In spite of all the evidence, many advertisers continue to resist the idea of advertising with video.
Yes, trying and investing in a new channel is scary — but the numbers cannot be ignored.
For example, 50.9% of B2B decision-makers use YouTube to research future purchases. And 70% of viewers bought from a brand after seeing it on YouTube.
Even so, advertisers resist video advertising for a myriad of reasons.
Some worry it’s too expensive. Others feel they’re doing just fine with other ad types, so why bother?
If you’re still not convinced the time is right for video advertising, see if these points persuade you.
1. Video Advertising is Great for Brand Awareness
Quite simply, we get great results for clients with video advertising, particularly when it comes to driving brand awareness.
For one of our B2B clients, for example, 91% of its TrueView video ad viewers that continue on to its website are new visitors.
That is comparable to – or better than – the percentage of new visitors we see with non-branded text ads.
We’re also finding that video ads are getting more engagement than our non-branded search campaigns.
To illustrate, here are metrics from this client’s video campaigns:
As you can see, users are viewing 5.49 pages per session and the average session duration is 8:21 minutes with video campaigns. (That’s a lot!)
This beats the results we’re getting from non-branded search campaigns:
With our non-branded campaigns, users are viewing 4.90 pages per sessionand the average session duration is seven minutes.
That’s pretty darn good. Still, video ads have the edge – at least for this client in this situation.
But now you may wonder… do you need to bother with video ads if you’re already getting good results with text ads?
Are video ads worth the extra effort?
In short, the answer is yes – for these four reasons:
1) Video ads aren’t the hassle you might think (more on this in a minute).
2) You don’t know what you don’t know. Maybe video ads would outperform your already well-performing text or Display ads. You won’t know unless you test.
3) As a general principle, it’s better to have a mix of ad formats and strategies as a hedge against performance changes.
With PPC, you never know what the future will bring. The competitive landscape may change, Google may change its rules, and the list goes on.
When you don’t put all your eggs in one basket (or one ad format) you mitigate the risk, which is why it’s worth trying different ad types, including video.
4) Your target market might not live on Google.
Generally, younger demographics spend most of their time on YouTube. They use it not just as an entertainment platform but as their search engine of choice.
So if you’re only advertising on Google with text and Display ads, you could be missing an entire segment of the population.
2. Video Ads Can Do Things Other Ad Formats Can’t
By nature of their format, video ads can do some things that text or Display ads simply can’t.
For example:
Explainer Videos
Explainer videos are perfect for serving up in response to search queries that relate to your product, such as “What is protein powder good for” or “How to get fit at 40.”
You can’t answer these questions in detail in text or Display ads, but you can with video.
Client Testimonials and Interviews
While you could put a short written testimonial in a text or Display ad, it simply won’t have the same power as a video testimonial.
Product Introduction or Review
Text and Display ads are too restrictive for an in-depth product introduction or review – but they’re totally doable with video ads.
Demos
Sure, text and Display ads can take users to a demo sign-up page. But you can do the same with video ads and include a sneak preview.
3. Video Advertising Doesn’t Have to Be Expensive
Next, let’s address one of the most common misperceptions about video advertising: it’s too expensive.
Sure, if you can hire a team to produce and shoot your video on location, then that’s great. (And there’s nothing wrong with that approach if it’s within your budget!)
But you don’t have to go that route.
After all, tools such as YouTube’s video builder make it super easy to create short videos you can use in your advertising.
Also, you may already have the video assets you need without realizing it.
For example, we have 30- and 60-second video ads for a client that are working really well. So we asked the client if they had any other video assets we could use.
They sent us a three-minute video, almost as an afterthought. Surely three minutes would be way too long for a video ad?
We decided to test it out… and, to everyone’s surprise, engagement for this video is great!
In fact, the view rate for the three-minute video is only slightly lower than for the shorter videos – and visitors are staying on the site longer and viewing more pages.
Clearly, these three-minute video ads are reaching serious leads.
By the way, we’re surfacing these ads in response to the “What is…[non-branded product name]” searches that we described above.
4. Advertising with Video Can Give You a Competitive Edge (Still!)
While I’ve argued here that advertisers need to give video ads a chance, not everyone has gotten the message yet.
This means that advertising by video may give you a competitive advantage. If your competitors aren’t in this space yet, you have a wide-open playing field.
This window on this opportunity may be closing, but it’s not shut yet.
Add Video Advertising to Your Marketing Mix
We’re long past the point where video advertising is too expensive or scary to at least test and, more likely, deploy.
So if you haven’t given it a try yet, now’s the time.
This article was originally published in Search Engine Journal.
