Online Video Ads: A Compelling Case

Debadutta Upadhyaya The author is the Vice President (India), Vdopia, Media and Software Solutions

When its a marriage between the emotional connect that happens with video ads and interaction that the digital world provides, the experience is awesome. In some cases it shortens the distance between awareness creation and purchase intent depiction.

Brands are increasingly turning towards online video advertising, thanks to its advanced audience targeting capability. As an ad network, we are able to bring on to the table a variety of unique users across various demo diaspora through genre targeting, engaging users with highly-relevant, in-context ads that solicit actions from them based on relevant characteristics.

Compared to other non-digital outlets for video advertising, online video ads are far more accountable, offering 100% transparency and better proof-of-performance for brand advertisers. To elaborate on the accountability at the back-end, the ad network defines the advertisers RoI and tracks and measures every single user action resulting from every single ad. So the advertisers get to know what is clearly working for them and what is not. The advertiser pays only for ads that are viewed.

Time spent, social conversations, referrals are some of the buzz generating parameters of campaign evaluation process that lends itself very well to video advertising.

The true power of the video ad is that it is highly complementary to brands existing TV investments. The pre-roll video ad, for example, lets brands leverage their existing TV creative and derive added returns on the assets in which theyve already invested. All while being familiar to users in that it closely mimics our all-too familiar TV experience. In many cases, the creative agency doesnt need to do much to adapt their existing spots into an online video commercial, so production is less expensive and hence more RoI friendly.

Today online content consumption is seeing a growth spurt, making it the right-fit vehicle for advertisers looking to supercharge their brand marketing and seeking justifiable returns on marketing spend. The numbers are big. The growing reach of broadband and optimization in video delivery has led to a huge uptake in the consumption of video content in India. 7 out of 10 Indian Internet users watch online video, says a comScore study released this March. For the online generation, viewing short-format video content is quite the thing to do these days. No wonder mobile and online video advertising sites are growing popular by the day!

A recent survey by The Nielsen Company demonstrates high acceptability of and increasing viewer interest in online pre-roll video adsads served while a site visitor is waiting for her or his chosen video or live stream to load. Fifty eight percent of respondents recall seeing these ads and the significant majority of these respondents (87%) are open to watching them. In fact, 83% of respondents say they have clicked at least once on a pre-roll ad, with the majority (54%) more than once. Importantly, 69% of these respondents think pre-roll video ads are interesting. This is the compelling power of video!