At this age, digital marketing primarily consists of online media and websites. Brands and companies welcomed the potential of this new platform for their business. Advertising being one of the crucial elements of any business or industry, with the rise of online platforms companies have started to incline towards modern ways of advertisement than the traditional way and one of the most popular and effective ways of advertising in the marketing industry has proven to be video advertising. A comprehensive video marketing strategy helps brands connect with their potential audiences.
WHAT EXACTLY IS VIDEO MARKETING?
Video advertisement is a marketing strategy involving short or long, informative, and engaging videos to promote a brand’s product or service. Typically, these videos are distributed across digital platforms like social media, websites, and streaming services. They usually play before, during, or after the main video. The primary purpose is to grab the audience’s attention, tell a compelling story, and reach a larger audience. Consequently, this strategy creates buzz and quickly improves sales.
Video advertising has a diverse range of styles and formats, each style is designed to cater to various platforms, businesses, audiences, and strategies. Choosing the right form of video for advertising is crucial for marketers. Here is an overview of the common types of video advertisements that exist in the industry,
- BUMPER ADs: These types of video ads are mainly unskippable ones that appear before, during, or after the main video. Bumper ads are quite short in duration, mainly 6 seconds, and these are unskippable but contain clarity in the message. Audiences encounter them commonly on streaming sites or video hosting platforms like YouTube. Brands use these ad formats to reach out to their targeted audience and enforce their image to increase awareness. Companies usually pay for bumper ads based on the count of impressions.
- IN-STREAM ADs: In-stream ads are one of the most popular types as they are highly customizable. These types of ads allow marketers and advertisers to frame the duration, placement, and frequency of the ad according to their preferences. In-stream ads contain the same characteristics as bumper ads, they can be played anytime before, during, and after the main video. It gets played on a variety of social media, streaming platforms, and websites and in-stream ads can be both skippable and non-skippable. These ads help brands reach out to a wider range of audiences as they grab the audience’s attention quickly because of their interest-based content. In-stream ads also work as an interactive way to engage with audiences through click-on links and offer claims.
- OUT-STREAM ADs: Out-stream ads are different from in-stream ads as they aren’t embedded with any main video. These ads are designed to appear on websites or in-article spaces as a standalone, often full-screen with mutable audios, they come in view automatically and often get paused or closed when scrolled past, and because of this reason out-stream ads used for reaching out to non-engaged audiences. It makes these types of ads for mobile use and can be found outside of YouTube. This format is crucial for those brands that are required to increase their reach. It is also cost-effective as it doesn’t require any pre-existing video. Brands only pay when the ads are seen for more than 2 seconds.
- NATIVE ADs: These types of ads are designed to naturally be a part of and blend into the main content video. Native ads shape a story or share information regarding a product or a service with the audiences rather than trying to sell the same explicitly. These characteristics make this form of advertisement less intrusive than others. Native ads are mostly showcased as branded content on blogs, blogging channels, social media platforms, news networks, etc. These types of ads are ideal for presenting a product or service in an engaging format which is highly beneficial for reaching a broader audience.
- SOCIAL MEDIA ADs: As the name suggests, these types of ads are common on various social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(now x), LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. These ads can be placed in various locations for social media users to spot like on news feeds, paid stories, and in-stream video ads. Social media ads can be of any length, so advertisers have the luxury to tailor them for each category of audience. Brands use social media ads as forms of entertainment and organic content in a very concise format.
- SHOPPABLE ADs: Shoppable ads are one of the interactive types, allowing audiences to purchase any product or survive directly from the ad video. For brands, it’s a great opportunity to engage with their audiences in a visually appealing way and grow their eCommerce and sCommerce business. Shoppable ads mainly highlight products with placed click-on links for direct purchase. From ad to purchase, this smooth way shortens the consumer’s journey and significantly increases the conversion rate. Shoppable ads provide brands the opportunity to reach out to potential consumers and generate sales with a single ad.
- MASTHEAD ADS: These types of ads most commonly appear on top of a site’s main page and auto plays with a mutable audio feature. The name justifies this ad’s format as it comes on the masthead or as a masthead and has a duration up to 30 seconds. After the auto-play of the ad, the main video defaults to the video thumbnail. This type of format helps to create a buzz within a very short period.
Video advertising is a great way to engage with a huge mass and by understanding each of these various types of video advertising formats, advertisers can generate successful leads and campaigns. Every choice of format depends on the platform, the audience, the business, and the campaign. An effective type of video advertising is crucial for every brand.
