About Video Ads
Video Ads Explained – Learn The Tactics, Tips And Jargon Fast
The beauty of video ads in short are that the media industry thrives on them, to support every day people who watch videos on a daily basis because they are relevant to the content that they are currently viewing.
Whether you are watching an entire film, movie clip, video blog, presentation or any other type of video related content chances are you will witness some form of ad appear at the beginning, middle or end.
Once you delve into this type of online video marketing you will begin to discover new terminology that is fundamentally used across most marketing methods, tools and platforms but have certain aspects that pertain video based.
Two main types of media ad pricing models
Such terms as Cost Per Engagement (CPE) which is used to describe a users action only when they actually engage with the video, so that it plays upon rolling over it or clicking on it.
Also Cost Per Action (CPA) known to many as pay per action is a unique pricing model where a publisher or advertiser pays only when a specified action is completed, for example a user may engage with a video and be lead onto a capture form which they will have to fill in before proceeding, another may be an actual sale.
How to develop killer video ads that create an impact
Even if you have never created or brainstormed video ads before you must follow three important steps that will quite literally guide you into a killer sequence of tried and tested pointers:
* Six characteristics – By developing your own characteristics and adopting others from various sources you are immediately setting yourself up for success, you are looking for trigger responses that make your media ads stand out from the crowd and demand attention.
Take the following six and use them if they suit your current campaign, they are not vital for every ad, just your unique business model. (Fun, entertaining, exciting, unique, new and valuable).
* Creative flow – Have you ever been so in the zone that you develop something of pure genius? Well for most this is a difficult challenge but for others, it comes easy.
When piecing together an ad try using this brainstorming technique to fire up your creative juices – take five post-it notes and stick them on your wall use one of the sticky notes for the central idea, for each note jot down a main sub-category of your central idea and elaborate on that subject. You will notice a spiral effect and ideas will just roll in.
* Your message – What’s the message you want to get across? Your message is the most important part of the video but it cannot come across as salesy in any way shape of form, it needs to dance around the selling part and head straight for the ‘value’ giving part. So make sure you always have your message clear in your mind but always ask the question, “am I offering the viewer something of value?”.
If your ad is funny and entertaining then the viewer will see this regardless of the ad itself or what you are selling, they will want to watch it again and also pass it onto their friends because they enjoyed it so much, get the idea? This one key point has been used in thousands of media ads, world wide.
Technical jargon and common industry formats
Rich media advertising is taking on a whole new direction as you will see on the major social media platforms such as You Tube and My Space. As time progresses other big platforms like Digg and Facebook will add some form of interactive ad which will rival many other sites, so now is the time to start learning as much as you can about each format, to gain the biggest advantage.
Different video type ad formats used
There are many industry formats or video types offered by a multitude of networks however below is a list of the most common:
* In-page – will appear outside of the ad unit, usually on the top or bottom, you can measure the metrics of these ads also
* In-stream – come in three forms which are pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll, these are also known as overlays. Shows once the content is played and in some cases can be closed
* Floating – floats in, on and around the video content and can be customised to suit the advertisers needs
Future technology
As you well know technology these days is improving quickly and developing at incredible rates, this is why you will see You Tube ads tinkering with various ad formats and overlay technology which is the premise of invitation advertising, in relation to the content being watched.
A video clip of the future will use companion attributes that match the video content to the advertisement perfectly, so you can most certainly expect a smarter format of ad shortly, one possibility that you could see very soon is the movie rental market using the ‘live steam’ approach and movie ads (film ads) being shown repeatedly throughout.
