Retargeter

Why You Should Get Started with Video Ads

Consumers are spending more and more time consuming media on desktop and mobile devices, providing new opportunities for marketers to use highly engaging videos to connect with their audiences.

In November 2012, comScore found that 20% of all online videos viewed online were video ads, and time spent watching ads constituted 2% of all time spend watching online video. In both October and November of 2012, roughly 86% of U.S. Internet users also self-identified as online video viewers.

When it comes to mobile, the numbers are even more astonishing. YouTube has reported that a quarter of all video views come from mobile?an astonishing increase from the 6% served on mobile a mere year and a half ago.

With time spent viewing online and mobile video consistently headed up and to the right, there’s no better time than now to launch a video ad campaign on desktop and mobile.

The Incredible Power of Online Video

Online video, and by extension online video ads, provides a unique opportunity to engage deeply with your audiences. Video provides an extended alternative to traditional display, search, or social ads, allowing you to tell your brand story online.

Marketers have increasingly turned toward rich media ad units to improve the effectiveness of online display or retargeting campaigns. Video in particular typically sees the highest engagement rates, which is why investing in this channel is such a smart step.

In addition to the power for engagement and branding, online video can be highly focused. By leveraging video RTB platforms, you can target your video ads along the same parameters as traditional display campaigns, including demographic, geographic, and behavioural information. You can also use a gimbal to create stunning sweeping videos for your promotions, visit topgimbals for their top picks and reasoning behind them!

Going Mobile

As powerful a channel as online video surely is, mobile video has significant untapped potential. People watch mobile videos that are on average three times as long as the videos they watch on their desktops?which makes sense when you know that 63% of mobile video views occur while the user is at home, not on the go. With tablet ownership steadily increasing and mobile becoming the screen of choice for media consumption, the opportunities for engagement are only going to skyrocket in the coming years.

Mobile video viewers are also highly active and engaged. In a recent eMarketer survey of mobile video consumers, 92% said that they regularly share videos after watching. A third of survey respondents do so every week. If your video ads are compelling, you can be certain that there will be a social amplification effect as viewers share your content across their networks.

If you’ve been hesitant to get started with mobile (and if you are, you’re not alone!), mobile video could be the perfect starting point. Mobile video ads are some of the most effective ads in the entire digital sphere?they can be highly targeted, high-engagement, brand-building, and action-driving all at once.

How to Get Started Today

For television advertisers, adding an online video campaign can be as simple as re-purposing TV spots. Though you may eventually want to create web-specific video content, TV spots can be an excellent place to start.

If video is part of your content strategy, it can be relatively easy to re-purpose that video content as ads (and as with TV, it’s a great place to start).

If you’ve yet to dive into video, it’s becoming increasingly easy to produce videos yourself. If video production lies outside your area of expertise, it?s also becoming increasingly inexpensive to outsource video production.

For companies invested in retargeting or targeted display, adding a video component is a smart way to boost performance. Retargeting with video has been demonstrably effective for a wide variety of advertisers, and video RTB functions in much the same way as traditional display RTB making it easy to supplement a retargeting campaign with video ads.

Video spending is steadily on the rise. Forrester predicts that spending on online video RTB will reach $667 million in 2013. Mobile ad revenue is predicted to reach $7.19 billion this year, and one important reason for that is mobile video. Advertisers are slowly but surely getting on board with both desktop and mobile video?don’t be the last to get there.