Tips for effective video advertising online

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when planning a video advertising campaign

1. Target your ads to your audience
Sophisticated targeting is the hallmark of online advertising. In video campaigns as in other online advertising campaigns, it is important to use the targeting options available to you and make them match your target audience as closely as possible.

2. Create high quality video
You want to make sure that your video puts your product or your message in a good light. Higher quality ads will do a better job conveying the quality of your product. With the advances in technology, however, mobile cameras and production apps, you can create polished video ads yourself (see more later in this lesson).

3. Focus on the beginning of the video
In many video platforms, users can skip a video ad after a few seconds. Often, you don’t pay when users skip. Getting your message across in the first few seconds gives you a chance to influence users who skip, or it may help you to capture the user’s attention enough to make them sit through the ad.

4. Make your ad work without audio
In many video platforms ads will start playing without user interaction but also without audio (until the user interacts). So, if your video can get a message across without audio, you have a chance to influence non-interacting users. And, if your visuals are powerful, you increase the chances users will interact with your ad.

5. Use short video ads
Users have little patience for ads, especially when they are consuming short form video content. Keep your ads short - research shows that 15 second video ads perform well online. Shorter ads (e.g. the 6 second bumper ad on YouTube) are becoming popular as well. While ads shorter than 15 seconds may not give you as much time to put your brand message across, they can be powerful for conversion focused ads as well as remarketing.

6. Choose the tone of the ad based on your objective
You can use different tones to bring your message across in a video ad. You can use humor, emotion or you can keep things informational. Research from Yahoo! Shows that different tones work better depending on your objective. When trying to influence millennials, humor worked best if the objective is to generate awareness about a brand or product. Emotion was more powerful to create brand affinity (or liking), and informational ads did better at converting users to a purchase.

7. Include a Call to Action
As with other advertising, it is important to include your call to action in your video ad. Many video ad formats allow you to add a button users can click where you can provide a call to action. Or, you can include a URL or a reference to your Facebook page for instance, to make sure users know how to follow up on your message.