ROO's Sr. VP of Sales and Marketing, Greg Verdino, offers tips and tricks to get your online video campaigns rolling.
If 2005 was the year online video advertising began to garner attention, then 2006 will be the year that it is truly embraced. The catalysts causing the media and marketing communities to sit up and take notice include bold moves by online media giants like AOL, Yahoo! and Google; online publishers' shift from traditional text-and-graphics content to more video-centric strategies and creative video initiatives by leading marketers.
What 2006 will also demonstrate is the continuing decline of television advertising and the realization that traditional internet advertising is breaking down fast. But don't start crying about it just yet. Online video advertising offers an effective alternative that addresses these industry ailments. This article discusses why you should create engaging and effective online campaigns using video, and suggests some useful strategies for doing so.
Putting it all into context
With all of the real world activity surrounding the holidays, you are forgiven if you missed one of our industry's most noteworthy studies-- eMarketer's December 2005 "Online Video Advertising" report. It definitively stated that online, in-stream video advertising is by far the most effective form of online advertising available to marketers today.
So what makes video so much more effective than other forms of online advertising? A big part of it lies in its contextual relevance.
Let's look at just one scenario: Perhaps you suffer from diabetes and turn to the web for information on how to manage your condition. You choose to visit a relevant destination site, click into their video section, surf their video channels and select one devoted to health news and information. Within the health channel, you initiate a specific video clip about living with diabetes. Before your on-demand video plays you see just one 15-second commercial, presented in the video player, and it is an ad for a medication that treats diabetes. Chances are you will watch that commercial; you may even click for more information.
This scenario, typical of how we program advertising on the ROO network, works for many reasons. Here are some of them:
The content is compelling. Video is the most engaging form of content available on the internet, and it is the reason many consumers are upgrading to broadband. The web offers viewers access to video content that they cannot get anywhere else. And it is available on-demand-- viewers watch what they want, when they want to watch it. By associating your advertising directly with that content, you reach an active, engaged viewer who may already be pre-disposed to your advertising messages.
Ads are presented in context. In-stream ads are an integrated part of the content experience, and they are part of the process that consumers are familiar with from television. You don't need to resort to disruptive gimmicks to draw the user's attention away from the content.
Consumers are receptive to in-stream ads. Another eMarketer takeaway is that consumers are least likely to be "annoyed" by in-stream video ads. Generally speaking, online viewers understand and accept the trade-off between access to vast amounts of free content and the broadcaster's need to monetize that content through advertising. A receptive audience is a responsive audience, and the eMarketer study bears this out, as does our internal research at ROO. The typical video advertiser can expect a two to three percent clickthrough rate; one recent ROO advertiser saw double digit response rates. When was the last time your banner or rich media ads delivered even a one percent clickthrough rate?
Online video advertising offers marketers the ability to leverage the impact of television's sight, sound and motion with the internet's immediacy and accountability, to establish a meaningful connection with engaged, receptive and responsive online audiences.
So if you're ready to get into the online video advertising game here are some simple best practices:
Keep ads short. Because most on-demand online video content is "short form" -- for example, the average clip in ROO's video library runs between two and three minutes -- shorter ads are better. If you have or can create a 15-second spot for use on the web, do it.
Create for the medium. Not surprisingly, most of the ads running as pre-roll today are simply repurposed television spots. All but a small handful of the advertisers that ran on the ROO network in 2005 used the very same ads that they created for offline television. This is certainly a reasonable first step, but for pre-roll to be its most effective, advertisers should create web-only video ads that leverage the unique features of the medium, including its 'click now' functionality.
Include a strong call to action. Direct marketers have long known the power of asking the consumer to "act now" and providing an incentive to do so. Internet marketers have always emphasized clickthrough rates as a primary measure of online ad effectiveness. On the flipside, most television advertising simply does not solicit immediate action. A strong call to action presented through an attention-grabbing video ad delivers what traditional television cannot-- the potential for real-time "one-click-away" response.
Be targeted. Targeting discussions quickly turn to demographics (and demos are important), but the real power of online video is the ability to match appropriate, targeted advertising to on-demand content. The healthcare example above can be extrapolated to virtually any category. Online video buys should not be based on reaching the broadest audience possible with any given placement, but on reaching the right customers, at the right time, in the right place through user selected on-demand content that is contextually relevant for your brand.
Think beyond pre-roll. I believe that in 12 to 18 months' time, a lot of people will feel foolish for devoting so much brainpower to debating over where to spend their pre-roll video dollars, let alone whether they should be allocating any budget to pre-roll at all. Pre-roll is an on-ramp to internet video advertising. Forward-thinking marketers are already moving beyond simple pre-roll placements to more immersive marketing programs that include sponsored video channels, branded entertainment, product placements and more.
As you can see, there are some straightforward guidelines to creating an effective online ad strategy. But don't stop here. This medium is still young, and creative approaches to getting your product's and brand's message across are out there waiting to be developed.
As ROO's Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Greg Verdino brings over 15 years of experience in the online media and advertising industries to drive ROO's North American sales and marketing initiatives. In this role, Greg oversees strategic alliances, new business development with affiliates and content partners, advertising sales and marketing strategy. He also represents ROO on the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Broadband Committee. Greg is a recognized expert on streaming media, internet broadcasting and media convergence and has appeared on CNBC and Fox News Channel, as well as in BusinessWeek, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. Greg has also spoken at numerous industry events, including Streaming Media East as well as NAB, the Radio Ink Radio Internet Conference, the Radio Advertising Bureau Conference and many more.