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Instagram unveils a new video service, challenging YouTube

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Sourced from FLIPBOARD

Facebook Inc.’s Instagram service is loosening its restraints on video in an attempt to pull younger viewers away from YouTube when they’re looking for something to watch on their smartphones.

The expansion announced Wednesday, dubbed IGTV, will increase Instagram’s video time limit from one minute, making it 10 minutes for most users. Accounts with large audiences will be able to go as long as an hour.

Video will be available through Instagram or a new app called IGTV. The video eventually would give Facebook more opportunities to sell advertising.

This is the latest instance in which Instagram has ripped a page from a rival’s playbook in an effort to preserve its status as a cool place for young people to share and view content. In this case, Instagram is mimicking Google’s YouTube. Before, Facebook and Instagram have copied Snapchat — another magnet for teens and young adults.

Instagram, now nearly 8 years old, is moving further from its roots as a photo-sharing service as it dives headlong into longer-form video.

The initiative comes as parent company Facebook struggles to attract teens while also dealing with a scandal that exposed its leaky controls for protecting users’ personal information.

Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said he hopes IGTV will emerge as a hub of creativity for relative unknowns who turn into internet sensations with fervent followings among teens and young adults.

That is what’s already happening on YouTube, which has become the world’s most popular video outlet since Google bought it for $1.76 billion nearly 12 years ago. YouTube now boasts 1.8 billion users.

Instagram, which Facebook bought for $1 billion six years ago, now has 1 billion users, up from 800 million nine months ago.

More importantly, 72% of U.S. children ages 13 to 17 use Instagram, second to YouTube at 85%, according to the Pew Research Center. Only 51% of kids in that group now use Facebook, down from 71% from a similar Pew survey in 2014-15.

That trend appears to be one of the reasons that Facebook is “hedging its bets” by opening Instagram to the longer-form videos typically found on YouTube, said analyst Paul Verna of the research firm eMarketer.

In addition to giving Instagram another potential drawing card, longer clips are more conducive for video ads lasting from 30 seconds to one minute. Instagram doesn’t currently allow video ads, but Systrom said it eventually will. When the ads come, Instagram intends to share revenue with the videos’ creators — just as YouTube already does.

“We want to make sure they make a living because that is the only way it works in the long run,” Systrom said.

The ads also would help Facebook sustain its revenue growth. Total spending on online video ads in the United States is expected to rise from nearly $18 billion this year to $27 billion in 2021, according to EMarketer.

Lele Pons, a YouTube sensation who also has amassed 25 million followers on Instagram, plans to launch a cooking show on IGTV in hopes of increasing her audience and eventually generating more revenue. “It’s like Coca-Cola and Pepsi,” she said. “You will never know what you like better unless you try both.”

IGTV’s programming format will consist exclusively of vertical video designed to fill the entire screen of a smartphone — the devices are emerging as the main way younger people watch video. By contrast, most YouTube videos fill only part of the screen unless the phone is tilted horizontally.

Snapchat began featuring vertical video before Instagram, making Instagram’s move another example of its penchant for copying rivals.

But Systrom sees it differently. “This is acknowledging vertical video is the future and we want the future to come more quickly, so we built IGTV.”

Sourced from FLIPBOARD

Article originally appeared in Los Angeles Times

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Snap Can’t Repeat YouTube’s Mistake

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By Rick Munarriz

Snapchat’s parent company is moving into soft-scripted documentary shows featuring a YouTube star — a recipe that hasn’t worked for Google before.

Snap Inc. (NYSE:SNAP) continues to go Hollywood. Snapchat’s parent company is dipping its feet into the soft-scripted docu-series niche, according to Variety. The move will expand its push into original programming to drive user engagement.

Endless Summer will star teen model Summer Mckeen, a beauty and fashion vlogger that has built up a huge following on Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) subsidiary Google’s YouTube. Mckeen now has more than 1.4 million subscribers to her YouTube channel. Hitching one’s post to a young YouTuber on the rise seems like a no-brainer. The built-in audience is there, and the salary demands are modest relative to actual movie and TV celebrities. However, Google itself has stumbled in plucking its most magnetic YouTube stars in its own push for original content. Snap is hoping to avoid failing as well.

Snapchat's live video chat feature in action.

Image source: Snap, Inc.

Seasons change

Endless Summer will follow the 19-year-old model and budding entrepreneur as she moves out of her home to live on her own in Laguna Beach. The show is currently in production. It is expected to debut in September.

This won’t be a one-time thing. Snap has other docu-series shows in development. Endless Summer just happens to be the first entry in this niche. Snapchat has had some initial success by turning to cable networks and other established media companies for the Snapchat Discover platform, but that content traffic took a hit earlier this year with the site’s controversial redesign.

Banking too heavily on a YouTuber isn’t a guarantee for success, a lesson that Alphabet has painfully learned with Google’s YouTube push to go premium. YouTube Red — recently rebranded as YouTube Premium — hoped to get its freeloaders to pay up for its subscription-based service by casting popular YouTube personalities in studio-produced scripted and reality shows. It didn’t work. The same stars that had amassed tens of millions of YouTube subscribers weren’t enough to sway people over to the other side of the paywall.

A couple of those original YouTube Red stars would also go on to get into hot water for comments and actions in some of their videos, hurting YouTube’s credibility in tapping marketable stars. Instead of trying to bring more creators into the fold, YouTube alienated the community by doubling down on its biggest stars in February by dismissing smaller contributors from its monetization platform. The purge continues, as many new creators applying for monetization on YouTube have been waiting for months since registering for the perk. Even many of those cut loose in February — told that their readmission to the program would be automatically reviewed within a week or two of meeting the minimum requirements for monetization — continue to be left out in the cold. I should know. I’m on my fifth week.

Snap should still make this work. An important distinction between Snapchat Discover and YouTube Premium is that Snapchat’s platform for professionally produced content remains a free ad-supported offering. Folks that didn’t want to pay up for YouTube Red (and now YouTube Premium) will not have to worry about that particular tollbooth here. YouTube may have had the data on the stars it would go on to cast, but Snap is the one that has the right price in the eyes of its young penny-pinching viewers.

Alphabet (A shares) is not on our top “Buy” list, but these 10 stocks are
Investing geniuses David and Tom Gardner just released their best stocks to buy now — and it could pay to listen. Especially when you consider their average stock pick is up 353% vs. a mere 81% for the S&P 500.

They just shared what they think are the ten best stocks for investors to buy right now to members inside their service Motley Fool Stock Advisor… and Alphabet (A shares) wasn’t one of them! That’s right — they think these 10 stocks are even better buys.

By Rick Munarriz

Sourced from The Motley Fool

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YouTube woos brands with its new Creative Suite of ad tools

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By Sarah Perez

YouTube hopes a new set of creative tools will help it win back advertisers who may have grown disenchanted with the video network due to its ongoing content scandals. The company announced this morning a suite of tools that will allow brands and agencies to test ads, target specific audiences with customized versions of the same ad, and tell stories over a series of ads.

One new tool, Video Experiments, offers AdWords advertisers a way to test video ads on YouTube’s site, as an alternative to using focus groups to determine the impact of creative on metrics brands care about like awareness or purchase intent.

The service, which launches in beta later this month, will allow marketers to shift funds usually put towards those focus groups and their “simulated ad environments,” to real ad environments.

The ads will run in cleanly segmented experiments on YouTube at no extra cost beyond the media investment, the company says, and turn around results in as little as three days’ time.

The idea here is to allow brands to test their video ad campaigns before committing the funds to roll them out more broadly – something that could help them to tweak the creative material, or even pull back on an ad rollout that could have ended up being a total misfire that draws consumer backlash.

That’s a critical factor to consider in today’s social media landscape, where one bad ad can spread virally beyond just those who directly watched it, leading to negative consumer sentiment and even brand boycotts.

Another new tool, Director Mix, was already announced last year, and is now being tested by brands like Kellogg’s in an alpha phase, ahead of its general availability.

This tool lets advertisers create many versions of their same ad using swappable elements. They can customize the text, while using the existing images, sound and videos across a variety of ads. These ads can be far more personalized to YouTube viewers, as a result.

For example, in a test with Campbell’s Soup, bumper ads appeared for those watching “Orange is the New Black” clips that said “does your cooking make prison food seem good? We’ve got a soup for that.” But the same ad customized for Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” instead included the line “Dinner for One?”

McDonald’s had also used Director Mix in the past to create 77 pieces of content from one ad.

Related to this, a tool for Video Ad Sequencing, also in alpha, lets brands spread their story over a series of ads. The idea here is that YouTube viewers could actually follow along with a narrative of sorts, or just see a longer story told over several ads.

Ubisoft tested this to promote “Assassin’s Creed Origins,” which showed several different elements of the game’s trailer over different ads. 20th Century Fox is also now using this tool, along with experimentation.

YouTube didn’t offer an update as to when Director Mix or sequencing were exiting alpha or launching more broadly, however.

In terms of better understanding how ads are working with different groups of viewers, YouTube says it’s adding audience segmentation to retention reports. Later this year, it will also allow advertisers to annotate different parts of their video – for example, the part where the brand’s logo displays or a shot of the product – so they can then see what percentage of the audience saw those key moments.

Combined, this set of tools aim to give video advertisers a reason to continue spending on YouTube at a time when brands may have become hesitant to invest due to YouTube’s inability to properly police the billions of hours of content on its site.

While that’s clearly a hard problem to solve at YouTube’s scale, the fallout has been seriously damaging. Brands have found their ads displaying against extremist content, white nationalist channels, and other obscenities. And some even suspended advertising on YouTube entirely, at times.

Meanwhile, YouTube is facing increasing threats from Facebook, which has rolled out a video hub called Watch. Facebook is directly investing in video from news publishers, and has just launched a creative game show platform to capitalize on the interactive video craze. Facebook-owned Instagram, too, is preparing to roll out longer-form video in a new hub on its network, as soon as today.

Despite Facebook’s threat, YouTube is still a massive network for advertisers to consider with its 1.9 billion monthly users, and a shift in how people – particularly younger users – watch video content. A generation of viewers is growing up without linear TV, and is instead during to video networks and streaming services for entertainment.

Though some of YouTube’s tools have already been in testing, YouTube is today positioning the combination of resources as its “Creative Suite” with this more formal introduction.

By Sarah Perez

Sourced from TechCrunch

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6 Ways You Can Use YouTube to Reach Your Intended Audience

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By Jason R. Rich

The following excerpt is from Jason Rich’s book Ultimate Guide to YouTube for Business. Buy it now from Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | IndieBound

Everyone who uses YouTube to promote themselves or their company has their own goals. The following is information about six popular ways YouTube can be used as part of your overall online strategy to achieve your company’s goals.

1. Promote Yourself as an Online Personality and Entertain Your Audience

One strategy small businesses use effectively to personalize their brand and build a rapport with the audience is to use YouTube videos to introduce their company’s leaders and position these people as spokespeople who appear in videos. Some company spokespeople have even achieved celebrity status from starring in YouTube videos to promote themselves, their products, and/or their companies.

If you’re a small-business owner with a big personality, consider starring in your own YouTube videos to help build your company’s brand, tell its story, and promote its message. Featuring the actual leader of your company can help personalize your business and build its credibility. You could also demonstrate products, speak authoritatively, and boost your company’s brand recognition and reputation.

2. Share Your Knowledge, Commentary, or How-to Information

One reason YouTube has become so popular is that in addition to watching countless hours of entertaining videos, people can quickly find informative and easy-to-understand how-to videos about any topic imaginable. As a business owner, chances are you have expertise that other people could easily benefit from.

YouTube offers an informal yet powerful way to communicate directly with your customers, in your own words, in a forum that gives you absolute control over the content. Using a bit of creativity, chances are you’ll come up with a handful of ideas about how your business could benefit from communicating directly with its customers (or potential customers) using YouTube. For example, you could create a product demonstration or product comparison video. Other options might be to showcase customer testimonials in a video or to create how-to videos that explain how to assemble, operate, or use your products/services.

One popular trend on YouTube is for companies or individuals to produce “unboxing” videos. Basically, someone takes a new (still packaged) product, then films themselves opening and using the product for the first time, as they share their initial impressions. These videos are watched by people interested in the product, but who haven’t yet purchased it.

In addition, many companies have dramatically cut costs associated with offering telephone technical support by supplementing printed product manuals and product assembly instructions (which people hate to read and find difficult to understand) with informative how-to videos that are highly engaging.

3. Introduce a New Product or Service and Direct People to Your Online Store

Showcasing products on YouTube is a low-cost yet highly effective way to demonstrate products to your customers, showcase features, and explain how to best use a product especially if you’re operating an online-based business or there’s an online component to your traditional retail business. In addition to showcasing a product’s features or functions, you can use YouTube videos to answer commonly asked questions.

Keep in mind, people who use YouTube don’t want to watch blatant commercials for your products or services. Consumers are already bombarded with advertising in their everyday lives. While your videos can certainly promote a product or service, and build awareness or demand for it, take a soft-sell approach that’s entertaining as well as informative.

4. Teach People How to Use a Product or Service

Many businesses have discovered that producing YouTube videos as an instructional tool can help improve customer loyalty, reduce returns, and allow a business to enhance its customer service efforts without putting a strain on resources.

How-to videos for a product offer a different approach than a product demo, yet both approaches can benefit businesses looking to promote and sell products. While a how-to video is designed to teach someone how to do something, a product demo simply showcases a product’s features or functions, and gives the viewer a chance to see a product in action. Either type of video can be used as part of a business-to-consumer or business-to-business sales and marketing strategy.

Instructional videos can help to reduce incoming customer service (and tech support) calls. You can produce instructional videos to teach people how to assemble and/or use a product, for example, plus help customers easily discover the true potential of a product, while eliminating their potential frustration. Your videos can also be used to highlight lesser-known features of or uses for a product that your customers might not otherwise consider.

5. Share Video Footage of Business Presentations You’ve Given

If you’ve presented a lecture, workshop, or some type of presentation, consider uploading the edited video footage of it to YouTube for your customers, clients, and the public to see. This will help establish you as an expert or authority, allow you to convey valuable information to potential customers and clients, plus help you build awareness of you and your company.

This information can be supplemented with an animated and narrated digital slide (PowerPoint) presentation that you post on your YouTube channel, and/or include a recorded one-on-one interview with you talking about something in which your (potential) customers or clients would be interested.

6. Provide Background Information about Your Company and Tell Its Story

Every company has a story to tell, as do the founders or current leaders of that business. By telling your story, chances are, you’ll be able to enhance your customer loyalty and brand awareness, while also educating the public about what your company does and its core philosophies.

Any type of behind-the-scenes videos can also be useful. For example, you can produce and publish a video that focuses on how your product(s) are made, provide a tour of your company, and introduce some of the people who work at your company within the video(s). If you’ve invented a product, you can explain where the inspiration for the product came from and why you’re personally passionate about the product.

Feature Image credit: wundervisuals | Getty Images 

By Jason R. Rich

Jason R. Rich, based in Foxboro, Mass., is author of more than 55 books on topics including ecommerce, online marketing, digital photography and interactive entertainment, as well as the Apple iPhone and iPad.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

 

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YouTube turns to Wikipedia to help it fight conspiracy theory videos

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By Minda Smiley.

At SXSW, YouTube chief executive Susan Wojcicki revealed that the site will begin using Wikipedia to try and curb the spread of conspiracy theory videos.

Conspiracy theory videos on the site will now include text from Wikipedia pages that users can click on to learn more about the topic in question. For instance, someone watching a video about chemtrails would see a “companion unit” featuring Wikipedia’s “Chemtrail conspiracy theory” page.

According to Wojcicki, the feature is set to roll out in the coming weeks. While she did not explicitly say how exactly YouTube plans to determine what is considered a conspiracy theory video, she did say that the site will be “using a list of well-known conspiracies from Wikipedia” to help it decide which videos should receive the additional information.

“When there are videos that are focused around something that’s a conspiracy, we will show as a companion unit next to the video information from Wikipedia,” said Wojcicki. “People can still watch the videos, but they actually have access to additional information.”

The move comes weeks after YouTube was criticized for letting a conspiracy theory video about last month’s mass shooting in Parkland, Florida take the top spot in its “Trending” section. The video accused David Hogg, a survivor of the shooting who has since spoken out for gun control, of being a “crisis actor.” YouTube eventually pulled the video for violating its policies.

Over the past year, YouTube has struggled to keep its platform free of extremist and offensive content. About a year ago, brands including Verizon and PepsiCo pulled advertising from the platform due to concerns that their ads were appearing next to videos that promote terrorist groups.

In December, the Google-owned video site rolled out a four-step action plan in hopes of curbing the brand safety concerns that have plagued it in recent months.

Feature Image: Conspiracy theory videos on the site will now include text from Wikipedia pages that users can click on to learn more.

By Minda Smiley

Sourced from THE DRUM

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Getting People to Focus on your Product Will Make Them Desire It More

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Here’s why you need to get your advertising to zoom in.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

The relationship between desire and attention was long thought to only work in one direction: When a person desires something, they focus their attention on it.

Now, new research reveals this relationship works the other way, too. Increasing a person’s focus on a desirable object makes them want the object even more – a finding with important implications for marketers seeking to influence behaviour.

The study, published in the journal Motivation and Emotion, is the first to demonstrate a two-way relationship.

“People will block out distraction and narrow their attention on something they want,” said Anne Kotynski, author of the study. “Now we know this works in the opposite direction, too.”

In marketing, advertisements with a hyper focus on a product’s desirable aspect – say zooming in on the texture of icing and frosting – might help sell a certain brand of cake.

Findings suggest the ad could be targeted to people who have shown an interest in a similar product, such as running the cake commercial during a baking show.

This finding also works in other areas outside advertising too. For example, doctors could potentially help their patients develop a stronger focus on healthy activities that they may desire but otherwise resist, such as exercising or eating a balanced diet.

The study’s findings also add a wrinkle to knowledge of focus and emotion. According to a spate of previous research, positive emotions, such as happiness and joy, widen a person’s attention span, while negative emotions such as disgust and fear, do the opposite: narrowing a person’s focus.

“We conceptualise fear as drastically different from desire,” Kotynski said. “But our findings contribute to growing evidence that these different emotions have something key in common: They both narrow our focus in similar ways.”

The findings also fit the notion that both of these emotions – fear (negative) and desire (positive) – are associated with evolutionarily pursuits that narrowed our ancestors’ attentions.

For example, fear of predators motivated attention focused on an escape route, while an urge to mate motivated focus on a sexual partner.

“If a person has a strong desire, research says this positive emotion would make them have a wide attention span,” Kotynski said. “Our research shows we developed a more beneficial behaviour around desire: focusing our mental energy on the important object, much like fear would.”

The study

Study participants were shown images of desserts mixed in with mundane items. They were instructed to pull a joystick toward them if the image was tilted one direction and push the stick away if it was tilted the opposite direction. Researchers recorded the reaction time of each.

Participants who responded fastest to pull the images of desserts were those whose attention had been narrowed. Responses were much slower to the mundane, and for participants whose attention was broad, suggesting narrowed attention increases desire for desserts but not for everyday objects.

The study used dessert pictures to measure reaction time because such images have been shown to increase desire across individuals, most likely due to a motivation to seek high fat, high calorie foods that is rooted in evolution.

There you go people. If people love cars and you can get them to focus on the car you are hawking, you’ll have a better chance of converting that to a sale. May the ROI forever be in your favour.

 

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Majority of Workers Feel Distracted at Work, Blame Technology

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More than a third of millennials use their phones for personal activities up to 2 hours during the workday.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Technology is now on the verge of making us utterly unproductive. This is according to a new report from Udemy.

The study measured how distracted employees are during work hours, how they’re responding to distractions, and the price of distraction for employers and the economy at large. The research found a strong correlation between increased levels of distraction, decreased productivity, and a lack of proper training at work.

Workers can’t resist the pull of social media
Most survey respondents (58%) said they don’t need social media to do their jobs, but they still can’t make it through the day without it. When asked to rank various social media sites and communication tools by degree of distraction, Facebook came in first (65%), followed distantly by Instagram (9%), Snapchat (7%), and Twitter (7%).

In addition to recognising how workplace distraction can hurt productivity and diminish quality of work, companies need to be aware of the very real damage to employee morale and retention. Among millennials and Gen Z, 22% feel distractions prevent them from reaching their full potential and advancing in their careers, and overall, 34% say they like their jobs less as a result.

When people are engaged, they report being more motivated, confident, and happy, and feel they deliver higher quality work. And, based on the survey, opportunities around learning and development are the top drivers of engagement.

 

Workers want training but are reluctant to ask for it
Though 69% of full-time employees surveyed report being distracted at work and 70% agree that training could help them learn to focus and manage their time better, 66% have never brought this up to their managers. Younger workers, in particular, are also having trouble balancing work and personal activities on devices they use for both; 78% of millennials/Gen Z say using technology for personal activity is more distracting than work-related tools like email and chat.

Let’s face it, we are all suckers for social media. The good news for marketers is that with highly engaged audiences comes a lot of places to put targeting advertising and reach these audiences.

 

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How to Win at Marketing Using a Hashtag

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A travel company has managed to stir up a lot of viral traffic with their hashtag. Watch and learn, people.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

What do a dream wedding in New York, an adventure through the mountains of Sri Lanka and a family’s search for their roots in Scotland all have in common? All saw a hospitality professional going out of their way to make or save someone’s trip. And a holiday booking company use this mushy sequence of events with a hashtag to fire up social media views and get a great repsonse from them.

Booking.com call themselves the global leader in connecting travellers with the widest choice of incredible places to stay. Established in 1996 in Amsterdam, Booking.com B.V. has grown from a small Dutch start-up to one of the largest travel e-commerce companies in the world. Part of The Priceline Group (NASDAQ: BKNG), Booking.com now employs more than 17,000 employees in 198 offices in 70 countries worldwide.

So, what are they doing with their social media marketing? They are riding hastags like a showjumper would a prize horse.

They have had some great success with their recent hashtag #BookingHero. They asked people to share their travel stories using the hashtag. The best story won travel prizes and big kudos online.

Following thousands of submissions via social media, Booking.com selected the three most touching and inspiring accounts of hospitality professionals going above and beyond to create unique and unforgettable travel experiences for their guests.

The customers were then flown back to say thank you to the person who saved their trips. Here are the stories.

 

 

The point isn’t the stories though. The point is that real people’s journeys made the hashtag come alive and generate traffic for booking.com. In fact, the call out for submissions via social media has been so successsful that Booking.com is now using the hashtag to extend the social media campaign with long-form video content that extends the #BookingHero message, with TV to follow.

According to recent research conducted by Booking.com across 25 markets in 2017, a personal connection is essential for many travellers with 29% saying that an accommodation feeling like home is key and 24% sharing that a welcoming host is a make or break factor during the first 24 hours of their trip.

Said Pepijn Rijvers, Chief Marketing Officer, Booking.com. “These stories beautifully demonstrate that an amazing trip is about more than simply finding the right destination or the perfect accommodation– it’s also about the people you meet along the way which truly make for an unforgettable journey. And that’s what travel is all about.”

And for the company, it is about finding the right hashtag and getting it to go viral.

 

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A New App Can Create Facebook Ads Without the Cost

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This handy app can help you create ads with impact but with very little effort.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

An app called Plotaverse helps marketers to create great ads without the dreaded and costly content creation process. Quickly bypassing established app giants, the young startup’s iOS app made the list of Facebook’s top 10 mobile apps.

The photo app’s animation features allow businesses of any calibre to create impactful ads fast and on a budget. More or less, you can choose from many artistically appealling gifs and put your message over them. The artwork on the site is truly eye-catching.

But how did Plotaverse’s 8 months old mobile app manage to disrupt visual advertising, going up against 8 billion video views a day on Facebook alone?

Images animated with Plotaverse, formerly known as Plotagraph, are the key to its success. The app ads movement to any single still photo. This creates ads that stand out in saturated media feeds.

 

Brands like Coca Cola, Wella, Chevrolet and Red Bull were seen boosting their brand with captivating Plotagraphs. There is no need for video, multiple photos or video editing skills to turn a photograph into a Plotagraph. Users of any skill level can quickly animate and post uniquely moving images to their business and social page.

On Instagram and Facebook, Plotagraphs have proven to attract up to 5 times the amount of views and engagement than surrounding images.

Every day, 4.5 million business pages on Facebook are trying to cut through 1.32 billion daily active users according to WordStream. As expected, Adobe’s titan apps, Photoshop Express and Spark Post head Facebook’s list of Photo Enhancing apps. But the tiny startup’s photo animation app has unexpectedly spearheaded the looping content industry.

To check it out, click here

 

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Why Facebook Video Ads Should Only be Just Six Seconds Long

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Facebook is now the most popular places that advertisers are putting their video ads, even beating YouTube.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Top marketers know that digital video is one of the most powerful tools to increase consumer engagement and brand loyalty. In fact, according to a new study from Clinch, brand marketers are ramping up their production of digital videos with an emphasis on creating campaigns specifically for Facebook and YouTube.

The study found that 78 percent of marketers plan to increase their production of video ads in 2018, while only 43 percent of marketers plan to increase their production of static banner ads this year.

Social is Video

When it comes to digital video campaigns, Facebook reigns supreme, representing 46 percent of all video ads produced. When adding Facebook-owned Instagram into the mix, this number leaps to 74 percent. YouTube comes in a close second at 41 percent.

Says Oz Etzioni, CEO of Clinch, “It’s no secret that Facebook and YouTube dominate the digital media landscape and we don’t expect this to slow down, particularly with the Facebook algorithm change which requires brands to pay in order to be seen. In 2018 brands will increase spend and leverage the rich data that these platforms provide. However, the data and platform are just two pieces of the puzzle. Creative is the critical third piece. If brands aren’t uniquely tailoring their creative specifically for each platform and by audience, opportunities will be missed and ROI will be lowered.”

Nearly three quarters of marketers are adopting online video from their TV commercials. 44 percent indicated that they don’t shorten commercials for each platform’s suggested length. While TV ads remain a critical source of video content, the user experience of each social platform is very different than traditional TV. For example, TV ads are 15 to 30 seconds long but Facebook and YouTube recommend six-second videos.

Etzioni continued, “We were really surprised to learn that marketers were taking a one size fits all approach to video. In 2018, marketers will awaken to the fact that investment in creative will increase ROI and personalisation at scale, and will become the norm for digital video as it has become for static ads.”

Defining Social Personalisation

While 50 percent of respondents say they personalise their video campaigns, brands can be doing a lot more. Those that are personalising their creatives based on data are seeing big results. Nearly 90 percent of respondents who have customised Facebook or YouTube video ads reported seeing benefits. Furthermore, 70 percent of those who customise said that they have seen improvements in their key performance indicators (KPIs).

According to Etzioni, in the next few months, the definition of personalisation will change. “Rather than creating a handful of versions – one for men, one for women, one for the East Coast and one for the West Coast, we expect brands to be using data insights to personalise at scale. This means hundreds if not thousands of versions of videos where the message and creative is tailored to their specific needs and interests. This will create a more meaningful experience for the consumer and transform video campaigns from simply brand awareness to direct response opportunities,”

The full report, “How Leading Brand Marketers are Using Personalised Video to Drive Sales,” is available for download here.

 

 

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