Commentary
Online Video Ads Might Work, If Only We Had One
- by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, August 9, 2013
I’m constantly amazed by simple research that tends to prove what you’ve already figured out from gut instinct. I’m not knocking the research at all but, for example, learning for a fact that consumers will leave a video site within a split second if the video doesn’t develop is not news. But knowing the whole world does it, based on research and surveys, gives empirical credence to your observations, kind of like how satisfied you felt when you learned how all the other kids also took apart their Oreo cookies, too.
As an example, earlier this year, Relevancy Group released a study that showed that three quarters of the marketers it studied didn’t include videos in their emails to customers despite the pretty plain evidence that consumers will click on videos with the flimsiest provocation. Virtually every month comScore reports a new record for the number of video ads consumed. It was 11 billion in June. Each one that is seen, in theory at least, brings a consumer that much closer to the business-end of the funnel.
To me, it would be more satisfying if these no-shows stayed away out of some principle that makes them non-believers. But only 22% said that, more or less, they were unconvinced. But the study said a whopping 43% avoided attaching videos to emails simply because they didn’t have any, and 27% suggested producing them would be too expensive.
Those marketers that got religion, however, reported the predictable thing—55% said videos aided the click-through rate, 44% said it increased the amount of time they spent on the email, and 41% said it increased the likelihood that customers would forward the email to somebody else, or share the video.
I guess you could hope all of those percentages were higher—far higher, in fact—but advertising and marketing is a game of percentages, after all. The number of people who do anything at all after seeing a television commercial, even several times, must be in the very low single digits.
But again, everybody must know that, right?
pj@mediapost.com
P.J. Bednarski has written for MediaPost since 2012 on media and marketing topics. He can be reached at pj@mediapost.com
I totally agree with you P.J! Fair enough, comScore bang out their statistics about the growth of video ads, while us online video marketers provide businesses with these facts and insights that highlight the benefits of using videos. But you have hit the nail on the head in this article - marketers simply don't have video ads to use!!!
Although the research figures are there, unfortunately the figures are not in the budgets marketers need to create video ads! Video production is not cheap - you either employ a production team or else you purchase a high quality camera and shoot the footage yourself! Either way, the process is long and expensive! You should check out Viddyad - where businesses can create their own professional online video ads in minutes using the worlds largest database of royalty free stock footage! Using this software, you are set to see more and more marketers using video ads, now that they are inexpensive to produce and share!!
I could not find anywhere a simple statistic with data about (at least) the number of different video ads produced, or at least broadcasted on tv rather than published online. Nothing. At the same time there is no data available, on a country basis, estimating the budget spent by marketeres to produce video ads.
Nevertheless, working in this industry for more than a couple of decade, I have seen the cost of a "similar quality and creativity" ad falling down of almost 90% thanks to the digitalization and the widely available network of high quality filmakers which can replace the expensive agencies at a very affordable price.
Filmakers today can be engaged directly - on well known freelance platform - or through a crowdsourcing model that helps selecting the best creative, the best script and the best execution. Global platform like Userfarm, Mofilm, Tongal and Poptent have reached a good level of experience and can guarantee very good results.
To give you a very approximate reference, a good quality video ad was priced more than $100k 5-7 years ago, now it is offered by the same agency at $70k but you can have it for $30k through a Userfarm open contest (together with other 5 different creativities) and for $15k through a Userfarm Pro Pitch.
It's great to see costs drop from $100K down to $30K or even 'as low' as $15K...it's happy days all-round for businesses who have big marketing budgets.
However, these costs are still prohibiting many SMB's from taking full advantage of online video advertising opportunities. If production costs can be cut, there will be an opportunity for businesses to run effective video campaigns. Viddyad allows businesses to spend 10% of their budgets on video production and the other 90% on video distribution.
Any business can have a high quality video...but what is the point if you cannot afford to distribute your video?
There will always be a small minority of businesses who can afford $15K to produce a video but a far larger majority of businesses in the US will never have this luxury.