• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, December 19, 2011

Engagement with interactive online video ads can spike if targeted in a highly tailored fashion to the right consumer.

That’s what video ad network Tremor Video learned during a recent campaign for an adult beverage targeting Hispanics. In an innovative use of creative and ad formats, Tremor Video relied on English language creative, but then added interactivity in the Spanish language in the form of a “call to engagement” that yielded an average engagement of 105 seconds with the interactive portion of a 15-second pre-roll, said Jason Krebs, chief media officer for Tremor Video.

The objective with the adult beverage campaign was to drive engagement of the brand with a Hispanic audience by providing more information on the history of the product via the engagement slate. The format was a pre-roll with creative in English and a roll-over/call-to-action in Spanish. Once the viewer interacted with the trigger, a slate opened with Spanish language creative. Tremor Video’s audience insight tools then “modeled” viewers who engaged with the slate to find other English/Spanish bilinguals to deliver the spots to in real time. The result was more than double the average engagement for viewers who interacted with an ad. The key takeaway is that optimizing towards engagement during a campaign can increase the performance of the spots, Krebs said. He added that Tremor Video only charges the advertiser when a viewer actually engages with the creative.

For the adult beverage campaign, Tremor Video found that early morning yields the highest engagement rates, with the most interactivity occurring between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. Top categories that drive engagement are travel, sports and entertainment. The top geographic areas to deliver engagement spots were Miami and Las Vegas.