Video Advertising
Instantly create a connection with your target audience through video content.
You don’t have to dig deep to understand why video advertising is becoming the dominant force in the digital marketing universe. With the continued dwindling of attention spans and the increase of mobile devices, utilizing highly visual and engaging content is imperative to stand out from the crowd. Your ability to connect with your target audience through visual content just might form the basis of the relationship between them and your brand.
Video advertising at a basic level is comprised of online display ads that use video instead of or alongside static images. However, in recent times video advertising has become more synonymous with video ads that play before, during, or after a video stream, such as on YouTube or Facebook.
Video advertising has become the digital marketing trend in recent years, and it’s only expected to gain in popularity. According to a recent report by Wyzowl on video usage, 87% of businesses are now using video as a marketing tool, which is up from 81% in 2018 and 63% in 2017. Based on statistics alone, if you’re not using video in some form of marketing yet, you’re already behind.
So why is video advertising important? First and foremost, video is engaging. It draws in the attention of your audiences, sparks emotion, and creates a connection. Nowadays our apps and online experiences are clogged with static images advertising anything and everything causing the user to scroll monotonously past your ad without taking a second look.
Enter video advertising, a disruption to our marketplace and re-engaging the user with entertaining content that is versatile and easy to digest. In fact, 96% of people say they’ve watched an informational video to learn more about a product or service, with 68% of people saying that it’s their preferred method of product and service-learning. On top of that, 80% of users are able to recall a video ad they’ve viewed online in the past month.
Videos help explain products to consumers, and in a world full of choice, our consumers no longer need a sales pitch; that’s what a quick Google search is for. Instead, our target audiences need to perceive value; why your hotel will provide a better experience than your competitor. And the easiest way to do this is through a sleek and compelling video.
We work with the following three platforms to distribute our video advertising content:
- Social media video ads
- In-stream video
- TrueView video ads
Social media and video are a match made in heaven. GCommerce strategically combines Facebook and Instagram’s targeting capabilities/audience creation with video ads and is able to increase ad engagement. Static social media ads still have a purpose, but video ads not only engage your target audience but also qualify that audience through engagement performance metrics. For example, Hotel X serves a video ad to people who meet their demographic and geographic criteria on Facebook, but this audience has never been introduced to Hotel X previously. When viewers interact with the video ad, GCommerce creates custom audiences based on that interaction which allows us to then tailor future ads and messaging that viewer is served. This creates a very strong conversion funnel and increases ROAS.
What are programmatic channels? They’re real-time markets created by ad exchanges, where advertisers, publishers and networks can buy and sell video ads and reach their audiences at scale with lower transaction costs and fewer manual processes. Utilizing programmatic gives advertisers the ability to reach targeted audiences at scale. Programmatic video ad units appear within the body of a page, typically an article or blog, that offers video ad inventory and is available through the ad exchange. You pay when the video loads on the site, which counts as an impression.
As the world’s largest video platform, YouTube offers a way for brands and consumers to connect in a meaningful way. When distributing video ads on YouTube, GCommerce utilizes in-stream pre-roll video ad units. This means that our ad plays before the viewer sees the content they already selected.
Targeting capabilities through YouTube are mainly focused on audiences that have already engaged with your brand in some way. These YouTube users that have subscribed to your channel or uploaded email lists.
When a viewer clicks on a video, in-stream ads play before that video and after five seconds, the ad gives the viewer the option to continue watching or to skip the ad. You pay when a viewer opts to watch at least 30 seconds of the ad or when the viewer clicks on any promotion or any other element of the ad.
Start connecting with your audience with more compelling content than just a picture of a hotel bed or an image of your product. Show the experience they can expect and create an emotional connection. Not only are they more likely to purchase with your brand, but they are more likely to become a loyal fan.
