all you really need.
Zidivo is here to share the key steps in producing video ads that convert and highlight the different types of ads for businesses to utilise.
The first step to a video ad that converts is pinpointing what you want to achieve. Are your ads aiming to boost sales, encourage enquiries, elevate brand awareness, or improve your brand’s reputation? Whatever your ultimate goal is, this should shape your ad completely, determining the type of ad, hook, script, storyline and Call To Actions.
There are many different types of video ads to create, allowing businesses to mix up their video marketing campaigns and provide a range of ads to suit individual purposes. Product demo videos, for example, allow businesses to show their audience exactly how a certain product or service works, to clear up any confusion along the buyer’s journey and encourage conversions. You don’t need to have a physical product to demonstrate either, an explainer video showing how a company as a whole or a piece of software works can be just as influential. Another high-converting type of video ad is customer testimonials, reviews or case studies. This way, you can let your customer tell the story of how your business has benefitted their life. There’s an instant level of trust established when ad content comes from a consumer and not the brand itself. Take the Grammarly ads, for example, a perfect mix of product demo and testimonials!
All in all, it should be clear what you want your audience to do at the end of an ad, whether it’s visit your site, get in touch or simply remember your brand for all the right reasons. As you would when writing a helpful piece of content for your target market, touch on key pain points to make sure your video highlights how your product/service/brand can solve an issue or improve their life.
It’s far more effective to create video ads that appeal to a specific set of people than to keep your ad generic, as this way you risk not evoking a strong enough feeling in any of your viewers. If your audience doesn’t connect or relate to your ad, they won’t click through.
Once you’ve got a good understanding of what your video ad creation will consist of, it’s important to find the right way to share your ads and get them in front of the right people. Instream and outstream video ads are the two main types of ads, let’s take a look at which is best for your business.
Instream ads are largely self-explanatory - they appear within video streams, whether a video is live or on-demand. The most common types of instream ads are linear, consisting of pre roll video ads, mid-roll or post-roll. Mid-roll ads, which play usually as an interval in the middle of a video, are most popular as they target viewers once they’re already ingrained and engaged in some video content, making it much less likely that they will click off.
Instream ads can be highly effective for businesses to get their ads in front of the right types of people using targeting strategies. For example, you set demographic and topical parameters for your ads to be played within videos where viewers will already be interested in what you have to say.
The problem with instream advertising is that if your targeting campaign isn’t quite right, you can risk your ads appearing in videos that are irrelevant or even jarring to the viewer. Consistently appearing in the wrong kinds of videos or having your ads shown in too many videos can impede your message and lead to your brand having negative associations. While it’s usually possible for viewers to press ‘skip ad’ after a few seconds of instream video ads, it’s still important to consider the risk to your brand’s reputation that comes with this advertising method.
These ads are those that aren’t shown within other video content and can instead be placed anywhere, whether it’s on a webpage or on a social feed. Outstream video ads have many benefits, the main one being that they are far less intrusive than instream ads and only auto-play as people scroll down a page or feed. As soon as the user scrolls past, the ad stops or minimises and plays in a corner of the screen, with minimal disruption or affect on user experience.
When deciding whether instream or outstream ads are right for your brand, it’s important to consider viewability. Outstream are far more flexible, allowing you to place your ads on any page of your site, whether there is existing video content there or not.
What’s more, you get to keep full control over where your ads are placed, embedding your video players on pages where an ad is completely relevant and adds value, rather than disrupting the content. Outstream ads put you at an advantage by targeting users at a potentially later stage of the buying journey, where they are already interested in and have sought out the surrounding content. You can ensure your video ads are 100% relevant and increase the amount of time people spend on your site by providing multiple types of content, not just text.
On top of the control your brand can maintain over where your ads are placed, outstream ads give viewers control too. They are far less problematic by allowing viewers to simply scroll past a video ad that they don’t want to view. Providing you don’t embed ads too many times within your content, your user experience isn’t impacted and the adverts are far less invasive, which consumers will thank you for in conversions or recognition.
Whether you choose to use instream or outstream videos on your own website, you will need an HTML5 video player. WIth Zidivo, our HTML5 players allow brands to completely customise the look, branding it up to represent you down to the ground, with no mention of your provider. An HTML5 video player with ads should allow you to deliver videos in the utmost quality both quickly and reliably, with complete freedom over where and how you display your ads to your target audience.
Get in touch with the Zidivo team today or sign-up to the platform to start embedding video ads on your website right away and boost your conversion rates.
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