Learn More About Video Advertising Software
What is Video Advertising Software?
Before beginning any advertising endeavor, you must determine your advertising strategy. This includes setting (or being aware of) your advertising budget, knowing your target audience, outlining goals and desired outcomes, and determining your key performance indicators (KPIs). Video advertising enables marketers to share their company’s story by delivering extremely relevant content in an engaging manner with a greater audience reach. This type of advertising can be leveraged within a cross-channel advertising strategy to connect consumers across social media advertising, display advertising, and search advertising.
Video advertisements come in a variety of formats, each with different advantages and disadvantages. Understand which ad formats you want to use and ensure that the platforms you are considering support them. Video advertising software platforms do not all have access to the same ad inventory, and you should take note of the ad network and ad exchanges that can be accessed with the platforms you’re considering. This will help ensure your ads can be placed in front of your target audience. Depending on your company size, campaign strategy, and ad budget, you may need to account for how effectively video advertising can scale. Not every product handles large amounts of ads equally, so make sure you have a clear picture of a software’s limits before making a decision. Listed below are different kinds of video ads you can consider including in your campaign strategy:
In-stream — This type of video advertising relies on the existence of other video content and can be displayed to your specified target audience. In-stream ads are tied to publisher content, which allows your company to home in on the right audience and boost brand awareness and user engagement. These video ads are shorter in nature, typically 15–30 seconds, and usually include a “skip this ad" feature since it interrupts a consumer’s video experience. There are three main types of in-stream ads: linear ads, non-linear ads, and companion ads.
Linear video ads interrupt main video content and take up the entire video screen. Pre-roll linear ads are shown before the video content, mid-roll linear ads are played in the middle of the video content and resemble commercial breaks, and post-roll linear ads play at the end of a video. Post-roll video ads are useful when a consumer is watching a series of videos at one time. Finally, linear video ads can contain interactive components, like clicking for more information or downloading a piece of content. In contrast, nonlinear video ads, or overlay video ads, play without interrupting the main video’s stream. These ads will only cover a portion of the screen and will overlay the main video. If a consumer does not interact with a nonlinear ad, it will minimize in size or disappear altogether while the main video continues to play. Unlike the first two types of in-stream ads, companion video ads play around the main video but on the same webpage. These are the least disruptive of the three types, as they play alongside another video but never appear on their own.
Outstream — Outstream video ads are far less intrusive than in-stream video ads because they are served outside of a video player. One huge benefit of outstream video ads for marketers and advertisers is that they don’t have to worry about their ads not being seen. Outstream ads only play when they are completely in view, and they pause when someone scrolls away from them. Because outstream ads are closely related to the other content on the screen, they are sometimes called native video ads because they look natural alongside the other content; these ads can be integrated with other native advertising software. Finally, outstream videos, also known as in-read videos, are triggered to play when they are within the reading area of the page’s content.
In-banner — More disruptive than outstream video ads, in-banner video ads are typically set to autoplay when you open a website, appearing at the top, bottom, or sides of a webpage. In-banner ads can be leveraged in parallel with display advertising software and can redirect consumers to a brand’s website or targeted landing page.
Key Benefits of Video Advertising Software
- Programmatically purchase video ads across the entire web with ease
- Display your content with engaging videos that your audience wants to watch, which will increase involvement and click-through rates (CTR)
- Zone in on your desired audience through a wide range of targeting methods and hyperpersonalization
- Increase efficiency in your video advertising trafficking by using bulk edit and upload features
- Keep an eye on campaign performance by tracking views, impressions, and conversions
- Increase brand awareness, sales, and retention
Why Use Video Advertising Software?
Using video as an advertising form will not only boost engagement with your target audience, but it will also increase interactivity and trust with your consumers. Types of video advertisements that can assist you in increasing interactivity and brand recognition include product feature videos, tutorial videos, customer testimonial videos, and many more. Video advertising can help companies in an abundance of ways, including:
Transparency and brand safety — You want a platform that is going to give you an accurate and holistic picture of where your ads are running. This helps immensely in tracking the actual ROAS of your campaigns and detecting fraudulent impressions caused by bots. Furthermore, you need to know what types of websites are running your ads. This may be less of a concern for some industries than for others, but most brands need a software package that can ensure their ads are only being displayed on brand-friendly sites.
Mobile advertising — Video advertising and mobile advertising go hand in hand. The video format enables brands to connect with their consumers in a more natural way, and mobile advertising enables that connection to occur where consumers are—their mobile devices. Smartphones allow people to consume videos on the go, which provides a more immersive, personalized experience. This personalization helps marketers increase brand awareness, lead generation, and conversion rates.
Shareability — Video can be leveraged throughout your social media advertising efforts, as social media platforms make it inherently easier to share content, especially video. Not only do social media platforms help people easily share videos, which exponentially increases that video’s exposure, it also provides other benefits for marketers. One huge benefit is that sponsored videos look extremely similar to organic content in social media feeds (i.e. other text posts, images, and videos that are being shared on those platforms by the people you follow). As a result, those videos will have additional shares, likes, and comments. Additionally, social media assists marketers with the storytelling aspect of their video ads, which will help consumers build an emotional connection with that brand. Marketers will then be able to tee up video ads that will resonate with their target audiences.
Who Uses Video Advertising Software?
Video advertising can help companies showcase their brand story all while entertaining their consumers. Video ads can also help companies build awareness of their latest products, as well as increase customer advocacy efforts by highlighting customer testimonial videos. The following users are most likely to use video advertising software:
Marketers — Digital marketers are typically involved with video advertising strategies, but marketing generalists could also use video advertising software if a company didn’t have specialized marketing functions. Marketers can leverage video advertising as a way to convey their brand’s message in a short amount of time. Additionally, video is an exceptional medium to strengthen brand identity due to consistency in branding and design. As video is more engaging than the typical text ad, marketers use video advertising software to increase brand recall among its consumers.
Ad agencies — If a company doesn’t have a dedicated marketing function focused on advertising, it can decide to outsource help with an ad agency. Ad agencies employ industry experts that will help with the production, promotion, and management of video ads. Additionally, an ad agency will ensure that your company’s branding is consistent throughout all of your video advertising efforts.
Video Advertising Software Features
Video ads create the opportunity to build a more entertaining experience for consumers to interact with a brand’s content. Video advertising software can help you target your desired audience based on personal preferences and behavioral patterns.
Real-time bidding capabilities — Video advertisements can be bought in real time through a process called real-time bidding (RTB). This allows ads to be more targeted, as they are bought on an impression-by-impression basis as the webpage loads. Purchasing advertisements in real time requires the use of a demand side platform, which may or may not be packaged with video advertising software. If you wish to purchase video ads in the RTB environment, the products you are considering must have DSP capabilities.
Integrations — Your advertising platform will need to integrate with a variety of other software your company already uses. From other digital advertising software and data management platforms to marketing automation software, making sure a product can integrate with existing software will help provide a more comprehensive and holistic view of your data.
Bulk editing and uploading — Bulk editing and uploading will save you time when launching video ads as you can simultaneously update several videos at once across one or multiple campaigns. Additionally, bulk uploading provides the capability to make offline changes to a spreadsheet that can include your creative, keywords, targeted personas/groups, etc.
Brand safety — This feature is important when ensuring brand consistency across multiple platforms. Video advertising software that offers this feature will protect your brand so it doesn’t appear on websites or in articles or videos that will conflict with your brand’s image, mission, and values.
Targeting — With the help of the integration feature mentioned above, video advertising software can offer tools that will allow you to target your desired audience with more relevant messaging and engaging videos.
Workflow capability — Workflow capabilities streamline the process of creating, launching, managing, and tracking the success of your video advertising campaigns. With this feature, you will be able to view the status of your video ad, choose your video ad placement, and review the performance of the campaign.
Campaign dashboard — It’s important to optimize your video ads over time, whether that includes tactics like shortening the length of your video or altering the video’s content to further personalize it to your audience. A campaign dashboard is a feature that will assist you in optimizing your videos and track your video ad performance. Metrics that can be included in this dashboard include views, average watch time, click-through rate (CTR), reach, and frequency.
Potential Issues with Video Advertising Software
While video advertising software can help you streamline and measure the effectiveness of your video advertising initiatives, it may or may not be able to protect you from ad fraud. Ad fraud is a scam where people take advantage of advertisers by making them pay for something that doesn’t correlate with specified campaign metrics. Examples of ad fraud include click fraud, domain spoofing, pixel stuffing, and many others.
Click fraud generates fake traffic through the automated use of clicking programs, which in turn charges the advertiser for no results. Domain spoofing occurs when someone misrepresents a domain where an ad is placed as that of a high-performing webpage. Finally, pixel stuffing takes place when ads are placed within pixels on a website, which then displays a registered impression to an advertiser. Unfortunately, because the ad is in a pixel, consumers aren’t actually seeing the ad, but the advertiser is being charged for that impression.
