Complete Beginner’s Guide to What is Video Advertising

Pissed off about YouTube’s double unskippable ads before every video and sometimes even between videos? Yeah, it’s a real nasty move from YouTube. But there’s a reason they do it - because online video advertising is a gold mine. So what is video advertising? Why are they so popular? And how can you utilize it to your advantage? Let’s find out!

1. What is video advertising?

Video advertising, sometimes called digital video advertising or online advertising, quite literally, means advertising within videos. So this means that every advertisement that comes before, during, and after a video is video advertising - or often known as pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll. Video advertising is pretty much the same as traditional advertising you can see on television - except that video ads is maybe shorter, and sometimes skippable.

According to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) guidelines, there are three types of video advertising formats:

• Linear video advertising is the traditional type of video ads that is presented before, in the middle of, or after the video content is consumed by the user, much like the way a TV commercial can play before, during, or after a certain program.
• Non-linear video advertising is the type of video ads that runs concurrently with the video content so the users see the ad while viewing the content.
• Companion video advertising is usually in text format, display ads, rich media, or skins that wrap around the video experience.

2. Programmatic video advertising

So you now know what is video advertising. Awesome. And then you decided to jump on the online video advertising bandwagon. Even better. Now, exactly how would you do it? Would you just go around and meet big people from popular companies and then talk and negotiate with them to put your ads on their sites?

Well, yeah. I mean, that’s how people used to do it in like, 10 years ago, when “Frozen” wasn’t even a thing. But this is 2021, you guys. No one talks to anyone anymore. And that is why we have programmatic video advertising.

What is programmatic video advertising you ask? Well, programmatic video advertising means that instead of going through a person, you utilize the use of bots to buy ad space based on preset requirements. You can define your ideal target audience in detail, provide access to your ads, and set a budget. The bots then take your noted requirement and use real-time bidding to display your ads to a user that fits your target customer profile. This entire process can happen in the short time it takes to load a page. Incredible, isn't it?

Theoretically speaking, programmatic video marketing is the superior and way more effective way of carrying out what is video marketing. Because of course the bots will be better and more efficient than humans at targeting the exact right target, and thus this will help you to increase your conversion rate and save you a lot of money in the long run.

3. Mobile video advertising

Ever been playing some dumb games on your phone and come across really, really stupid and annoying video ads about some weird games? Yeah, that’s mobile video advertising.

Mobile video advertising entails delivering video ads to users’ phones or other mobile gadgets like tablets. The main difference between mobile video advertising and traditional online video advertising is that this sometimes requires to be scaled down to fit a mobile device’s smaller screen - and sometimes they can be incorporated even if the phone is not connected to the internet. Therefore, the incredible reach that mobile video advertising has can make the extra effort well worthwhile.

Since nowadays, more people own a mobile device or tablet than a PC, and the average person spends significantly more time daily on the phone than on a desktop, therefore mobile video ads can open up a lot of new marketing opportunities. Actually, a person spends up to 170 minutes on their phone, and only 120 minutes on a PC or a laptop. Now you see why mobile video marketing is a juicy, juicy market that everyone wants to jump on.

So let’s go through some of the benefits of mobile video marketing, shall we?

• Cost-effective: A mobile video ads campaign generally costs a much lower budget than a desktop or traditional advertising campaign.
• Precise targeting: The data you got from a customer’s phone is actually quite consistent, and it can give you an easy way to collect and utilize your customers' data to improve your mobile ads targeting. It can help you to employ various behavioral or contextual targeting techniques to funnel your mobile ads to the most relevant target audience.
• High conversion rate: Video advertisement brings back a very high conversion rate, compared to other types of advertisement. And mobile video advertisement - with the data and precise marketing that we mentioned above - has an even higher conversion rate.
• Interactive engaging: Remember those ads with mini-games that you can play with for like, 5 seconds? That was fun. And that is also one of the best things about mobile video advertising - it allows you to have a brief experience of the game, and it encourages you to try for more.

4. Native video advertising

Native advertising is an advertisement that blends in with the site it's placed on. This style of advertising is very popular in the form of a text-based advertorial or a banner, and it works great! If you don’t know much about native advertising, you can try our Banner Slider extension, which is extremely helpful in creating captivating and interactive banners.

Since native advertising is popular and commonly used, it's applied to video ads also. Native video advertising is really great when it comes to the freedom to choose the placement of ads. You can place native video advertising on many channels, including but not limited to blogs, news sources, vloggers' channels, social media platforms. Native video advertising is actually extremely customizable, and it can provide a lot of value to a potential customer who is already primed to enjoy the content. 

The best thing about native video ads is that it often doesn’t look like ads. It takes a softer approach to sales and ads than traditional display ads, and it results in a substantially higher click-through rate too.

5. YouTube Ads

So, if you want to start your online video advertising campaign, where is a better place to start than the biggest online video platform on earth - YouTube? YouTube has become a premier video channel without any worthy competitors. Therefore, YouTube is a highly cost-effective channel for brands to convey their messages of products or services to specific target markets through online video advertising.

Technically, YouTube ads mainly depends on the user data harvested and provided by Google - much like almost all platforms nowadays to be honest. But that is why video ads on YouTube has more precise targeting and a higher turnover rate. If you execute a video advertising campaign on YouTube, you can get millions of views. YouTube ads often costs from $.10 to $.30 on each view, and it comes with three types of format for specific lengths and positioning for you to choose.

TrueView Ads

This type of video advertising often appears at the beginning, middle, or end of a video that the viewer has chosen to watch. TrueView ads are skippable ads, and thus, you only get charged if someone opts to watch your advertisement.

TrueView ads are the ideal type of YouTube ads for you if what you are looking for is exposure and awareness about your product or services. They are easy to be "discovered" by your customers, and they are also very cost efficient since you only get charged for any view that is longer than 30 seconds.

Bumper Ads

Another type of YouTube ads is the short bumper ads. They are unskippable ads that often last about 5 to 6 seconds and can be played before, in the middle, or after a video.

Most of the time this type of YouTube ads format is used to reinforce brand image and improve your brand awareness because they're a quick and efficient way to make you visible in front of customers.

Pre-roll Ads

Pre-Roll YouTube ads is not much different from the other two - it's also non-skippable and can be played before, in the middle, or after a video. The main difference is that pre-roll YouTube ads can last for more than 15 seconds, and marketers often utilize this format to captivate the audience through an educational or entertainment journey.

6. Social Media Ads

With the rise of social media, it is no surprise that all of the social media platforms nowadays join into the juicy online video advertising market. Facebook and Instagram advertising can be easily manipulated by Facebook Ads Manager. 

There are of course some different types of Facebook and Instagram video advertising. On both platforms, you can have video ads that appears in the news feeds, in-stream, in the videos that people watch, or use paid Facebook and Instagram stories.

Facebook and Instagram also often have a lot of choices in settings regarding your target audience. You can use these detailed targeting options to reach people of different age groups, geographical areas, and interests. 

Social media video advertising in general and Facebook and Instagram video ads specifically are extremely cost efficient, and the best thing is that they can easily be targeted to reach a huge pool of potential customers. Facebook often counts a video view as anything longer than 3 seconds but you can optimize your video ads for ThruPlay, which only charges you once someone has viewed the ad for 15 seconds or 97% completion.

As with online video advertising anywhere, remember to size your video advertising correctly. Facebook newsfeed video ads use different dimensions than Instagram Story video ads, so even though it is possible to use one ads across multiple formats, you might want to create a unique video optimized for each of these platforms.

A video advertising on Instagram is extremely good in directing traffic to your website, and if you have an Instagram page, how cool would it be to have your website synchronized with your Instagram gallery? Check out our newly updated, best seller Instagram Shop extension, which can make your website as shiny as your Instagram page.

7. What is video advertising role in the marketing scene?

Video advertising tends to get more engagement - more organic engagement - than other types of media and advertising. People can remember video advẻtising better than other forms of advertisement, and moving images are likely to be more impactful and memorable than still images.

If you are a marketer, you can gain a lot from all of the perks that come with video advertising. It can catch people's attention easily, and if people come through, your brand awareness goes up. There are many ways that you can create a compelling video advertising which will capture the viewers’ interest, and the only limit is your imagination. And also your budget - video advertising can be more costly because you need a whole team for creating videos and all. But you know - worth it.

Plus, if you know how to, digital video advertising can be shareable, which often leads to increasing reach. With the rise of social media, people usually share the videos they love, and most streaming platforms nowadays offer built-in sharing buttons.

Video advertising can also convey lots of information in a limited amount of time, too - and it makes video advertising an ideal way for telling a story. If you tell a story that relates to your customers, then they’re more likely to remember what they see, and more importantly, remember your brand.

And another perk of digital video advertising is that you can optimize video for mobile devices. We've already talked about mobile video advertising - and it's effective. For starters, you and your marketing team should make sure that the video plays smoothly on mobile devices and looks great on small screens. Imagine what people will be doing when they come across your video advertising, then adjust your video advertisement accordingly.

Conclusion

So have you learned about what is video marketing yet? Good. Even though video advertising often has a higher upfront cost compared to other forms of advertising because you need a whole team of production to create and launch the ads, it's something really worth investing in since the conversion rates and clicks you get back from it are often way more efficient than other types of marketing. So get out there, and let’s make some vids!