At last month’s Ad Week Europe event Google intensified its efforts to generate additional marketing dollars by announcing the results of a new research study that claims online video delivers a 50% percent higher ROI than TV ads. Given TV still commands the lion’s share of advertising dollars, it’s hardly surprising that Google are going all out to make a land grab (and their study makes an interesting read).
But whilst it is irrefutable that people are watching less linear TV than they were five years ago and in-stream is slowly encroaching on traditional TV spend, to me the most interesting video play right now isn’t at the top of the funnel at all. Instead it is the opportunity for brands to leverage video in the middle and lower end of the marketing funnel.
Like most advances, it is data insights and ad technology that is ensuring video - traditionally confined to an awareness play - can now be effectively used to drive consideration and action, most especially by clients who fully understand and invest in the customer journey and use these actionable insights to drive activity.
Because despite Microsoft’s director of consumer engagement Tejal Patel’s recent declaration (also at Ad Week Europe) that banner ads on mobile phones may soon be a relic of the past, our experience is that in the here and now video engagement banners are working, especially at the mid-lower funnel level (across all mediums) when used to augment an advertisers in-stream play; particularly in markets like Australia where quality in-stream placements are both expensive and sparse.
Although Patel’s comments that “Millennials … are likely to sacrifice their privacy. However, they’re not going to do that for banners. Why would you? There has to be a value exchange there: good contextually relevant content,” do completely resonate.
In order for brands to use video to successfully drive brand recall or greater response by providing the value exchange required then the following has to happen:
User controlled: Whilst content is king, distribution is queen, the people still rule and the rise of Adblocking is a great example of people exercising their rule and expressing their dissatisfaction and dislike for contextually irrelevant and disruptive video advertising. It is critical then, even with hyper targeted and compelling value adding content that you give consumers the option to skip or interact with the ad.
At Exponential, we recently commissioned a US market research firm EyeSee to investigate the effectiveness of interactive video. You can read the results here but a key finding was that compared to standard pre-roll units, interactive video-driven units held attention for over twice as long, produced higher ad recall rates and boosted brand perception.
Contextually relevant: Not all targeting and retargeting efforts are created equally. There continues to be an over reliance on third party data where advertisers have to trade scale for accuracy. Estimates of the accuracy of a recent study conducted by Mediasmith with Quantcast tested age and gender targeting data from 11 U.S. and U.K. vendors and found that, in the U.S., four of the 14 data targeting solutions evaluated offered little to no benefit compared to the control group of random targeting. Furthermore, only a third of solutions labelled as “high confidence” were consistently more accurate than their “lower confidence” counterparts. Where possible, brands should look to use high quality first or second party data or at least look at the third party data with a discerning eye and a view to pairing it with other sources. Poor targeting is a key driver of consumer alienation.
Relevant content: You don’t have to look too many years back to look at old in-banner videos in order to cringe. By and large they used to consist of the 30 second TVCs in 300x250 on a running loop without audio. Shudder. We’ve come along way since then and the best in market video engagement units of today can provide short, instantly engaging, informative and humorous creative that grab the attention and provide a fair value exchange.
For brands that are able to target effectively and choose the right ad format, video that is focused on engagement can deliver a more compelling and memorable experience and push consideration and purchase in a way that was previously beyond its reach (pun intended).
By Luke Donkin - commercial diirector at Australia and New Zealand for Exponential.