By now we know that videos are an integral part of our daily lives, but also allies for our businesses in the form of video ads , be they Facebook video ads, YouTube, etc.
Today, in the digital age, people are constantly consuming and sharing videos with their loved ones, colleagues and acquaintances.
From animal videos to informational tutorials to promotional content, the variety of video types available is endless.
Precisely for this reason it becomes essential to include video advertising in your web strategy
This represents a golden opportunity to showcase your brand differently and creatively through engaging and high-performing video advertising.
There are several studies that confirm this and show the clear advantages of video advertising campaigns .
One of the most interesting data is that video advertisements seem capable of converting up to 70% more .
Not to mention that the ROI (return on investment) is also improved. Source: Vidyard
4 Reasons to Choose Video Advertising
Creating video ads alongside text or image ads for your brand campaigns can have many benefits.
There are many reasons for choosing to create video ads, so let’s summarize the 4 most important ones according to data collected by some studies:
Video advertising is more engaging : videos are immersive, engaging and more engaging than images , or at least that’s what 74% of companies surveyed by Renderforest noticed . If someone stops to watch a video for 3 seconds, it’s very likely that they’ll stay for 10 seconds, and if they get to 10, there’s a good chance they’ll even get to 30.
An important confirmation also comes from the Google Ads Performance Max campaigns , particularly effective campaigns especially for e-commerce (but also in terms of lead generation, both B2B and B2C).
This type of campaign covers all placements in the Google ecosystem (Google Maps, Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Discovery) and makes extensive use of Google AI to segment and intercept users who are actually searching.
To do this, a lot of creative assets are required : lots of titles and descriptions, images, brand logo, the various extensions (now called assets) and even videos.
In our experience, adding video to Max campaigns significantly increases yield, CTR and average result
Also, where videos are not added, for example, Google Ads will try to compose a video from images and titles/descriptions inserted. Of course, this video will not be as effective as a video created ad hoc with a precise message, tone of voice and aesthetics.
The moral of the story is this: online marketing tools are becoming more and more sophisticated; it is up to the company to keep up and produce quality content to maximize the potential of advertising and communication platforms.
Possibility of reaching new customers : this is thanks to the increasingly extended and perfected function of the machine learning of the platforms . These software are capable of understanding the concepts of the creativity even in a very detailed way, then favoring the contents that people like the most and that respond to their searches, needs or purchasing intentions. From this point of view, videos have a narrative capacity that is decidedly more complete than any other multimedia content.
Richer content and less effort for users to enjoy : in 30 seconds of advertising video you can say many more things than a post with only images and texts. Another important thing is that a video requires less effort to be enjoyed than a written copy, this often makes the difference between a person who dwells on the advertising message or not.
Increased Sales with Video Ads : 87% of Wyzowl respondents said video marketing helped them increase sales . Generally speaking, most marketers who use video advertising also see a higher ROI than with simple images.
Video Ads – Sell More with Video Advertising
Source Wiz Owl
So how do we know if our video ads are working?
There are certainly many metrics to take into consideration and they are not limited to those related to video ads.
The user journey has become chaotic and complex ( Messy Middle! ) and individuals go through multiple touchpoints over time before reaching conversion; what we can do is keep this in mind when designing our marketing strategy, constantly looking at the data.
1. Do ad creatives capture people? Do they stay for at least 3 seconds?
This is one of the first data to check on the backends of advertising platforms. As we also said in our article Social Video: a “Must have” for social media marketing , the first 3 seconds make the difference between a successful video and a flop.
Even more so if we are talking about a clip for an advertising campaign to find new customers: here the first 3 seconds are really decisive and define the Hook Rate of your video ads on Facebook, YouTube, etc.
If you are managing to stop people from scrolling or skipping, you have already done a good job with the creation of your video advertising content, this is the first step towards a good result.
2. Is the video interesting? How many watch it up to 50/75%?
Once you have checked the hook rate of the first 3 seconds of your content, another important point to analyze is the quality of your video ads in relation to your target.
To do this, an important metric to look at is the video view %, compared to the previous data
This comparison is very useful especially to help you understand how many users you lose at each step.
Only in this way, thanks to the data , will you be able to truly understand the quality of the content you have created for your video advertising.
Analyzing the percentages tells us if we have created valuable storytelling within our content, if it answers questions/doubts deemed interesting by our target and if the video is capable of engaging the people to whom the algorithm has decided to show it after analyzing it (or based on our targeting).
video ads – facebook metrics for video
3. Does Video Ads drive action? How many users go deeper by following the CTA?
Consider for example a video of a razor, the first 3 seconds make you understand what it is , the rest of the video gives you details, transmits solutions, probably also emotions and tells you the story of how you too, with that very tool, could change and improve the perception of yourself or improve your appearance…
But then you scroll and don’t click on the button with the CTA – the call to action (which perhaps leads you to purchase the product).
It’s not a complete Game Over, because this type of communication contributes to Brand Awareness and leads the user to take the path (funnel?) that you want.
However, the constant lack of concrete action can make us understand something important
The chosen audience is wrong or the video is not clear enough in the “eyes” of the machine learning software, so it is showing it to non-target people, because it lacks details. Or it could be a video to a “cold” user target, which is still in the very early information phase.
The angle chosen for video advertising and the related trigger are not effective on the target audience, they only work as “simple like/view grabbers” or brand awareness.
The content of your video ads doesn’t answer the main doubts, doesn’t resolve the blocks to purchase or fails to dismantle some preconceptions of potential customers.
Some things you can consider : evaluate the video you made taking into account how clear and immediate it is ; test other hooks or answers to different doubts and questions; analyze again and if necessary review the target audience by searching on social media, e-commerce platforms or search engines and understand what they are looking for, how, for what reasons and what doubts they have.
But be careful: these considerations are valid in theory
But you must also consider any aspects related to the weakness of the brand, the poor technical quality of the video.
4. Does the video attract quality traffic? How do users behave on the site?
After seeing the important metrics to consider on social platforms, now let’s try to understand if our video advertising campaign attracts quality traffic or not.
To do this, Google Analytics comes to our aid . At this stage, it is important to see how people behave once they arrive on our site.
To understand it better, we need to take into account the phase of the funnel we are in
In the bottom phase, the most important data concerns (almost always, but not only) monetization, in the top and mid phase of the funnel there are some data that can give us good indications on the quality of the traffic.
The data to consider are:
Page scroll: we can set it to different percentages and compared with the average duration of engagement (we’ll see it later) it helps us understand how interesting the landing page is for those who arrive there.
Average engagement duration: this can be seen per single page or for the entire site and helps us understand how long users stay on average on a specific page/on our site. To fully understand user behavior , one solution could be to install behavior tracking tools such as Hotjar , a famous tool for recording what users do on your site, maintaining their privacy.
Number of pages visited: a very useful metric for understanding
How much the traffic arriving on the page is actually interested in the product/service, the brand and the whole world that gravitates around it.
Add to cart and/or lead generation: this is perhaps the most immediate to read and gives us useful information about the user’s intention. These two metrics show the strong propensity towards conversion.
At this point it’s all up to you: analyze your YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. video ads; find out what blocks your customers and understand how to provide the right reassurances, to demonstrate that you can help them solve their need.
