VIDEO AD FORMATS: THE ROAD TO SUCCESSFUL DIGITAL VIDEO ADVERTISING
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A best practice guide from IAB Europe to key online video formats and lengths, and how to prepare for and measure video campaigns.
- In-stream ads are requested via a video player and typically run between 15 and 30 seconds.
- This format is also available in as a skippable ad, both linear and non-linear.
- Out-stream ads take place outside of video content and may render in a standard display ad unit slotted into the editorial content, typically paragraphs of text.
- Types of out-stream video ads include: in-banner, in-article, native, interstitial, in-feed and video skin.
- When a viewer accesses video content on a publisher’s website, publishers add code, called an ad tag or ad template.
- The most common ad tag templates are VAST and VPAID, both of which are created and managed by IAB Tech Lab.
INTRODUCTION
Digital video has been ‘the next big thing’ for some time now, and in 2018 it accounted for 14% of Europe’s total display advertising market with a year-on-year growth rate of 30.9% (source: IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark 2018).
Figure 1: Share of formats in 2018 (source: IAB Europe AdEx Benchmark 2018)
This is not surprising in an environment where brands are trying to attract and maintain user attention. In this context, a brand must provide relevant and interactive advertising content. Having a smart video advertising strategy is now an essential part of any brand advertising campaign.
The emergence of video streaming services presents advertisers with new avenues to engage their audiences. Typically, consumers access online video through mobile, desktop and connected TV devices that can stream internet-based video content.
In this article we will cover some key considerations for a video advertising strategy, the formats available and advice on using those formats.
KEY CONSIDERATIONS
1. Ensure relevance
This goes for any advertising strategy – generate the highest relevance for every single potential and existing customer, at every step, along their personalised customer journey. It’s not about producing the shiniest ad or spending the most ad budget, it’s about wanting to offer real solutions, value and support to your audience.
2. Combine data with good creative
When defining your video strategy, it’s best to consider both emotions and data. Combining artistic skills, imagery and sound effects can subtly evoke strong feelings of all kinds. Don’t forget about enriching your strategy with data segments and insights.
Think about dynamic video. Marketers may have access to a CRM system, a DSP (demand-side platform) and a website (with user interaction insights), amongst other data sources. This data can be used to tell a brand’s story and develop multiple versions of the ad within that.
It works like this: once the ad platform recognises a very specific user, identified by a concrete data set, it shows him/her a different version of the ad. For example, a user who subscribed to your newsletter is a fashion enthusiast that travels by bicycle – they may see one personalised version of your video ad that focuses on style and eco-friendly messages. If a car-owner newsletter subscriber is recognised, the ad reconfigures and the creative is different. It still stays true to the brand and carries the topline marketing messages, but the sub text and creative is personalised to be more relevant for the different audiences.
3. Set your objectives and KPIs
Make sure your objectives and KPIs are defined before you start planning. Video ads must be measured properly. Whether your goal is increasing awareness, consideration, or moving the buyer down the funnel, the KPIs you select for video should align with your marketing goals and where your target audience is in the decision-making process. It is also important to consider the type of content that your ads should appear next to and what type of content you want to avoid. An ad that appears next to incorrect content may not have the desired effect on your target audience.
Some KPIs for video to consider, depending on where in the consumer journey you want to influence, include:
- Awareness KPIs– views, in-target reach, in-view reach. Were your videos viewed by your target audience? It’s important to note viewability is a baseline metric and engagement/impact should be measured on top of this.
- Consideration KPIs– view-through rate (VTR) or video completion rate (VCR), watch time. In essence, how engaged were they? How much time was spent with your ad or content?
- Action KPIs– clicks (CTR), interactions. What actions did they take? What outcomes did the video drive?
As with all ad inventory, video inventory attracts fraudsters. Because bots try to emulate normal user behaviour and visit random sites to build up a believable profile, even premium publishers are exposed to sophisticated invalid traffic (SIVT) outside of their control. Keep track of your SIVT levels and try to target away from it.
4. Consider the screen
A key part of ensuring relevant and engaging content is making sure the ad is designed for the device on which it is viewed. Of the 453 million hours of video content consumed in May 2019, 54% was viewed on a mobile device (US, source: Comscore), while 46% was viewed on desktop devices.
What may be more interesting is that on desktop devices, for every 11 minutes of video content, users consumed one minute of video ads. When this is compared to mobile, there is a big difference. To consume the same level of video ads on mobile a user would watch 36 minutes of content. This means users on mobile devices view 3.4 times less video ad content than desktop users.
Millennials in particular increasingly consume mobile content vertically, yet many advertisers make the mistake of shrinking ads originally designed for a TV screen for their mobile campaigns. It is important that advertisers embrace the small screen to maximise results.
TYPES OF VIDEO AD FORMATS
There are two primary digital video ad formats available: in-stream and out-stream. IAB Europe’s Attitudes to Digital Video Advertising report highlights that more than 80% of publishers continue to invest heavily in in-stream formats, while out-stream formats seem to be more favourable to users.
In-stream ads are requested via a video player and typically run between 15 and 30 seconds. They usually interrupt the viewing experience using ad breaks which occur as pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll. In the case of a non-skippable ad, users are required to view the ad before being able to continue the content experience. Compared to display advertising, this has obvious benefits in terms of user attention, putting the brand front and centre.
It's important to note that the longer the ad break publishers inject (sometimes several ads in a row), the more likely the user is to switch tabs or do something else while the ad is playing. As such, it's critical for advertisers to measure viewability rates, to ensure that these ads are being seen and that budget is spent on inventory that actually gets seen by a human being.
A more user-friendly option is the skippable in-stream format which give users the option to skip ads that are not of interest by clicking a skip button. This format can be great to narrow your focus to engaged and interested audiences, spending budget only on viewers that decide not to skip. It is important to consider that users will decide to skip or not in the first couple of seconds of your video creative. Those precious seconds are key to convincing people to keep watching, so plan that content wisely.
In-stream ads are also available in two formats: linear and non-linear. Linear ads play in-line, either before, during or after the main video content, while non-linear ads, or “overlay-ads,” are delivered to the viewer simultaneously with the video.
Out-stream ads take place outside of video content and may render in a standard display ad unit slotted into the editorial content, typically paragraphs of text. This is an ideal setup for embedding video ads into premium editorial content or social feeds and greatly increases the chances of being viewed.
Out-stream has also been great at helping publishers create more video inventory on their sites. But buyers should be aware of the differences with in-stream formats. As the video ad is surrounded by editorial content, such as an article, users have more freedom to keep scrolling past the video as they might do for a standard display ad; therefore, it is important to track viewability of out-stream ad formats.
Some out-stream suppliers guarantee viewability by starting playback when the out-stream unit scrolls into view, then pause it when the out-stream unit scrolls out of view. Or they give the video slot a fixed position and make it scroll with the page as the user navigates the web content.
There are a number of different types of out-stream ads, including:
- In-banner: Video clips delivered into a display ad slot (e.g. 300x250) and in lieu of a static image or text file. In-banner video formats can be difficult to navigate without proper metrics. While a source of affordable inventory for buyers, the obvious downside is that, from a consumer's perspective, the experience is more like that of a banner ad than a video. It's important for buyers to keep track of this and make a conscious decision whether they are interested in these formats and ensure that they're not paying in-stream rates for in-banner placements.
- In-article: Typically displayed to a viewer between text in a paragraph or while scrolling down the page. In-article video ads usually only play when they are completely viewable.
- Native: Video clips that embed almost “seamlessly” within the website's content to resemble the look and feel of the site’s elements.
- Interstitial: Often full-screen ads or splash images that appear between two content pages and popular within mobile web and mobile in-app, forcing the viewer to click-through the content to proceed.
- In-feed: Creatives embedded into content feeds, created to resemble other assets on webpages and common on social sites.
- Video skin:High impact branding formats which frame the page content and include video.
Short and long-form video format ads can be vary in length from six to 30 seconds. Out of 80 mobile campaigns Sublime ran in H1 2019, more than 50% of advertisers used 20-second videos for their mobile campaigns, while only 12% ran videos lasting eight seconds or less.
Interestingly, they noticed the best view-through-rates (VTR) were achieved on shorter videos, with a 65% completion rate for videos under 15 seconds. Brands often shy away from shorter ads, with the perception they do not have enough time to convey their message. However, the evidence shows they can still make an impact.
DELIVERY AND MEASUREMENT OF VIDEO ADVERTISING
How does a video player know what to do when a video ad is requested? To put it simply, when a viewer accesses video content on a publisher’s website, publishers add code, called an ad tag or ad template, which tells the player how to handle the ad. The most common ad tag templates are VAST and VPAID (both created and managed by IAB Tech Lab).
VAST (or Video Ad Serving Template) is an XML-script developed by IAB Tech Lab. It creates a communication link between the video player and ad server, additionally, any player that supports VAST can be used to monetise ads. Beyond ad delivery, VAST can also provide insight into ad performance by showing how the viewer interacts with the creative. The key advantages of VAST are a common standard that both publishers and advertisers can use to communicate their ad tech and automation of the ad delivery process.
The key disadvantages are that accurate capture of video ad measurement can be challenging when compared to VPAID and VAST does not currently provide as many interactive features as VPAID.
VPAID (or Video Player Ad-Serving Interface Definition) is an interactive ad template that delivers inline creatives to video players. With VPAID you can present all sorts of highly creative, interactive experiences to your viewers: information panels, buy buttons, related content links etc. When layered with VAST, VPAID inherits the IAB communication standard for ad delivery and third-party players. Just like VAST, the video player must support VPAID standards for ads to display.
It's important to keep in mind that only about 65% of inventory currently supports VPAID. Especially on mobile, the amount of VPAID-compliant inventory is low. To work around this, video ad tags can support both VPAID and non-VPAID at the same time by providing both VPAID creatives and regular video files in the same video ad tag. This ensures compatibility across the ecosystem.
It pays to think about your video ad as a creative that can stand on its own, then think about how to enrich it with an interactive experience in places where VPAID support is available. Because VPAID can be challenging to get right, the IAB has just released new specifications (SIMID and OMID) for interactive video ads, intended to replace VPAID over time.
The key advantages of VPAID are that it provides a more reliable picture of performance metrics, allows for reporting transparency whilst limiting fraudulent activity. It also allows for a new level of interactivity with the ad, increasing the likelihood of viewer engagement, thus increasing potential publisher revenue. However, with new interactive features, a performance hit may occur which could result in a delay in executing code, leading to possible latency issues
SUMMARY
Digital advertising has come a long way from when it was seen as a pure performance channel. Digital video advertising is now recognised as a brand-building medium and very much a proxy for TV advertising. Marketers should be seriously considering video as part of their strategy but need to recognise the complexities and plan accordingly to achieve their goals. There are many considerations, many of which are summarised in this article.
You can find out more at IAB Europe.
This article was written by IAB Europe members and compiled and edited by IAB Europe’s marketing team, Marie-Clare Puffett and Helen Mussard.
ABOUT IAB EUROPE
IAB Europe is the European-level association for the digital marketing and advertising ecosystem. Through its membership of National IABs and media, technology and marketing companies, its mission is to lead political representation and promote industry collaboration to deliver frameworks, standards and industry programmes that enable business to thrive in the European market.
