Everyone agrees — the future of video marketing is bright and filled with innovations. Still, no one is talking about how to overcome challenges to get the most out of application strategies.

What is video marketing in 2020? Today, it is a tool for building every marketing campaign, raising click-through rate, conversion rate, and memorability of the brand message. At least that’s what I’ve heard at the IAB ALM and CTV Roundtable conferences that I attended this year as SmartyAds CEO and Spearad CRO.

As a CEO, I’m supposed to be the front runner of all transformations in ad tech and martech. What I’ve recently learned was an eye-opening revelation: Although nearly 63% of marketers regularly use video marketing strategies, lots of them don’t know that the right ad formats and platforms can do wonders to their ad campaigns. Piling up the freshest conference insights with the customer data aggregated by SmartyAds DSP, I made a short and definitive video marketing guide specifically tailored to the year 2020.

The importance of video marketing

Before you start an advertising campaign, you should keep in mind that by 2022, 82% of internet traffic will be driven by video. The impact of video rises as people embrace Ultra-High-Definition (UHD) or 4K video streaming. The introduction of the 5G standard already sped up video rendering and streamlines VR and AR video experiences in China.

What’s the result of this? If last year (2019) people watched videos 84 minutes per day on average, by the end of 2020, this number will jump to 100 minutes per day. By 2022, the number of videos streamed on the internet per second will climb to one million.

How users consume video content: (According to the 2020 stats)

• 78% watch video s every week.

• 55% watch videos every day.

• 72% of customers prefer learning about a product or service by watching videos.

What is the right video marketing strategy in 2020?

Video marketing business strategy is a path that leads your ad campaign to great achievement or underachievement. Why underachievement? Because a poorly chosen strategy that doesn’t take into account current opportunities and market challenges at some point can set you back to the beginning of your path. Thus, when planning a video campaign, follow three core steps:

1. Choose your goal

Video marketing strategy is a map that should include all necessary channels, tools, and platforms that you will be using and, most importantly, the result that you want to achieve: click-through rates, conversion rates, sales, or the number of subscribers?

2. Choose a creative type

After you’ve made up your mind regarding the result you want to achieve, choose the format that facilitates the achievement of these metrics. The data aggregated by SmartyAds DSP can tip you off here. According to analyzed ad campaigns (2019), the most performing ad formats are:

• Rewarding videos: Rewarded video ads appear at certain intervals of the mobile games offering bonuses to users in exchange for watching promotional videos. The bonuses are often used instead of in-app purchases, which is why over 70% of gamers actually like this format. In 2019, their CPM rose to $13.75 (iOS) and $12.01 (Android). The typical CTR averaged at 5-10%.

• Playables are also among the best: These formats are best suited for driving installs and attracting good quality audiences to your app. The video ad promotes another game that the user can try before downloading. These ads bring in 10.5% CTR and ~9,600 installs per month on average.

• Interstitial videos: Video interstitial ads can appear at the beginning of the video, in the middle, and at the end. They can be used for desktop, mobile, and in-app environments alike. In 2019, their eCPM was at the level of $9.01 (iOS) and $5.44 (Android). Click-through rates can reach 5-10%.

• Native video ads: When it comes to native videos, they can work best for various campaigns that raise brand awareness and performance alike. Native video will typically appear at the feed or recommendation block on the page. These videos don’t cause irritation since they are triggered by users and naturally fit the look of the web content. Native ads produce 40% higher click-through rates than other formats and 55% more views.

3. Choose a platform

Before choosing where to post the video, first think of your target audience. If you post it on a corporate website, only website visitors will find it. If you chose YouTube and in-build the video on the web page, both YouTube viewers and website visitors will watch it. Airing the ad on social media will make it even more visible, especially for millennials and Gen Z.

You can even build entire advertising funnels based on videos. For instance:

• The primary source of traffic for your ads is YouTube

• From there, a person watches your short video ad and, using the link in the description, registers for a free video tutorial

• The tutorial contains call to actions (ctas) or links leading to the landing page that fully demonstrates your product or service

This strategy is more suitable for businesses that specialize in training or education. Other businesses can expand their reach by shifting to trending addressable TV and OTT, as digital spend on these mediums will reach five billion dollars by the end of 2020. Game consoles, tablets, Smart TVs, and other gadgets connect users to the Internet, where they can stream video content on how and where they like.

This has given a push to personalized programmatic advertising on TV that delivers video ads to households individually, according to relevant customer data – just like programmatic does on the web. Let’s consider, for example, you may be watching the same show with your neighbors, but they will be watching e.g. Starbucks commercial, and you’ll see the interactive CTV ad that offers you to register for a car test-drive (example below).

Benefits and challenges of video marketing in 2020

This January, Google announced that it will stop supporting cookies on August 5th, 2020. For video marketing, this means the end of the era of data usage as we knew it. Google Chrome wasn’t the first browser that abandoned cookies – Firefox and Safari have done it as well.

Is there life for video ad targeting after cookie’s death? Certainly yes. While you still have time for preparation, it is better to embrace DTC (direct-to-customer) video campaigns to make yourself less cookie-dependent. By addressing your customers directly, you are fostering loyalty to your brand, and loyal customers are much more likely to share their data (first-party data), which you can then legitimately use and re-use for video marketing campaigns.

When setting pre-roll and mid-roll video marketing campaigns, be sure your creative also complies with new ad duration and experience standards established by Google in February 2020. It is recommended to use Google’s ad quality report in order to ensure that your video ads are not violating user experience. Finally, making a video marketing campaign, revise creative guidelines established by the ‘Coalition for Better Ads’ and your ads will always be relevant and will never be blocked.

A brief takeaway

Social media, rapid adoption of connected devices, and mobile gadgets – these are the catalysts that made video the most wanted format in 2020. People will spend more time watching videos over the next few years, which means advertisers will be budgeting for more video marketing campaigns.

In order to face the growing competition for user attention with ease, marketers should use advertising automation, platforms, and formats that increase ROI and user loyalty, all at the same time. All social video marketing trends that will be disrupting the advertising market in 2020 I will be revising in the next article. Stay tuned.

Author: Ivan Guzenko
Source: taken from ClickZ