Goodbye To YouTube’s Unskippable 30-Second Ads

Campaign reports that YouTube is moving away from the unskippable, 30-second ad format. By 2018, Google’s video site will completely phase out the long unskippable ads in favor of shorter preroll formats.

According to YouTube, mobile devices account for more than 50 percent of views. A 30-second unskippable ad can have negative effects on a user’s experience when they are watching on a device with a limited data plan.

BI Intelligence’s 2017 Digital Trust survey found that users consider Facebook and YouTube’s ads to be the most annoying.

 In order to improve the user experience, advertisers will have the option of 15- and 20-second unskippable ads instead. The relatively new 6-second bumper ads are also available.

For advertisers who wish for longer preroll options, TrueView ad formats have no time limit but are skippable.

With its increased efficiency, advertisers can expect more changes to their video ad options as Google continues to invest in YouTube. 

How to Make Video Marketing More "Do-able"

Digital video is a new and intriguing opportunity for many advertisers. However, the first obvious roadblock in a video marketing campaign is the cost of production. Common sense tells us that creating a video is more expensive and time consuming than creating an image, however I’m here to tell you to not mark it off your list of opportunities just yet.

Forbes recently published an article titled, “How To Master Video Marketing On a Budget” and listed several tips to get the job done.

First, do your research. With any marketing campaign, you want to make sure you’ll stand out, be noticed, and be successful. Make sure to nail down the purpose of the video. Are you trying to get people to purchase a product, visit a new place, or simply become aware of your brand? Once you’ve figured out your goals, make sure you research your competitors to avoid creating a look-alike ad causing consumers to get déjà vu when they view.

The next suggestion is to ask your audience. Consider using user generated content to increase engagement and authenticity.

Third is to cut back on actors. Let’s face it, actors are expensive. If budget is an issue, try going for animation or only using a few faces to get your message across.

Which leads me to the next recommendation, get to the point. Think about a child telling you a story, you know how it takes forever for them to build to the climax? Well, we don’t want that (usually). On average, “your audience’s attention span is just eight seconds” so we want to deliver the message before they get distracted.

Promote Promote Promote! Put some targeting behind your message. Use tags and keywords to give your video higher rankings. Make sure it’s on YouTube! YouTube is the second largest search engine by volume only falling behind Google, so make sure you’re where the audience is.

Also, feel free to repurpose your video content across a multitude of platforms. Share it on social, send it in your email marketing, post it with a blog, etc.

Lastly, be sure to keep quality high. Never sacrifice the quality of your content. If budgets are tight, look for other ways to make due. Lowering the quality of your content will only lower the viewers opinions of your brand.

Advertisements on the Big Screen Verses the Small Screen

No one reading this blog would be surprised if I stated that people watch television shows on multiple devices. A statement that might intrigue you is that advertisements do not settle in with consumers in the same way across all devices.

Nielsen commissioned a study to be carried out by Hub Entertainment Research to measure how people watched the same five shows and their ability to recall advertisements. Viewers watched the shows: Bones, Family Guy, The Big Bang Theory, Survivor, and Family Feud across televisions, tablets, smartphones, and computers.

After the shows had been viewed, Hub Entertainment Research conducted 15-minute interviews and determined that those watching on televisions had the highest ad-recall percentage at 62, followed by tablets (47%), smartphones (46%) and computers (45%).

Hub also measured “attentiveness” using a scale of 1-10 where 29% of television viewers ranked advertisements in the 8-10 range.

Conclusions were drawn that the study had two primary factors: the size of the viewing screen and the role of multitasking when watching the shows. A mere 7-11% of multitasking was related to the brands featured in ads shown.

Peter Fondulas from Hub Entertainment Research puts it this way, “The more likely culprit for lower ad engagement on smaller screens is an ad delivery approach that doesn’t align well with the expectations, and viewing situations, of consumers watching on mobile devices.”

Simply put, viewers expect to see advertisements on television, that’s all we’ve ever known. Yet, when it comes to viewing video on alternative devices, viewers are less accommodating and accepting of these interruptions.

The Unimaginable Becomes Imaginable: Creative Doors That are Waiting to be Opened

We’ve all heard people talk about the future holding the unimaginable. It’s always interesting to me to think about what could happen in the future and then see what actually comes about. Somehow, my mind is still always blown. So far this year, the trend has continued. Technology has gone to new levels, invented new products, and taken consumers to a whole new world, (almost) literally. With these new technologies come many new opportunities for advertisers.

Jayson DeMers discloses seven marketing trends he expects to dominate in 2016, and sure enough, many of these expectant trends, are new entities in themselves.

First, Google will finally jump on board with in-SERP (search engine results page) video advertising. So this one isn’t new, but it’s new to Google. And it’s a new incident that Google isn’t leading the market in new opportunities, instead they’re following competitors Facebook and Bing who already have in-page video ads.

It is likely that mobile-optimized sites will no longer be good enough. Instead apps will take over as a more convenient, intuitive, and accessible alternative.

Digital assistants will surely open doors for advertisers. Never heard of a digital assistant? Well sure you have, just maybe not with that term; think Siri, Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa, or OK Google. These assistants use search engines when necessary which prompts the task for advertisers to become readily accessible so that the next time an iPhone user asks Siri, “show me the best pizza in my area” your mom and pop’s pizzeria will be the first on the list.

Proceeding on to the world of virtual reality: The Oculus Rift is a VR gaming device whereas other VR devices are used for general use. Surely advertisers can find their place through connections to social media channels, gaming, videos, and possibly even direct messaging.

Lastly, wearable technology is on the rise. The Apple Watch is the first of these devices but most definitely not the last. Again, new devices create new possibilities.

With all of these unimaginable technologies becoming imaginable and reality, advertisers can enter into a brand new world. Benefits include reaching people from the get-go. For example, many younger Internet users don’t see the intrusion of ads because that’s what they’ve always known while the older generations can recall a time where there were no ads. If advertisers are able to insert themselves into these opportunities from the start, users will know the product as is instead of remembering the “good ole days” of an ad free experience. However, with the rise in demand, it is likely the price for digital advertising will follow suit. 

New Email Marketing Techniques Look to Stand Out From the Crowd

CEO of Vidyard, Michael Litt, authors an article on Marketing Land titled, “It’s Time to Get Personal with Email” disclosing the newest ways companies have enhanced their email marketing campaigns.

Litt discusses two ways in which marketers are making more of an impact. The first is incorporating video into their email marketing efforts. A study from Marketo and ClearFit (client) found that their emails using video for a direct call to action had a 53% higher click-to-open rate than emails without. Experian found that open rates increased to 13% (from seven-percent) when the word “video” appeared in the subject line.

Video has impacted the digital world as a whole, so why not bring it to direct email marketing as well?

The second tactic Litt discusses is personalization. I remember being in awe as a kid when my parents would get a direct mail piece that had their name stamped on it. Later to discover that in reality, the simple personalization wasn’t quite as authentic as I had assumed it to be, albeit, I was still impressed. Marketers are revamping that personalization and wrapping it into their emails.

Research from VentureBeat Insights states that more than 90% of marketers see an increase in their open and click-thru-rates when some form of personalization is used in their email marketing.

Litt then leads advertisers to do the seemingly obvious and combine these two methods. Genius, right? Lenovo, a computer manufacturing company, sent out a holiday greeting video to its customers last December including the recipient’s name on a sign by the gingerbread house in the video’s opening screen. In Litt’s own words, “Who wouldn’t open that?” The results showed that he wasn’t alone in that thought. “Seven times as many people clicked through to the personalized video compared with others that weren’t personalized.”

Not only have personalized and video emails shown higher open and click-thru-rates. Act-On found that viewers spent 62% more time than average on the campaign landing page.

Do Lengthy Story Telling Ads Have Hope for a Comeback?

Today’s culture is one that embraces instant information and longs for messages that are short, sweet, and to the point. Our smartphones and tablets are flooded with six-second Vines and disappearing Snapchats. Advertisers have adapted their messages to reach consumers despite their dwindling attention span. So what about the “Mad Men era” emotion filled 60-second spots? Have they vanished alongside the Walkman or will they make a comeback like scrunchies and jean jackets? Google partnered with Mondelez International and Droga5 to find out.

Google’s study consisted of three similar ads for Honey Maid. The ads all varied in length at 15 seconds, 30 seconds, and just over 2 minutes. These ads were run on YouTube’s TrueView skippable ad format. With TrueView, viewers can skip any ad after just five seconds. The ads featured the Gomez family in celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month. First, let’s break down each ad and its intention.

:15 Format

The product first appears at the six-second mark and is present in 33% of the ad. In theory, the shorter length will encourage the viewers to stick it out for “only 10 more seconds” after the skip feature is activated.

:30 Format

Here the story has more depth. The viewer can better understand the family culture. In this format, the Honey Maid product is first shown at the 11-second mark and receives 30% of the screen time. For this length, the idea is to get the best of both worlds; the viewer sees a more in-depth story while only watching an ad for half a minute.

2:17 Format

Perceptibly, this version gives the most depth into the story including family members speaking both English and Spanish. In contrast to the shorter ads, here the product is not shown until the 1:17 mark and is only filmed for 12 seconds which translates into just under 9% of the ad. With this method, the goal is to add richness into the story and produce an emotional connection.

While all three versions performed well, the 30-second spot had the highest VTR (view-through rate) which landed 30% higher than the 15-second spot. Both the longer spots also beat the 15-second spot when in terms of lifting brand favorability. However, if ad-recall and brand recognition are your main goals, the 15-second spot may be the way to go as it generates top-of-mind awareness.

With the TrueView format, ads are only charged if they are watched passed the 29-second mark or if the viewer interacts with the ad. So, unless marketers are solely driving brand recall, it only makes sense to go with the better performing, more interesting, and detailed ads.

After goals are set and ad length is determined, marketers are tasked with the challenge of creating an interesting and emotion provoking story while incorporating their brand/product in a non-disruptive way.

It seems that, like scrunchies and jean jackets, we can expect to see more comprehensive story telling ads exceeding a mere 15 seconds.

To see the entire study and watch the tested ads click here. 

Millennials Win the Prize for Most Active Online Video Viewers

According to research conducted by TiVo, Millennials are the most active online video viewers of any US generation. With that, TiVo dug deeper to find what type of video said Millennials are viewing.

The graph above shows that full length television shows are by far the most popular video streamed online by Millennials. The one surprise on the list, “videos of people playing video games”, but I guess if you’re a true gamer (unlike myself), it’s a necessity.

eMarketer expects to see a growth in online video viewers in upcoming years although it will be gradual since Millennials are already streaming at a high rate. 

Online Video Catches Up with Television

According to a new report from Millward Brown, consumers are spending just as much time watching online video as they are watching television.

This might not come as a surprise to many advertisers, as we have seen growth in online video streaming, however, this shifts how advertisers can best reach their target audience.

Millward Brown conducted a global study of over 13,500 multiscreen viewers (people with a TV and either a smartphone or tablet) in 42 different countries. The study showed that people between the ages of 16 and 45 watch 204 minutes of video a day. 

Those 204 minutes are split equally between television viewing and online viewing.

This study has shown that not only younger generations utilize online video, but also Generation X-ers.

Consequently, viewers tend to find online advertisements irritating. Only 19 percent of online viewers responded in favor of online ads during their videos while 27 percent of viewers feel positively about television ads.

Interestingly enough, 41 percent of people who were included in the study responded favorably to ads tailored to their interest. With that being said, only 25 percent of respondents like ads that had tracked their browsing history and promoted something from a website they had previously visited.

With this information, advertisers can start pushing their video ads onto online platforms. The most important measure of this transition will be the content and context in which the advertisements are displayed to make sure it is received with a positive connotation.