Exponential

Attention has emerged as a key metric to measure the effectiveness of a video ad campaign. That might sound surprising, at a time when advertisers are competing for consumer attention more than ever. But even with the option to skip a video ad, brands can still build compelling stories that grab and retain consumer attention. Attention as a KPI can be measured via eye tracking and interaction rates to measure the length of browsing and interaction time.

Defined by Nielsen Vizu* as a percentage increase in your main marketing campaign objective, brand lift helps you discover how your video ads will affect your long-term brand equity. To effectively measure lift for branding campaigns, you must work with soft metrics (not clicks) to see if your ads prompted changes in how people interact with your brand. Think metrics such as brand recall and brand favorability.

More and more, consumers want content tailored to them that addresses their specific needs, and they often prefer it comes from the experts. According to inPowered’s “The Role of Content” study*, expert third-party content was 83 percent more effective at lifting product purchase considerations than user reviews. Yet, finding quality content is often a blocker to pursuing advertising for some brands. Forty-seven percent of retail marketers surveyed in the IAB Video Ad Spend Study said quality of content was the biggest obstacle to spending more on original digital video advertising. Part of the solution is infusing interactive features into your ads that can drive results. There are different content ideas that are suitable depending on your vertical.

For retail, advertisers can foster engagement with a “find a location” option, image or product gallery and promotions.

For auto, marketers can consider including a map of local dealerships, a color selector or even integrate third party content such as car advice and reviews.

Dwell time is a metric measuring the amount of time a user hovers over or pauses on a piece of content as opposed to someone who scolls past it. Video can nearly double the average dwell time and lead to positive increases in ad recall.

Video is the most powerful vehicle for engagement. Definitions of engagement vary, but we can apply it to mean a measure of a user’s active attention with advertising, triggered by an indication of responsiveness and measured by the amount of time spent with the ad unit. Working with a partner who understands your business and your goals can help you hone in on the right KPIs for engagement.

Whether expandable or in-stream, when it comes to picking video ad formats, consider those that prioritize opt-in engagement, viewability and active attention. To better understand the effectiveness of different formats, Exponential commissioned research firm EyeSee* and found that compared to standard pre-roll video and display formats, Exponential’s Video Driven Experience (VDX) ad formats held attention for over twice as long, produced higher ad recall, stoked purchase consideration and boosted brand perception. There are different VDX formats that are suitable depending on your vertical.

For travel brands, a VDX billboard ad might drive better engagement, as the format provides a larger brand canvas.

For quick service restaurants, a VDX mobile adhesion better might drive more results, as people use their mobile on the go.

Geolocation helps advertisers learn where a consumer is physically in addition to understanding where their attention is focused. Geolocation data can be used to match consumers with the right video ad, at the time at which it will be most relevant.

Geolocation data can be especially compelling for QSR ads on mobile, for which the brand can pinpoint an individual’s location and send them a coupon or offer while they’re out and about.

High-impact formats expand across the page to have an effect on the user. The impact itself comes from the format vs. the creative elements within the ad itself and will often result in higher engagement and reach. Exponential offers high-impact, expandable units made possible through our direct publisher partnerships.

In-stream video ads appears in the video player itself, allowing advertisers to deliver their brand message within the stream where the targeted user is visually engaged with the content. This allows advertisers to capture their audiences’ attention by drawing them into an opt-in interactive brand experience. There are three main types of in-stream video ads: pre-roll, shown before the video content; mid-roll, which appear in between the beginning and end of the video stream; and post-roll, shown after the video has completed.

JavaScript is used in Video Player-Ad Interface Definition (VPAID), one of two video standards created by the IAB (the other being Video Ad Serving Template, or VAST). VPAID is implemented in either JavaScript or Flash to provide a universal guideline dictating interaction, such as play or pause, between ad units and video players to provide interactive advertising experiences. VPAID typically works better in display formats. VAST enables the pre-loading of video ads for in-app inventory, making it a better fit for mobile campaigns. Which standard you use depends on the type of campaign you are running, in which format and channel, and your measurement goals.

The key performance indicator for your video campaign will depend on a number of factors, including, as mentioned above, how you plan to measure brand awareness of your campaigns. Some of the KPIs currently used in video campaigns include:

• Engagement rate
• Interaction rate
• Average time spent
• Click-through rate
• Video completion rate

Some marketing experts believe the loyalty loop is replacing the traditional sales funnel. Whereas marketers until recently relied on “push” marketing targeted to consumers at different phases of the buyer journey, certain industries, such as auto, have seen their funnels come to adopt a “loyalty loop” which include, according to General Assembly*: initial consideration; active evaluation; buy; enjoy; advocate; bond. There are also two types of loyalists, active ones, who might recommend a brand to a friend and heavily promote it on social media, and passive ones, who continue to use a brand but don’t share about it. The latter group are the ones that could more easily be lured to another brand, making ongoing video campaigns a smart branding choice. In the auto industry alone, McKinsey found “a six-fold difference in the ratio of active to passive loyalists among major brands, so companies have opportunities to interrupt the loyalty loop.”

As referenced in other definitions above, measurement in video can be tricky given that many of your metrics will tie to brand awareness instead of direct response, the latter which tends to be easier to quantify. Also, there still does not exist universal measures of video ad success—measurement vendors each have their own approaches and different datasets. In addition to identifying the right KPIs that will tie to your business goals, the important thing to remember is that you should have the right technology, partners and standards at your disposal to make sure measurement is accurate, transparent and set up for success. Aligning on goals, setup, reports and information-sharing will benefit your measurement strategy. Our new VDX Connect video product provides advertisers with performance-based metrics offering more insight into how their video campaigns are impacting results and ROI.

Native advertising refers to paid, in-feed content that works seamlessly with other content on a publisher platform to provide a better user experience. Native done well is indistinguishable from organic content. Native video tends to be more focused on educating or entertaining a consumer than promoting a product, and can include video in feeds of social networking sites on which it was either uploaded to or created, YouTube and content discovery networks. Native video usually runs for at least 30 seconds and requires a consumer to click to play, differentiating it from pre-roll, which tends to be shorter in length and required for a user to watch to access the content they originally came to view.

Outstream video ad units run outside a video stream, as opposed to formats such as pre-roll that run within a video stream. Outstream ad units are contained in a large-format player that automatically plays when a reader scrolls near it within an article or social media feed or within a game. Outstream is often used by publishers with limited video content.

Pre-roll are videos of about 15 to 30 seconds in length that autoplay and precede content a viewer intends to watch. Some pre-roll video ads are skippable after five seconds. Exponential’s VDX interactive pre-roll ads are uniquely designed to drive user engagement, compelling users to opt in to an interactive brand experience. In our EyeSee survey of 500 internet users*, average browsing time per viewer was 28 percent greater for VDX pre-roll over standard pre-roll.

One of the struggles with video advertising is a lack of quality inventory and the struggle to produce—from both cost and resource perspectives—new video content. Look for partners that focus on direct, first-look inventory access with premium publishers and those with proprietary formats built in-house so you can focus on your video vision without having to worry about production.

Contrary to popular opinion, video can be used in direct response campaigns that drive to actions such as form fill-outs and clicks (as opposed to branding campaigns which are trying to create awareness). While formats like pre-roll align more with branding campaigns, other formats such as video-enabled teasers can add interactive layers that compel users to take an action.

An airline might offer the chance to win a vacation package that a user can enter by clicking on a link right within the ad.

What if ads were as wonderful as the trailers preceding movies? They can be, especially in a visually appealing format like video—but they must tell an authentic narrative.

Around the world, consumers associate “badvertising” with disruptive online content. Eighty-three percent of global consumers* say online advertising interrupts their online experience. It’s not about your products and services—it’s about why your brand is here, what it stands for, how it helps people. And you must prove you really believe what you’re saying. Choose a single concept and, like any story, have a beginning, middle and end. A mix of the right content, visuals and format will help you bring your narrative to life.

Targeting helps your video campaigns reach the audience most interested in buying your product or service. There are different types of targeting. Three examples include: behavioral, based on a user’s purchase activity or website browsing behavior; contextual, leveraging keywords or topics; and demographic, considering age, gender, income and other factors. You can improve your targeting through real-time optimization, which lets you analyze consumer behaviors to understand how they affect purchase intent. With these valuable real-time insights, you can better target audiences to deliver relevant messaging at the appropriate stage of the consumer journey.

User experience matters throughout a consumer’s entire marketing journey across channels. But video is one of the best formats for providing an entertaining and engaging experience. In fact, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) said in its “Improving Digital Advertising Experiences with Liquid Creativity”* whitepaper that while 73 percent of marketers and media agency executives say UX in digital marketing could be better, video was low on their list of areas of concern, at 18 percent vs. ad clutter at 54 percent. Working with interactive, high-impact video formats like VDX can improve your chances of delivering a wonderful customer experience. In our study of 500 internet users, over a quarter of viewers rated the VDX units more compelling than typical online ad experiences for each of the positive attributes: better looking, more interesting and more engaging.

Simply put, viewability is a measure of how viewable an ad is. This largely relates to where it is placed on a page, such as in an area “above the fold.” Viewability as a KPI tends to be more important for brand marketers who are trying to link their online efforts to in-store sales or who have longer buying cycles, such as auto. But while viewability can be valuable to measure, it is often best to consider it as a KPI secondary to metrics that measure the impact of your advertising, such as Return on Ad Spend. If you do want to measure viewability, you will want to vet third-party providers to understand their criteria for viewability (it’s different across providers) and what you can do to increase the viewability of your ads.

A whitelist is an advertiser’s list of sites that are approved to run its ads to ensure they are aligned with brand-safe content. Whitelists are usually either created by the advertisers or obtained via a third-party. Whitelists can be formulated at the domain and the page level to account for the fact that even premium publishers sometimes run content with which a brand might not want to be affiliated. Whitelists are the opposite of blacklists, which list sites that should never run an advertiser’s inventory.

Like how we snuck ourselves in here? Since 2001, Exponential has aimed to deliver innovative advertising experiences that transform the way brands interact with audiences across desktop and mobile. Our platform fuses one of the largest digital media footprints and proprietary data with user-centric ad formats designed to drive engagement and action. The “X” also applies to VDX, our proprietary, scalable Video-Driven Experience format. From in-page display, to mobile and in-stream, VDX was designed to deliver a single brand experience across multiple screens. Developed to build upon the advantages of television and video ads and enrich them with the ability to target consumers who are most relevant to a brand, VDX offers consumers an interactive, immersive video-centric experience.

Yield management involves using pricing to maximize your revenue. Advertisers need five things* to make yield management work for them according to Nielsen: digital, cross-media measurement, new measurement tools, real-time data and accountability. With all of these pieces in place, yield management can help advertisers target the right audience, identify the right campaign, match the right ad and deliver messages at the right time. After all, that’s the holy grail of advertising done well, right?

Anyone who’s ever had a data cap knows that watching a video can make you max data out faster than say reading a blog post. Zero rating is the process of data-heavy apps and services like video not counting towards a data plan. This can impact video publishers because if their content cannot be viewed through zero rating, they might lose viewers afraid of how long it will take their video to load, which eats away at their data faster.