The Importance of Video Creative in Your Paid Media Strategy

Whether you’re working with an agency or run your marketing efforts in-house, chances are you’ve heard about the increasing popularity of video advertising across channels like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and more. At this point, most marketers understand the value of using video as part of their overall strategy, and the roadblock is now actually making the creative assets.

While many advertisers have their own in-house design teams, those teams have a myriad of responsibilities from website design, static image ads, conference materials, etc, and it’s common for video assets to get deprioritized because they are more difficult to create. However, it’s important that advertisers do make room for video asset creation for several reasons:

Video ads perform better than static ads on social networks like Facebook & Instagram

Across advertisers we’ve worked with, we’ve consistently seen video outperform static imagery. In a recent test we ran, we found that video ads drove a 51% higher CTR, 15% higher conversion rate and 56% higher ROI than static ads.

When thinking about how to capture the attention of an audience that is quickly scrolling through their feed, videos are much more likely to stand out and garner engagement than a static ad. Additionally, more information can be conveyed during the video – including live tutorials of the product being used as well as before-and-after shots and descriptions of why somebody should use your product or service over another.

Without video creative, you miss out on tapping into video-only channels like YouTube

YouTube offers a lot of benefits for advertisers, including 95% viewability & audibility of ads, lower CPMs than other social networks and a large audience of cord-cutters (more 18-49 year olds watch YouTube than cable TV). According to this report from Think With Google, Display ads typically only have 50% viewability and video ads shown on sites or platforms other than YouTube only have 68% viewability, so YouTube stands out as a clear winner in terms of likelihood that your ad will actually be seen.

Without video creative, you’re missing an opportunity to get in front of this highly engaged audience and show them why they should consider purchasing from your brand.

Video is effective at educating your audience about your brand and influencing their decisions

In a study done by Think With Google, they researched how video affected students applying for universities, and found that 80% of students who planned on attending an online university said that video influenced their application process. Although this data is specific to the education industry, it’s still a great example of how video can impact the decision-making process. This data isn’t surprising – when people can visually see a demo of a complex SaaS product or watch the before-and-after effects of applying a new makeup product, they are going to be more educated on the company than they would by seeing a single static ad. Therefore, they are more likely to be influenced by the content and more likely to make a purchase from that company.

In addition, according to a report done by Hubspot, more than 50% of consumers want to see video content from brands, which was more than any other type of content. So not only is video effective at influencing your audience, people would actually prefer to see video content from you.

Easy video creation options

So now that we’ve convinced you why video content is important, the question of how to create the content still remains. If it’s not possible to make room in your internal team’s schedule, you still have options:

• If you work with a digital marketing agency, ask them if they offer video creation services or if they partner with any video production companies – since agencies work with lots of different types of clients, they will likely have good recommendations on what type of vendor would be good for your budget & style
• For YouTube, utilize tools offered by Google, like the new Video Builder beta that allows companies to create basic videos from existing assets like static images, logos, and text
• For Facebook and Instagram, a similar tool exists called the Video Creation Kit that allows you to create mobile-first videos using already existing assets through their pre-designed templates

No matter how you choose to create video assets, it’s important to make sure their creation doesn’t get buried under other projects. If video is deprioritized, you will continue to miss out on the benefits that other advertisers (and even your competitors) are already tapping into.

If you’d like more information on how to start or improve your video campaigns, contact our team for a deep dive.