Video Content Distribution: Think Audience First!
Post# of 17650
July 10th, 2014
http://www.envisionmedia.com/blog/
by mikevrh
Video Content Distribution is now a billion dollar segment of the ad market. Metrics like Nielsen’s shows that video has made enormous headway in recent years, becoming a nearly billion-dollar segment of the ad market. New metrics such as Nielsen’s OCR and ComScore’s vCE are helping to flatten the buying landscape and putting video on TV ad buyers’ have to have list. At the same time, quality native ad delivery platforms plus faster smartphones have made a video more reliable way for marketers to reach broader market segments. But some marketers when it comes to video are putting the cart in front of the horse. Too many video campaigns are executed backward. Yes, you heard me, backward.
Let Me Explain
What happens is agencies give their creative assets to media planners, and the strategic demographic thinking that went into them does not target the right channels or audience. As a result, great creative misses its market by being led by specific channel-spend allocation decisions, rather than by target audience hang-outs. With segmented budgets and the need to cover every channel asset distribution gets carved up before content — and the specific audience — is finally confirmed. In the process media planners adopt a shoot-and-point mentality that is a legacy of television-style ad spend and miss the opportunity that an integrated cross-channel campaign delivers.
The Way It Should and Needs to be Done
Please put the audience first. I know that sounds so elementary but even if you’re repurposing creative, let the asset dictate the placement. With any given creative ad asset, there will be a wide variety of formats and platforms appropriate for your ad. Instead of placing your ad on a channel because that’s what was planned or budgeted for; prioritize audience first and then figure out which channels will give you access to that targeted personal demographic hang out.
Some Social Media Technology Suggestions
Consider programmatic. Applying audience-first thinking to video will pay dividends on programmatic buys. Seeding a video programmatically helps lay the groundwork for viral sharing. Today, videos such as T-Mobile’s “Liverpool Dance “or the popular Old Spice commercials are often mistakenly assumed to have achieved viral status purely through organic growth on YouTube and Facebook. In fact, these campaigns ran programmatically, using the distribution method to generate more growth after seeing an initial positive organic reaction. What’s more, programmatic can be optimized in-flight – you don’t have to jump off a cliff and hope for a safe landing.
Think holistically. Consider a video in the context of the whole customer journey. Think about what your viewers are doing before and after they watch your video – and what you want them to do. In the best of all possible worlds, your video will point users to another high-engagement channel, one that will move your customer right on down the funnel. In other words, always have a call to action that meets your strategic goals for every creative asset that you deploy.
Apply insights across channels and integrating video with the rest of your campaign allows your entire campaign to benefit from insights derived from each channel. One of the benefits of running an integrated campaign with a data-management platform is that you can apply the audience segmentation you’ve done for display directly to your video campaign. What’s more, audience-related insights you garner from one channel — display or search, for example — can shed new light on how to go about reaching your audience with video.
One of the unique advantages of video when used with an online video platform that can tag videos and provide a wide range of KPIs is that clicks are free, and like email platforms you can get great analytic information on consumer engagement. Typically, video will end up costing less than comparable multiple display and search ads that would have been required to achieve the same results.
Remember Audience First
Video is growing faster than any other marketing technology. Study after study proves that a video provides a more effective engagement than any other content marketing technology. An integrated and strategic rollout of video should be at the top of your list if it not already. Video provides external marketing advantages and has a vast array of internal enterprise applications for nearly every business operation from human resources to virtual product demonstrations. Just remember like any other media the audience and the content come first.