Interactivity is, perhaps more than anything else, what makes the web different from TV, radio, and print. Yet only 10%–15% of current online video ads are interactive. “The other 85 percent are simply repurposed TV ads, where the viewer is just supposed to sit and watch,” says Tim Avila, VP of product marketing for video ad platform BrightRoll, Inc. “That’s sad, because research proves that viewers exposed to interactive ads have higher product awareness than viewers exposed to non-interactive ads,” he said.
Interacting with online ads motivates consumers to dig deeper into the content and makes them more willing to buy whatever’s being advertised. So, in other words, this means is that 85% of online video ads are not achieving their full potential.
But hope is on the horizon: At the time this article was being written, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) was on the verge of releasing a series of standardized interactive online video ad formats.
“The idea is to provide advertising agencies with the same kind of standardized ad formats that are used for 30-second radio and TV spots,” says Peter Minnium, the IAB’s head of brand initiatives. “This will hopefully make them more comfortable with purchasing interactive online video ads, and allow this format to achieve the growth and dominance it deserves.”
“We want to provide the agencies with turnkey solutions,” echoes Seneca Mudd, the IAB’s director of industry initiatives. “If we make it easier for ad agencies to buy turnkey solutions, chances are that more agencies will do so.”
In proposing these new formats, the IAB is thinking very, very big. “We want interactive online video ads to become the lead horse in the race for brand advertising dollars,” Minnium declares. “That’s what will happen with this medium, if we are doing it right.”
One Size Does Not Fit All
The fact that the IAB is proposing a series of interactive online video ad formats -- sources say the range is between four to six formats -- illustrates a simple reality: When it comes to interactive online video ads, one size does not fit all.
“Interactive video ads can encompass the full screen or appear in a portion of the screen and either pause or preempt the content of the video,” says Peter Koeppel, founder and president of the direct response advertising agency Koeppel Direct. “These types of video ads permit a range of interactions, such as signing up for an offer, requesting a coupon, clicking to obtain more information about a product or service, determining the location of a retailer, or taking you to a shopping cart.”
There are all kinds of ways that interactivity can be married to an online video ad. The application can be as simple as a button that allows viewers to skip the ad after 5 seconds or as complex as the ability to click on aspects of the video itself to drill down to more details. It is also possible to provide Facebook and Twitter links to let the viewer share the video with friends if they so choose, and to steer them to product-related feeds on these and other social media sites.
“A basic premise for looking at interactive video advertising would be to consider that a standard pre-roll as a 1 on an interactive scale of 1–10,” says David Sanderson, senior director of creative strategy at video ad platform Tremor Video. “Taking the concept [of] a standard pre-roll as your base vehicle for the message, you have literally thousands of ways to slice and dice interactive video,” Sanderson explains. “You can add to, augment, apply functions, features, layouts, additional videos, dynamic feeds, social linking mechanisms, weather, movie tickets, retail, shopping, polls, search, downloads, and uploads. And you can do this across all interactive mediums, including instream, mobile, tablet, connected TV and even in-page.”
This is the true beauty of interactive online video advertising: It offers elbow room for advertisers and ad agencies experimenting with new ways to cut through the clutter. The trick to success, as the IAB’s Minnium says, is “doing it right.”
What Works in Online Video Advertising
Choosing the right online video ad format can pay big dividends. For instance, Pittsburgh advertising agency Brunner, Inc. worked with BrightRoll to develop an interactive online video ad campaign for the Cub Cadet RZT zero-turn riding mower.
“The interactive element was aimed at supporting a national ‘test drive’ campaign to get people to experience the quality of our products first hand,” says Candice Puzak, Brunner’s group media director. “Online video has performed well for us but we wanted people to be able to find an event through our ads as well, so we added an interactive overlay over the video pre-roll. When a viewer clicked the overlay, they were able to enter a zip code for a test drive event near them.”
Cub Cadet saw a 128% increase in click-throughs when it added interactivity to its preroll video ads.
The result? “We saw a 128% increase in our click through rate from interactive online video versus standard video,” Puzak says. “Moreover, the mobile interactive pre-roll video ads delivered 250 percent above our benchmark.”
Clearly format matters; some forms of interactive online video ads deliver successful results, while others fail miserably.
So what kinds of ad models succeed? “A basic ‘call to action,’ which can be expressed by interacting with the online video ad, is extremely effective,” replies Atul Patel, CEO of OneScreen, Inc., a provider of digital video publishing, content, and advertising products/services. “The smart way to do this is to provide a one-click response button or some other simple way for people to respond,” Patel says. “This approach is far more successful than making complex demands, such as asking the viewer to fill out an online form, because it serves as a stepping stone for transitioning from television advertising -- where the audience isn’t used to interacting at all.”
Successful interactive online video ads build “consumer engagement with a brand,” says Koeppel. “They also allow for interactivity that grows in the player or when the consumer clicks through to a marketer’s landing page or website.”
“In general, keeping the interactivity self-contained within the ad is best,” advises Diaz Nesamoney, president and CEO of Jivox, maker of the Jivox interactive video advertising platform. “Click-through cause a disruptive user experience, and often end the user’s engagement as it takes them out of context.”
Innovid knows a lot about successful interactive online video ads: Its iRoll interactive preroll platform delivers such content to the web/mobile for clients such as the movie Madagascar 3, Nissan, and HTC Corp. In 2012, the company saw demand for its iRoll products grow 400% in 2012. “In some global markets like the UK, we saw 100 percent growth month over month,” says Innovid CEO Zvika Netter.
When asked what makes an interactive online video work, Netter points to Nissan’s Versa iRoll campaign. “From within the iRoll engagement slate, users could view videos that helped them experience the interior of a Nissan Versa, and learn more about the car’s features through a variety of hotspots,” he says. “Once clicked, the hotspots showcased each feature in more detail. The iRoll unit also offered multiple click-through points that took users to the ‘My Versa Road Trip’ website where they could participate in the contest.”
Innovid saw demand for its iRoll interactive ads, like this one for the HTC One X+ phone, grow 400% in 2012. On the top is the ad before interaction; on the bottom is the expanded version.
This is just an example of Innovid’s approach. On a strategic level, “We agree with IBM’s Yuchun Lee about the new 4Ps of marketing: Permission-based, Persuasion, Personalized, and Presence-based,” says Netter. The goal of the 4Ps approach is to “provide value to consumers and persuade them to engage.” Tools include humor, quizzes, and games to entice consumers to want to learn more about the advertised product/service, he added. “Retailers, movie studios, and car makers can also extend their retail presence and turn any in-stream player into a pop-up store.”
Finally, great advertising is as much about what you put in as what you leave out. “For effective interactive advertising, it is key to not overwhelm the viewer with options,” explains Sanderson. “Decide what the goals are, build in the supporting key features strategically. Be clear and concise. Be direct and don’t overwhelm the viewer.”
What Fails in Online Video Advertising
There are many ways to rob an interactive online video ad of its punch, making it fail.
One way is to annoy the consumer with extended forced viewing, poorly designed on-screen tools, and click-through features that don’t strongly reinforce the product, service, or message being promoted. Interactive features that are boring, amateurish, and hard-to-use can also turn viewers off.
Another way to go wrong is to create interactive ads that do not work with the range of smartphones, tablets, and computers currently in use. “The biggest challenge that brands face when doing interactive video ads is all the platforms that have to be served,” says David Regan, Brightcove’s senior product manager for Video Cloud. “It’s not just the problem of iOS, Android, and BlackBerry: Some older viewing devices don’t support onscreen interactivity, whereas new ones do,” he notes. “Producers of interactive online video content have to take this fact into account, and prepare multiple versions to deal with it.”
A mistake that puzzles Ed Haslam, YuMe’s SVP of marketing, is online video ads whose interactive features push people away from the content they’re viewing. “You don’t see a Procter & Gamble TV commercial telling you to get [up] from your chair and go out and buy soap right now,” Haslam explains. “Yet some interactive online video ads do just that: They try to break you away from the medium you are consuming at that moment, by directing you to other sites that take you away from the content.”
Overkill is also a brand assassin; it’s a crime that many advertisers commit. This is because “[b]ad advertising is often built on the mistaken belief that because you can, you should,” says YuMe, which worked with Mini on this ad campaign, discourages interactivity that pushes people away from the content they’re viewing.
YuMe, which worked with Mini on this ad campaign, discourages interactivity that pushes people away from the content they’re viewing.
Tremor’s Sanderson. “In other words, bad ads may try to fit a whole brand’s website into what should be a much more simple advertising experience. Any more than three to five options in an interactive slate is really pushing the limits of what the viewer will respond to effectively.”
Remember: “If you get your interactive online video ad wrong, you’re more likely to seriously alienate the consumer than if you just did a crappy display or print ad,” Minnium observes. In other words, a good interactive online video ad may be good for business, but a bad one can be disastrous.
A Tool to Be Used Wisely
Properly done, interactive online video ads can deliver solid results for sponsors and the online/mobile sites they purchase space on. This is why the IAB is working so hard to create standardized ad formats; it’s why Minnium is so bullish about the potential of this ad medium. “If we do this right, we could see a good 50 percent of all video ad buys incorporating interactivity,” he predicts. “The profit potential for Internet operators is simply huge.”
Sidebar: Server-Based Ad Insertion Maximizes ROI
The growth of online video viewing -- either interactive or passive -- does not automatically spell success for advertisers. To capitalize effectively on these eyeballs, online video ads need to be targeted to the right viewers. This means not playing commercials for Depends adult diapers to teenagers, a Wiz Khalifa song to Bible Belt fundamentalists, or Longhorn Steakhouse dinner specials to vegans.
This is why so many websites take the time to learn about their viewers’ ages, tastes, and preferences in exchange for access. Yet this knowledge is of little use unless it is used to select the right commercials based on this demographic data. This is where server-based ad insertion software comes in. Made by companies such as Elemental Technologies, Inc.; mDialog Corp.; and SeaWell Networks, Inc.; this software targets the right ads to the right audiences, whether for live streaming or video on demand (VOD). Elemental Technologies’ Elemental Live is a processing and encoding solution for video streaming. It works with both live and VOD events, and it can be integrated into existing media installations, as well as new ones. Elemental Live supports Adobe Flash, Apple HLS, and Microsoft Smooth Streaming. To ensure that its insertions marry well with these systems, this software uses player-side ad insertion of cue points for Flash, manifest manipulation for Apple HLS, and metadata tracking to tell clients when ad insertions should be done for Microsoft Smooth Streaming.
“TV may increasingly be ‘everywhere’, but in 2013 and beyond it’s going to have to be all about monetizing everywhere,” said Keith Wymbs, vice president of marketing for Elemental Technologies. “Traditional forms of TV advertising are akin to burning money in the street given their inability to precisely target and customize ads. Multiscreen monetization solutions from market leaders makes dynamic ad insertion into live and archived streams easy.”
mDialog’s ad insertion product is called SmartStream Platform. Working interactively with major North American media companies, the SmartStream Platform manages, delivers, and measures video advertising across a range of IP-connected devices. It serves technology including iPad, iPhone, Android, GoogleTV, Apple TV, Roku, and Xbox.
“The ability to insert and track uniquely addressable advertising across the fragmented landscape of connected devices is the key to advancing TV Everywhere,” said Greg Philpott, founder and CEO of mDialog. “In addition to delivering video ads across connected devices, mDialog’s video management platform solves a massive scale problem -- managing the insertion and measurement of uniquely addressable TV ads in real-time across million of TV Everywhere streams, essentially inserting a unicast TV ad break into a multicast TV stream.”
SeaWell Network’s ad insertion platform is known as Spectrum. It controls adaptive bitrate (ABR) viewing sessions on the web and mobile devices, allowing the content to be served to a variety of viewing platforms. It interconnects to subscriber databases and content distribution policy servers, choosing the right ads to insert based on the combination of these two data sources. Spectrum also provides data on which videos are selected and how they are viewed.
Whatever the ad insertion platform, making this process work is no small feat: It requires a behind-the-scenes interaction between servers housing the viewer’s demographic data -- as much of it as happens to be available at the time -- the content provider’s server, and the advertising server(s). The server-based ad insertion software acts as referee and manager of this interaction, and it does so on-the-fly. Given how many platforms currently have to be served, plus the advent of newer distribution technologies such as HTML5 and MPEG-DASH, companies that make server-based ad insertion products have their work cut out for them.
This article appears in the April/May 2013 issue of Streaming Media magazine as "Online Video Advertising Grows Up."
By James Careless
