Why Video Ads Are Ideal For Performance Marketing
The video ad format has quickly become the darling of the advertising world. It has proven itself time and again, particularly when it comes to creating brand awareness, brand recall, and impressively high CTRs. This is because video ads are a perfect trifecta, combining visual elements, text, and sound which enable the ad to deliver huge amounts of information in a relatively short amount of time. Add to this a video with an emotional impact, and you can see why video ads are the coveted format to show off brands. But building brand awareness is only one way to use video in your marketing strategy.
Enter performance marketing. This is an area in which many advertisers and marketers struggle. After all, bringing in measurable results in the form of online sales is no simple task. It could be a lot easier if performance marketers tapped video ads like their brand managing counterparts. However, to get real performance-oriented results from video ad campaigns, you need to have the right tools, and this is where a company like TheMotion comes in.
It’s easier to understand how video ads for performance marketing differ from brand awareness videos by comparing the two approaches so let’s take a closer look at both.
Video Ads for Brand Awareness
Video ads designed to increase brand awareness focus on giving the viewer a clear picture of the brand’s ethos. These videos are not designed to sell products; instead, they are trying to sell the brand’s image on the whole and create brand fans. Brand awareness videos have the luxury of telling the company story through humor, empathy or other emotions that align with the brand’s culture. Brand awareness videos are typically longer in length, usually 1–2 minutes, and can have different approaches including ‘how to,’ product demos or explainer videos. However, many brands also take an approach that fosters brand awareness by creating a video story peppered with product placement shots.
Video Ads for Performance
When creating videos for performance, the video needs to focus on one thing and one thing only — selling the featured product. Performance is all about sales, so these video ads need to include the most important details about the product (think item name, product description info, price, etc.) while also representing the brand. Every element of the video — images, text and sound — need to combine perfectly with a strong call to action to drive the viewer’s purchase intent.
Creating Video Ads: Brand Awareness vs. Performance
The approach to creating a brand awareness video ad is quite different from that of a video ad designed for performance and the easiest way to understand this is to look at an example. We are all familiar with the recent Pepsi ad starring Kendall Jenner. The ad received quite a lot of backlash from unhappy viewers and, although Pepsi probably invested a huge amount of money in the production of it (casting, film and editing crews, location permits, etc.), the ad was pulled immediately and thrown into the trash. All that money just went down the drain. Now for a global giant like Pepsi that money spent may have been a drop in the bucket but for typical companies, it could cause them to go bankrupt.
Now let’s look at the anatomy of a performance video ad. For this example, we will consider a fictitious e-commerce company that sells clothes. This company has a product catalog consisting of 1000 items with new products being added, removed or put on sale every day. To run performance-oriented ads, this company will need not only need to create video ads for each product but also needs to be able to easily update and optimize the video content.
Speed
Performance ads need to be produced at speed. A company with thousands of products cannot afford to wait weeks or even days to have product videos as stock availability and prices can change daily. By working with TheMotion, our e-commerce brand can connect their product feed via an API and, as the product feed is updated, new videos that reflect the changes can be produced on-demand with the click of a button.
Scale
As the company has so many products to sell, producing video ads for every product is extremely important. Companies can’t afford to only create videos for a few products as those products — even if they are the top sellers — may not appeal to everyone and won’t give the company an opportunity to push other products to the top. Luckily, TheMotion has found a way around this by developing a solution that is designed for scalability, ranging from the production of hundreds to thousands of videos in minutes.
Content Optimization
Building on the previous concept, the ability to optimize the content in a performance video ad is critical. Video ad content can include product images, text, audio, and CTAs. Like with any asset used for advertising, video ads need to be tested and optimized. As marketers, we can make assumptions about what images and messages will resonate best with our target audience, but the proof is in the pudding — or data in the case of advertising. Marketing teams need to have the ability to create multiple versions of the same video and identify which version brings the best results plus have the option to continue to optimize and improve the video ad content to further maximize ROI. TheMotion makes this easy by allowing you to create many versions of the same video for A/B testing and continual optimization.
Partnering with the Right Tech Solution
Competing for the attention of customers is a daunting game, but by partnering with a video ad tech solution that meets your needs, it will become much easier. As a business, your goals include increasing sales while lowering CPAs and having the ability to quickly create and optimize your video ads is paramount to advertising success. At TheMotion we understand this, and that is why we have developed our tech solution exactly as we have. Want to see some real results? Check out the success we’ve had with fashion retailers, hotel brands and e-commerce companies.
Sign up for a demo today and let us show you how we deliver performance video ads that actually perform!
