Living in 2016, you cannot force your audience to watch your ad. By this time they became expert in skipping the ad both in online and offline media. Hence, it is important to upgrade your video advertisement strategy to create unskippable video ad campaign.
When an audience watches a video ad in YouTube, it allows him/her to skip the ad after 5 seconds. So if you cannot create interest in that 5 second, your audience is going to skip your ad. Now think about Television media. TV remote allow the viewer to change the channel if advertiser cannot create interest in 3 to 5 seconds, or may be less than that.
3 steps to create unskippable video ad campaign
- Understand your audience
- Create unskippable video ad
- Deploy smartly
Understand your audience:
Before you create the video ad campaign, do research on your audience. Who is your target customer? What they like to watch? Priorities and set the media mix based on their reach and media consumption.
Make some small group of your total target audience based on their interest and behavior. If you have a large target audience, plan for niche to reach the mass creating few small groups.
Create unskippable video ad:
Next step of your unskippable video ad campaign is to create ad for each of the group that you identified in previous step. Yes, I am talking about multiple version of same ad based on media habit of each of these groups. When your audience is watching a music channel or browsing music video in Youtube, you should not push drama kind of ad at that time. Because that doesn’t go with his/ her mood. But when the same audience switched to another channel to watch drama, you can show drama kind of ad.
So it is important to understand genre of channel or program that your audience watch in TV or Youtube and make the versions of ad based on those genre. Some time you need to create long or short or different kind of video ad based on media type. Like, your video ad can be different for Tv and Facebook and Youtube. I know it will increase your production cost. But believe me it will reduce skip rate significantly and generate better impact than one generic ad. Moreover, it will give you option to minimize your deployment cost through optimization.
Few things you need to keep in mind when creating multiple versions of ad. The core story should be same in all version of the ad. You can create different character for different version, but it is better if you can keep same character in all versions creatively. Your product shot should be same in all versions.
Do not plan differently for different version of the ad. It should come from the same production house and same team, unless you are confident what you are doing. Do not treat each of these versions as one TVC/ video ad. It is one video ad but different presentation for different media, genre and audience.
Youtube found some interesting insight analyzing video campaigns run in youtube that can help you:
- Humorous story helps to make the video ad unskippable
- Celebrity or recognized person’s presence in the starting of the ad make it unskippable
- Smiling face at the starting of the ad increase brand matrix
- Product shoots in 1st 5 second increase brand awareness
- Logo on product works better than moving logo
Deploy smartly:
Do not jump into top rated program or channel or interest or site. Otherwise you will be lost in the clatter or end up with spending higher. Better find the niche media or program and dominate there. When you deploy your ad, ensure right version of the ad in right genre and media. For online video ad, target right audience for different version of the ad. Set right level of frequency while deploying the ad.
If your set of niche media or program is unable to give expected reach, then move into better rated program/channel/media. Use your creativity to find impactful but cost effective solution.
These 3 steps is to understand your audience and his/her mood when you showing your ad. If you can deliver the right content in the right time to the right audience, possibility is less that the audience will skip your ad. Create unskippable video ad campaign to give entertaining customer experience that ultimately increase your brand matrix
