How Can Online Video Advertising Fit Within A Marketing Mix?•

2007 - the year YouTube introduced new methods of advertising outside of the traditional display ads that were usually seen across millions of websites, Video Ads! 12 years later YouTube becomes not only one of the fastest growing video platforms ever but the most popular choice for marketers to advertise videos across. So much so that 2019 predicts TV advertisement to continue to drop in favour of upweighting video content online.

Image source: https://www.emarketer.com/content/q3-2018-digital-video-trends

Now, online video advertising is not a new, ground-breaking feature we should start taking notice of. In fact, it has been around for years and now more than ever it’s time to join the party. Platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, Amazon Prime, Facebook, Twitter & Netflix (albeit the latter is not a paid advertising platform…. yet) continue to grow and show very little signs of slowing down. In-fact, YouTube was the second most visited site in 2018 (behind Google, of course) with Facebook trailing closely in third.

Why does this matter from a marketing point of view? Well, there are now hundreds of methods for a business to promote their brand/product/services via video across several key platforms. Below are some stats that we found of interest:

70% of consumers have shared a brand’s video. (Wyzowl)
72% of businesses say video has improved their conversion rate. (Wyzowl)
52% of consumers who watched product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions. (Invodo)
65% of executives visit the marketer’s website and 39% call a vendor after viewing a video. (Forbes)

Pretty impressive figures, right?

A question we get asked regularly by our clients is, “How can online video advertising fit within my marketing mix?”. First, we make sure they have a strong creative to promote. Any video can be pushed in the right way but if the branding/message is not strong, it will still lack engagement. Also promoting an advertisement filmed on an old mobile phone about trainers when a client wants to promote their formal shoe range isn’t going achieve their marketing goal, the creative must be of good quality, strong and relevant to their marketing objective.

Since its launch, YouTube ads has continued to add formats and features to ensure your targeting the right people to meet your objective. These include:

Formats

Ad format	Placement	Platform	Specs
Display ads	Appears to the right of the feature video and above the video suggestions list. For larger players, this ad may appear below the player.	Desktop	300 x 250 or 300 x 60
Overlay ads	Semi-transparent overlay ads that appear in the lower 20% portion of your video.	Desktop	468 x 60 or 728 x 90 image ads or text
Skippable video ads	Skippable video ads allow viewers to skip ads after 5 seconds if they wish. Inserted before, during or after the main video. If you turn on this option, you may see a combination of skippable and bumper ads play back to back.	Desktop, mobile devices, TV and game consoles	Plays in video player.
Non-skippable video ads	Non-skippable video ads must be watched before your video can be viewed. These ads can appear before, during or after the main video.	Desktop and mobile devices	Plays in video player. 15 or 20 seconds in length, depending on regional standards.
Bumper ads	Non-skippable video ads of up to 6 seconds that must be watched before your video can be viewed. If you turn on this option, you may see a combination of skippable and bumper ads play back to back.	Desktop and mobile devices	Plays in video player, up to 6 seconds long
Sponsored cards	Sponsored cards display content that may be relevant to your video, such as products featured in the video. Viewers will see a teaser for the card for a few seconds. They can also click on the icon in the top right-hand corner of the video to browse the cards.	Desktop and mobile devices	Card sizes vary

Images source: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2467968?hl=en-GB

Targeting Methods

Demographic Groups – Age, gender, parental status
Detailed Demographics – Students, homeowners or new parents
Interests – These range from a variety of categories & topics:
- Affinity Audiences – targeting users based on certain topics
- Custom Affinity Audiences – Tailor audiences to your brand, one method this can be customised is by providing a list of websites with a similar theme such as “sportswear” to target users from.
- Life events – Graduating university, getting married.
- In-Market Audiences – Customers who are researching specific products/services and are actively in the buying cycle.
- Custom Intent audiences – Reach viewers who are making purchase decisions based on the keywords they used on Google.com
Video Remarketing – Retarget audiences who engaged with your videos, by linking your Google Ads account audiences will be generated automatically.
Placements which include:
- YouTube Channels
- YouTube Videos
- Websites on the Google Display Network
- Apps on The Google Display Network

On top of the now extensive targeting methods, there are also other interactive features available to boost campaign performance. Some key ones can be seen below:

Goal	Interactive feature	Where to create it
Increase engagement with your video ad or brand	Cards Showcase the features of a product or service within a video. Promote other videos or playlists to generate follow-on engagement for your channel. End screens You can manually create an end screen on YouTube videos to encourage further engagement with your brand.	YouTube
Drive visits to your website	Call to action Encourage viewers to click through to your website via enhanced click targets	Google Ads
Encourage viewers to buy your products	Shopping cards Show listings with product details from your linked Merchant Center account. Connect viewers to products that they've already viewed or that are related to the video that they're watching.	Google Ads – TrueView for shopping campaign
Drive visits to your website and increase conversions	TrueView for action campaigns Show a call-to-action overlay or a headline text overlay to drive clicks to your site. Auto end screens Show an automatically generated screen at the end of your video ad that encourages viewers to take an action, such as installing an app.	Google Ads – TrueView for mobile app installs campaign

Image source: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/150471?hl=en-GB

Google provided some insightful stats as to how digital video has evolved going into 2019. This is broken down into 3 statistical buckets:

Digital Video Is The New Window Shopping

Of the shoppers that engaged with YouTube content along their customer journey, 80% began their buying process on YouTube.
There is over 7,300 years of watch time on YouTube for apartment/home tour videos in the past 2 years.

Digital Video Is The New Store Clerk

Virtually trying before buying is increasingly helping customers decide what to ultimately buy over the last 10 years watch time on YouTube has grown:

10x across “shop with me” videos.
12x across “how does it work” videos
2x “everything you need to know” videos.

Digital Video Is The New Instruction Manual

50,000+ years of product review videos watched on mobile in the past 2 years.
YouTube users are 3x more likely to prefer watching a YouTube video then read product instructions.
70% of millennial YouTube users watched a video to learn to do something.

In conclusion, Online Video Advertising may have been around for a good few years, but thanks to new developments (and without a doubt, more to come in the future) it couldn’t be more important to the marketing mix. It fits perfectly within: