It’s difficult enough to craft video ads to promote your business without the added burden of improving viewability as well. There are many factors that you’d need to bear in mind when creating such ads which could influence how well they fare in the eyes of audiences online. It can take up considerable resources (time, money, skill, etc.) to design video ads and feature them on websites, which is why it makes sense for ad makers to wonder whether it’s all worth it in the first place.
So how do you know whether your video ad was worth the efforts that you poured into it? That’s simple: you start with figuring out how many views you’ve garnered on it. The second step to follow here is to analyze the kind of audiences that you’re bringing in. If your target is viewing your ads, then there’s a good chance that you’d be able to boost sales both in the short and in the long run. After all, if your video ad is good enough, then it shouldn’t be unreasonable for you to expect your views to turn into clicks and your clicks into sales.
However, what do you do when you’ve spent considerable resources on making video ads but they’re just not gaining enough views? The answer to this is multi-dimensional so make sure you keep all the tips and tricks that we’ll discuss throughout this article in mind. Firstly, (and I know this sounds too simplistic) make a good video ad. Yes, it really is that basic. Think about it, some of the brands that earn the highest revenue in the world are those that have come up with some of the best ad campaigns. Every major company from Nike to PepsiCo has created truly memorable video ads over the years.
However, there’s a vast difference between featuring video ads on television and featuring them on the internet. For one, people have a lot less patience while viewing video ads online simply because (more often than not) they have the option to skip such ads after a few seconds of viewing them. In such a scenario, it can be quite challenging to boost viewability since you’d be compelled to feature engaging content in the first few seconds of your ads.
One way to determine how much of your ad a viewer has watched is to check your VTR (View Through Rate). In this way, you’d be able to figure out whether the majority of your audience sticks around to watch your ad in its entirety or skips it after the first few seconds. If you find your VTR to be unsatisfactory, the first thing to do here is to evaluate whether or not the opening seconds of your ad are arresting enough to make a viewer want to stay until the end.
If you believe that you’ve done enough for your video ad in creative terms, then it might be time to look at other factors. One of the things that you could consider is where and how you place your ads online. Let us assume for instance that you wish to place your ads on YouTube. Now, we all know that YouTube allows you to feature your ads in the beginning, middle, or at the end of a video. Therefore, you would first need to decide exactly where you’d like to place your video and whether you’d like to be skippable or unskippable. A word of advice regarding this: no one likes unskippable YouTube ads that are placed bang in the middle of videos so steer clear of placing your ads in this way if you can.
Another way in which you can improve the viewability of your video ads is to use a larger video player. The easier it is for people to identify distinct elements of your ad clearly, the more likely they’ll be to watch your entire video and click on your site link afterward. Reliable statistics have indicated that those videos with dimensions of 2560 X 1440 or higher are more effective in terms of viewability than their smaller counterparts.
Whatever your ad content or video player size might be, bear in mind that it’s also important for you to analyze how your ads are doing. This may well require the keen eye of a professional who possesses the relevant skills to analyze your viewability. In other words, it might be a good idea to get a PPC expert on board to help you understand how your ads are doing and how you can increase visibility. These experts will not only help you to design your ads for maximum impact, but they’ll also find the best website placements for them.
In this way, PPC professionals allow you to boost your revenue with the help of online video ads. Ideally, either your marketing department or PPC individual should test your video ads as well to ascertain how you can maximize viewability. You could place your ads on different positions on pages across different websites and use A/B testing to see which one works best. However, note that such exercises only make sense when you feature your ads on those sites which are likely to attract your target audiences. Moreover, it’s not just about where you place your ads, you can test different formats in terms of font size, color, and other graphic aspects of your ads as well.
In doing so, you’d be able to understand which ad layout is the most effective at improving viewability online. After all, there is no one-size-fits-all solution to increasing brand awareness online and it would be wise to follow as many of the aforementioned tips as you can to achieve good results with your video ad campaign.
