Matt Kaplan recently posted on Mediapost about the importance of making video advertising work for the web. It is an excellent post and one that many advertisers and agencies should consider before setting out the goals of their campaigns. The advertising equivalent of a 12″ remix is the 1min 15 secs version of an ad that was destined for a 30 second slot on TV. Just because you can post a longer version doesn’t necessarily mean that you should and remember that this is online so people are a click away from being elsewhere.
The creative possibilities within a video are bountiful. From the intrusive ‘CLICK ME I’M SOMETHING DIFFERENT’ to the more subtle ‘you seem to be enjoying watching so why don’t you find out more about me’. The tools are widely available to make a video interactive so it seems like now would be a pretty good time for advertisers and agencies to start using them. One important point that I think Matt misses is that a user who is watching a video ad online will almost always have a mouse in their hand and the advertiser needs to think about whether they want the user to use it or not. Interactivity doesn’t make sense in every situation but where there is an opportunity to pass an engaged user on to the point of purchase then why not let them? If someone is giving you their time to watch an ad on YouTube then they are already a pretty engaged user, why make them go elsewhere to look for the product or service that you want them to find.
This is a picture diary of me growing a moustache for Movember. If I hadn’t included the link to donate within the video then people would have to look elsewhere, email me, go to my Facebook page or hunt me out any other way to find the link. By making the clicking and the donating as easy as possible I think that my video has more value. My donations have gone up as a result of it certainly and that was the KPI that I set out ahead of time so for me this has been a success. It may be time for advertisers to move on from thinking that 10,000 views on YouTube is enough of a success, after all – that’s just TV on a computer.
| Find more reactive videos at coull.com |
