Why your brands need Video advertising
Video advertising definitely has taken people on awares. That is, we all knew it was coming to play big in the industry, but we didn’t realize just how much of a mark it would make, says Zubby Emordi, Head Ringier Digital Marketing in Nigeria. And now, in 2016, there’s no escaping it, brands either join the video ad revolution or they are left behind.
Digital video ad revenue, according to BI Intelligence, has reached almost $5 billion up from $2.8 billion in 2013 in the US. This shows that marketers are catching on to the many benefits of digital video advertising. Likewise in Nigeria, there has been a steady rise in demand by brands for video advertising because it helps brands stand out from the noise, capture consumers’ attention in a more visual way than text posts can, and sets them ahead of the curve as content incorporates more and more multimedia formats.
Consumers love online video. For instance, in the US the number of digital video viewers is estimated at 204 million in 2016, a 22 million increase from 2013. Online video doesn’t only simply capture viewers’ attention; it also provides significant benefits for the advertisers, too. Video ads have an average click-through rate of 1.84%—higher than any other digital format.
Advertisers can’t just blindly throw their money at video and hope it works. First, they have to understand the space, which evolved dramatically recently and is expected to bring new opportunities in the years ahead.
From Traditional TV to Digital Video.
Increasingly, consumers are flocking to digital video, either on mobile devices or through connected TVs like Apple TV and Roku. For example, eMarketer found that US adults watched one hour and 16 minutes of digital video each day in 2015—up from just 21 minutes a day in 2011, while time spent watching traditional TV has been gradually decreasing for three years.
As a result, marketers aren’t just creating new budgets for digital video spend; they’re actually pulling money from TV budgets to fund online video ads.
According to AOL’s report, half of advertisers who increased their digital video spend took that money directly from TV budgets. Aside from the fact that consumers are embracing online video, another motivation behind this move is that the cost of TV advertising has increased remarkably since 2012. Meanwhile, the digital video space provides more affordable ad options.
For marketers, this means that competition in the online video space is heating up. As such, making the move from TV to digital won’t be enough to ensure engagement. Marketers will have to put their resources into creating high-quality content and distributing it on the platforms that are most popular among their audiences.
The Mobile Migration
Consumers are increasingly using tablets (48%) and smartphones (56%) to view online video; and it is believed that video consumption on these devices will grow soon to 35%.
As such, marketers are smartly focusing their attention towards reaching users on-the-go. In the US, mobile video ad spend saw a whopping 75% growth in just one year, skyrocketing from $1.5 billion to $2.7 billion.
So, marketers are embracing mobile apps such as Snapchat and Instagram, which provide opportunities for brands to sponsor in-feed video ads and publish branded content. They’re also tapping into Facebook and Twitter’s mobile ad formats.
Part of what’s so enticing about these platforms is their targeting capabilities. For instance, when Instagram opened its API to all advertisers, it also synced up its targeting options with those of its parent company, Facebook. Marketers can now create video and then target audiences based on age, location, gender and interests. They can also upload their own data about buyers to create Custom Audiences.
Incorporating Video into Your Strategy
As more marketers venture into the video space, either by rolling out programmatic ads or publishing branded stories, it’s important to gather as much knowledge as possible about the platforms and content formats available. This way, you can get the most out of your ad spend and be prepared to adapt to inevitable changes in the landscape.
Essentially, with viewer attention shifting away from traditional TV and towards digital video, and with more advanced targeting options released every year, video is not a strategy that marketers can avoid for long. In fact, in years ahead, it should be a serious consideration for your advertising mix. Otherwise, your competitors will be off and running with awesome video while you’re left saying “hello” from the other side.
Here in Nigeria, marketers and brands cannot pretentiously say the potency of video advertising is ‘a nine- day wonder’, which will go away in a fleeting time. Rather, video advertising will etch itself as one the front-runner tools in the marketing mix because it can drive volumes. With a tele-density of 108.66% as at end of 2015, 97 million internet users and 46.1% internet penetration, plus an ever ready film industry churning out movies on video, which is a veritable platform or medium for advertising, marketers can do the mathematics of driving their brands using video advertising as a marketing tool and tell us where they stands.
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