Underwater filming is an art of its own. The best photographers are also going to be scuba divers and will have a love for underwater species. The light is very different underwater, and the equipment is different from still and topside and can be pricey. But for those who enjoy life under the sea, the opportunities for killer photography are many, and the rewards of seeing beautiful sea life perfectly rendered are amazing.

One of the most critical skills for shooting underwater is to be a very competent and stable diver. Control is everything. It takes experience to remain steady underwater and not scare away the fish you are trying to shoot or stir up the sand in sediment by touching it. Buoyancy control is critical and can even allow you to shoot upside down if that makes a better shot. 

Knowing What and Where to Shoot

Some species are very tough to film. None are particularly easy! So bring your patience. Great places to shoot are in national parks, wildlife preserves, or marine preserves. Beware as they are often protected areas and will require a permit to shoot. You’ll also need insurance for some of these areas. 

There are many subjects to shoot in nature in Caribbean waters. Get a boat, or hook up with a commercial dive operator. Remember that some species’ behavior is seasonal, like shark mating or whale migration, so do your homework. 

Special Challenges of Underwater Filming

Shooting above the water is very different from shooting underwater. Forget what you know when you go below the waterline! Think carefully about your ISO. Never assume it will be dark. Telephoto lenses will not work in underwater filming. You’ll be shooting through the thick medium of water and have light absorption, color absorption, and color diffusion. This means that most shots will require artificial light, and often even two light sources. It’s helpful to get close to your subject since the light will not travel well. 

An excellent underwater shooter will stay very close and shoot from a few inches to even 1-3 feet from your subject. This will result in the best light and color and provide the best background. 

Think of shooting underwater as shooting under a vast blue filter. Use the daylight setting to apply your white balance. The water’s clarity will vary and will impact how sharp your images might be. 

Your subject will bring unique challenges too. If you are trying to capture a school of fish, they often move quickly and will scatter. The larger species are more likely to glide. Fast shutter speeds are tough to master underwater, so that it will take practice. Keep your shutter speed as slow as you can.

Be Steady!

One of the most significant challenges of underwater filming is to hold still. As with all videos, you want to avoid shakiness in your shots. It may sound easy, but it is not! Any wobbles will be very distracting to your viewer. Holding the camera as close to your body as possible will help. 

Alternately, you may be able to use an underwater tripod. Various styles and prices will depend upon your diving and filming style. A tripod can be handy when shooting wide-angle. It’s also cool to keep the camera on your subject and sim away. This is less intimidating to the fish and can produce some great images. 

Stay on your subject longer than you think you need to. Hold for a count of 10 once your subject is in the frame, and don’t adjust your zoom. Remember, you will have some shakes and moves, so you need to get excess footage to allow for any unusable footage. You may be surprised to see that 60 seconds of footage may yield only a few usable seconds. 

Change it up

Any video is more interesting if it includes a variety of shots. Mix it up with some nice steady shots, and then some taken moving. You can pan the camera by twisting at the waist as far as you can to one side. Hit record and slowly turn your body back all the way to the other side. Don’t move your entire body with your fins, as that will cause shakiness. Each kick will cause some wobble, so try to frog-kick as you pan to get a nice long shot. 

The best way to follow a moving subject’s action is to keep it in frame with lots of headroom, so it looks like your subject has plenty of space to move. When you have caught enough of the action, stay still and let the subject swim out of the frame for a great end to the shot. 

When you are in edit, you’ll appreciate having a great variety of shots to work with. Try to get wide, medium, and closeup shots of any subject if possible. Shoot your subjects from various angles and with different lighting. A pro tip is to take images that will help weave the story together. Think about getting shots of the divers putting on gear or entering and exiting the water, some nice wide shots of the site, lots of blue water site and diver bubbles are always great. 

Shooting a wide-angle shot (scenic): Start by zooming all the way out. Keep our elbows locked and to your sides, and try to stay neutrally buoyant. Try to hold your breath to minimize shaking. If you pan a scene, do it very slowly and shoot multiple takes. 

Shooting medium shots (fish pictures): First, zoom to compose your shot. Get as close to your subject as possible. If you can, set the camera on a solid object or place your elbows in the sand to steady the camera. Hold your breath to minimize shaking if you are on the ground. Press record once the camera is steady.

Shooting closeup or macro shots: Here, you will need to have lights and will want to hide from the sun. The closer you get, the stiller your camera has to be. A tiny shake can ruin your shot.

Pro Tip: Always be sure to check your footage on a larger screen if possible. You would hate to find dust in your lens obscuring your entire shoot when you view it. 

Lighting is Key

Practice getting USD to your camera’s white balance function. With luck, you can leave it on “auto” but experiment.

Some lighting basics:

• A wide-angle at 45 feet or less requires a red filter and ambient light with manual light balance.
• For a wide-angle deeper than 45 feet, use lights and remove the red filter.
• For macro filming, lights on and no red filter. Always experiment for the best result as many things such as the water clarity and subject can change the results. 

Shooting underwater video does not have to be intimidating. It’s usually easier than shooting still images. You can let your camera run and wait for the action to happen. The keys are to keep it in focus and steady. Your post-production is also much easier and more forgiving than with still images. Underwater video is a great way to tell your story. Have a big underwater project and need an experienced team by your side? Give us a shout; we’d be happy to help.

Instagram reportedly has over a billion active users per month and 500 million daily Instagram stories. There are 130 million Instagram users in the US, and the average browsing time for a visitor is 53 minutes per day. Instagram is second to Facebook in terms of users, and there are now more than 25 billion business accounts on the platform. If you’re not using Instagram, you may be missing a significant opportunity to grow your brand, your audience and increase sales. Here we will explore some tips for creating memorable Instagram ads and campaigns. 

Will Instagram work for my business?

Instagram is an essential platform for any sized business. An active Instagram presence and consistent posting can help build your brand awareness. Instagram also now provides for e-commerce sales via their “Shop” tab on the Instagram home dock. Customers can purchase directly from you or your shoppable posts, which let you add tags to the products shown in your photos that link to the description, pricing, and a “shop now” button that links to your online store. It is reported that 72% of Instagram users have purchased products on the platform. Whether your goal is brand building, audience building, or sales, Instagram is a platform that can work for you. 

• Stories are a great way to show your audience who you are. Live stories can show behind-the-scenes peeks at your company and people, helping to build rapport and make you relatable.
• Partnering with the right influencer can give your brand a significant boost, and Instagram ads are a key to extend your reach and find new customers. You can target a lookalike audience and collect data that will help you collect data that will be usable on other platforms. 

Create a Killer Instagram Campaign

The key to a killer campaign on any platform is to be very clear on your marketing goal and who your target audience is. There are several types of goals that can be met on Instagram. Every element of your campaign must be aligned and focused on a single specific and measurable goals. Your strategy may be the longer-term purpose of being on Instagram, and a campaign is a sprint that is shorter and more intense. Here are some types of Instagram marketing campaigns. There are several broad categories of campaigns that can be optimized for different goals and tactics. 

•  Awareness campaign – Instagram is an excellent platform for increasing your brand’s visibility with new audiences. Think about using it to showcase new products and show what is exciting and different about your brand. 
• Sale or promotion – Instagram can be a powerful place to run sales or promotions with special discounts or offers for your followers. Provide a unique discount code just for your followers. Holidays and certain times of year are a great time are an excellent opportunity to run flash sales-driving pre-sales before a launch or to move seasonal inventory.
• Drive engagement – There are many ways to run contests that will support your goals. For example, if your goal is to expand your reach, the contest would ask users to tag a friend, and asking them to enter through a form will grow your email list. 
• Product launch – If you’re launching a new product, create camping to build anticipation and excitement. You can show off the benefits and value of the product. 
• User-Generated Content – User-generated content provides social proof that can make your product soar. You can have them showing how your product is used and what it meant to them. Create a unique hashtag to tie the campaign together. Use compelling content in other campaigns, as users love to see their content used by a brand. 

Top Instagram Tips

Here are some tips to help you optimize your use of Instagram. 

• Use the tools created for business users: The tools are much like those on Facebook. Insights will let you view impressions, engagement data, and a breakdown of user demographics like age, gender, location, or active hours. Use this data to perfect your Instagram campaigns and to help you target other platforms. This provides the best view of how users are interacting with your content. 
• Create sponsored ads: Ads have become quite prevalent on Instagram. You can promote just one ad or multiple ads using the carousel format. You can promote beyond your audience to a similar audience to increase the reach of your ads. Use ads that are engaging to your target or use your best posts in the form of an ad. There are several forms of sponsored ads, including photos, video, carousel or dynamic ads, Stories or Stories Canvas. 
• Use Instagram Stories: Instagram Stories can be very useful in lead generation. They come in a slideshow format that shows for 24 hours. A user clicks on it to view. They are displayed at the top of a user’s timeline, where a user will look first. Experiment with various formats like photo, video, live video, or Boomerangs. Use a Boomerang that plays on a loop. You can have unlimited Stories at any time. 
• Develop an interactive, branded hashtag: Interactive hashtags are a great way to encourage engagement. Customers can use that tag to post their own user-generated content. Users can then search through all posts relating to your brand. Hashtags are free, and every time it is used, your brand is being exposed. Consider using your slogan or tagline if you have one. 
• Think about when you are posting: Over-posting can turn off your audience and can make them unfollow you. You must post consistently so you can stay in their newsfeed. Try to post only on peak days and times. You can find this info in your analysis. Typically, Mondays and Thursdays are the best days, and Wednesdays and Sundays are the worst but check your brand’s data. Mornings from 8-9 are typically a great time to post. Use a scheduling tool to set these post times up.
• Track the metrics that matter to your brand and goals: You can only improve your campaigns when you understand their performance. Measurable results will tell you what is working and what isn’t. There are three key metrics that you should analyze. The number of followers is often considered a vanity metric. It is, but the growth rate is important. That growth rate will tell you if the content you are posting and your time you’re posting at is right for you. Next, average engagement is important. Look t the average engagement percentage of total followers and average engagement of each post to see how your page performs. Finally, look at your CTR, which will tell you how many people are clicking through to your site. The average CTR on Instagram is .94%. Work on improving this critical metric. 
• Cross-promote your posts to build synergy: To get a good start on building your Instagram followers. If you are engaging through Twitter, Facebook, or even email, encourage your followers to check out your Instagram content. You can share some of your Instagram posts on the other platforms as well. Facebook owns Instagram, so Instagram, so cross-posts to Facebook do well. 
•  Honor and express your brand consistently: As on any social media platform, have a strategy and a brand personality. Avoid random posts. Try to show a personality that resonates with your audience. Use images, colors, and fonts tied to your brand, and avoid anything that is off-brand. You want your followers to associate certain characteristics with your brand. 

Instagram is the place to go for image sharing, and you should do what you can to capture some of that vast marketing opportunity. Take advantage of the free tools, use the platform’s features, and be consistent in using Instagram to grow your audience and make sales. Not sure where you want to start with your social platforms? C&I has the expertise to get you the viewership you’re seeking. Give us a holler and let’s make you a social superstar.

Shooting underwater video is the perfect way to share your underwater world with your friends and social community. If you follow a few basics, you can bring the peace and calm and vibrant, and colorful life of the underwater world to those who will never venture underwater.

Make your underwater video engaging and entertaining by keeping it short and interesting. Your friends won’t want to watch your entire dive, trust us!. But they will love seeing the highlights and a well-edited look at the wonder of down under. For social media, a 30 to the 90-second video can be the maximum of your audience’s attention span, so keep it concise and focused and your shots well chosen and edited. 

A prerequisite for good underwater filming is that you are a strong and experienced diver. Remember, you’ll be fighting with buoyancy, currents, tides, and other factors before you even begin to shoot. Maintaining stability is always one of the biggest challenges, and you’ll need some scuba skills to manage them and create a smooth and flowing video. Bring a tripod for additional stability for those macro shots. 

You’ll need to bring all of your fundamental photography skills to your dive. Composition, framing, perspective, lighting, and subject all must converge to help you share your underwater experience compellingly and entertainingly. Don’t be overwhelmed trying to think about all the things! Like any new skill, underwater photography takes discipline and practice. 

Learn from the best

Study other great underwater videos that appeal to you. Look at their technique and how they frame up subjects similar to the ones you’ll be shooting. If they share settings and other techniques, read them carefully and read any accompanying notes or articles. Watch the Discovery Channel and other nature shows, and watch YouTube videos in that space. 

Search for underwater organizations like Mare Group, Oceana, The Ocean Conservancy, and others dedicated to marine life preservation. These organizations will help you understand and appreciate what you are shooting and may change your perspective about life under the waterline. 

Preparation

Before you head out, be sure your batteries are charged and that you have plenty of memory space- bring an extra.

Give some thought to what kind of story you’ll want to tell before you hit the water. You may want to follow one animal or a couple of species of the same order or tell the story of your dive. Try to get some close shots, try to shoot upwards, and go for a little bit of movement and various images. Try panning horizontally and vertically, or flyovers of your subject. Mix up wide, medium angle, and close-ups. And keep it steady. You will get movement, so shoot extra footage to net out with the usable footage you need. 

Filming

Pro-tip #1 – Always shoot more video than you think you’ll need. Memory space is cheap, and this will help you catch those unexpected and serendipitous moments and provide lots to work within the editing room. Shoot some transitional shots, too, like divers entering the water or preparing for the dive, to help bring our audience along. This pre-roll and post-roll will be super helpful.

When you are shooting the action, don’t rush. Let the fish exit the frame on their own time. Let that camera run and see what happens. Move slowly, and hold your shots as the marine life moves around you. Resist the urge to chase the action. 

Try to get various shots and angles to create a video that maintains interest and adds drama. Go for long and slow shots to bring your audience in on the tranquility and flow of underwater life. Pull in close to subjects that are incredibly vivid in color. Take wide shots to establish some context for the video.

You must understand how light behaves underwater. The water absorbs color and light with distance, and you must use lighting to account for that. Using the correct filters will help bring all the colors you’re seeing to life on your video and adjust for the blue or green water. Shallow water shooting can bring plenty of natural light. Just be sure you try to keep the sun at our back unless you are going for a silhouette shot, which can also be interesting. 

Lighting

Since much of the good stuff happens in deep water, you’ll need proper lighting to overcome visibility issues. Good quality wide-angle video lights will do wonders for your video. 

The Sea Life

It’s a privilege to share the zen-like calm of the underwater world with its inhabitants. The more you know about your subjects and their habits, the more compelling your underwater stories will be.

 Here are some favorite sea creatures of underwater filmmakers. Your subjects will, of course, depend upon your location and the time of year.

Seahorses are great sea creatures to film underwater. They live in shallow waters amidst weeds and algae, so they can be hard to spot. These little guys move by beating their dorsal fin 30 to 70 times per second.

Reef fish are a photographer’s favorite. You’ll find a great variety of these amidst the reefs and can often catch many in one frame or shot. They are a great representation of the diversity of a reef ecosystem. Keep an eye out for butterflyfish, damselfish, triggerfish, angelfish, gobies, scorpionfish, and frogfish. Reef fish are the stuff those amazing aquariums are made of. 

Crab can be fun to film. You may even find them in tidal pools. The larger ones are exciting subjects in underwater videos. They can have an enormous leg span and are the largest crustaceans in the world.

An incredible dive adventure is swimming with the sea turtles. They live in the open ocean, and some of them are surprisingly fast. Be responsible when filming turtles as most species are endangered and research them before you go, so you know their habits. 

Whale sharks are not as scary as they sound. They are incredibly docile and great diving partners. They look slow but are actually very fast and make for fantastic video footage. Try slowing it down in edit and adding some calm music. 

Octopi like to hide from you behind the rocks but are extremely photogenic for your underwater video. They are graceful and mesmerizing, but take care- some are poisonous.

Editing

In post-production, edit carefully. Try to stitch together a story. Group together with the shots you want to keep and start building your story. Keep it concise with smooth transitions, some context establishing wide shots, some macro detail, and some cutaways to end the story. Let the marine life set its pace and make its exit from the frames. Don’t forget some sots of empty blue water or diver bubbles. They work great in the credits section!

Don’t forget to take advantage of effects like music, titles, and fade-ins and fade-outs. They will all bring professionalism and interest to your video. If you’re stuck for music, check out YouTube’s audio library for free downloads. 

Creating underwater videos can be fascinating and rewarding. Take your time and practice. Learn from the best. And start sharing your underwater adventures with your friends and community.

Running a Successful Connected TV (CTV) Campaign

If you have not integrated connected TV (or CTV) into your marketing mix, you are behind the power curve. Connected TV is taken over the digital advertising world and shows no signs of slowing up. It is expected that by 2022 over 204.1 million viewers will be watching connected TV programming.

CTV is any TV that can be connected to the internet and can stream digital content at the viewer’s convenience. CTV can be viewed as a subset of over-the-top (OTT), which includes applications and services that don’t require subscriptions to traditional pay-TV or cable services. 

TV advertising is great for telling a longer story more visually. Think of CTV as an extension of that, in that you are showing the ad to a highly targeted audience group. And, format matters. They see your message on a full-size screen in a comfortable and familiar environment. Why would you not use CTV?

• Why you need CTV in your marketing mix nowHere are our top reasons that you should!

Affordability

Connected TV is the screen where the most digital impressions are shown- even surpassing mobile. A CTV ad can be purchased at a much more reasonable price per CPM, and as you take advantage of targeting insight, it becomes more and more efficient. 

Exceptional Targeting Capabilities

Extraordinary targeting abilities provide better audience efficiency and reduce media waster and the worry of reaching irrelevant viewers and households. Some examples of targeting capabilities:

• 1-st party audiences such as visitors to your home page or past purchasers.
• Lookalike audiences to target households that look just like your most valuable customers.
• Segments to target households on traits like age, gender income, kids, vacationers, or shopping intent.

Retargeting

In addition to great targeting for your prospecting campaigns, you can step it up a notch. CTV allows for high;y relevant retargeting campaigns. A viewer sees your CTV ad on TV at home. You can then retarget them across their other devices, such as laptops, to present a tremendous cross-device approach that follows and facilitates the buyer journey.

Real-time measurement

How many times have you seen the analysis of a campaign only after it is completed? You may wait weeks or months- when there is nothing to be done about the results. CTV allows you to track and measure digital metrics, video completion rates, and offline impact like store traffic. This will enable you to adjust and optimize as you go.

Holistic Campaigns

CTV can be very effective on outs own, but you can take it to a new level when you integrate it into a full media mix. To capture your audience wherever they are online, leverage your native display and video with your CTV for a homerun. IT is reported that over 70% of adults browse their phone or tablet while watching TV.

Catching them in this second screen behavior is meeting them where they are. Remember, the TV screen is non-click. Let’s move them over to an actionable device. 

Brand Building

You may not be at Super Bowl level of ad spend, but you can get that brand enhancement by making yourself present in the viewing experience. Get your highly viewable, non-skippable ads in from of your engaged audience, and you’ll see the best ad performance of your life. 

Best practices to take your CTV advertising up a notch.

CTV continues to evolve and grow, and many agencies and pros are struggling to create the next best strategy. Here are three strategies that we are seeing on the net and seem to be irrefutable. 

• We live in sensory overload. There is no doubt. The minute a show ends, the viewer is scanning his phone or laptop. Our goal as advertisers to get our message heard. This calls for a blended CTV/ Connected TV approach with other supporting ad channels in a carefully thought out way. We best do this by leveraging multiple platforms and devices but avoiding the heavy-handedness of being too intrusive. The timing must be perfect, and the messaging must be nuanced and remain relevant to the buyer’s journey. We want to be subtle and seem fluid, like a sequential story being told. Being spammy or too repetitive will not yield the success we want. 
• Be studied about the timing and pacing of your campaign. Again, start at the beginning. What metric are we chasing, and what do we want to spend to get there? For this, we test, test, and test some more. We use intuition and common sense to think about dinner time, drive time, etc. Use what you know about your customers and their behaviors. Equally important as the time of day is pacing. Make it smooth, and space it out to avoid breaking the back only a few days into the campaign. Start slowly and only increase your spending when you have the data to convince you to do so. Set some intermediary points to evaluate the campaign, the spend, and the timing. 
• Don’t overlook the value of a lookalike audience. We all know what declining attention spans mean. Even the hottest and stickiest ad will fatigue when running against the same audience. Use the data you’ve gleaned from your campaign’s success and construct a lookalike campaign to replicate your success with the first group and expand your reach. 

Turning viewers into customers

IF you are ready to get real measurable ROI from your TV ads, you need CTV. Marketers can focus their ads on audiences they know will connect with their messaging. They can track site visits, conversions, and other critical metrics directly back to CTV the campaign. 

CTV campaigns are perfect for driving site visits and conversions. The combination of ads across various channels makes the message stick and feel authentic. Your message is kept top of mind across and multiple devices, platforms. A winning combination of CTV and display ads will drive the brand familiarity and trust that translates into conversions. 

Measurement of CTV

Proper measurement of your CTV campaign will quickly show its value over linear TV when done correctly. 

Here are some do’s and don’t for beginners.

• Start by remembering that you can not measure CTV in the same way linear TV is measured. Linear TV measurement is abstract and does not provide statistical modeling. We are working with best guesses. 
• CTV functions as a simple digital programmatic ad but with a commercial vs. a banner ad. It uses a digital measure that offers precise details. 
• Finally, the expectations must be to view the whole customer journey, track conversions and activity in 3rd part analytics solutions. 

Correct CTV measurement releases a leave of insight that is not available with linear TV. You’ll know how many people saw the ads, how many watched the complete ad, and how many dropped out before the ad finished. 

More tracking kicks in after the ad runs. We then can drill into other channels, paid search, social performance other devices visited. Ongoing monitoring of the site reveals visitors originating from the campaign and follows through with actual performance and sales activity. Attribution is key and a big part of the puzzle when understanding the powerhouse that CTV is part of your total marketing mix. 

3 Keys to Successful CTV Advertising

Executing a successful CTV campaign has many more moving parts than a traditional TV, but the rewards are many! Day parts sell traditional or linear TV. In contrast, OTT or CTV is usually sold on an addressable basis, meaning you’re buying specific factors like demos, interest, or previous purchase behavior.

• That decision of what you want your audience to look like is critical. Before making any decisions, you’ll need to drill down on the goals for this specific campaign. Are you building the brand, introducing a new product, or targeting an increase in sales or site visits. You must define this very clearly. 
• The next step is to evaluate the digital platforms available to you. You will probably build your audience platform by platform as each has strengths in various places of the customer journey. Give though also to incremental reach or viewers that your current ad spend is not getting to.
• Finally, context matters. Make sure your ads are running around programming that is high quality and relevant to your audience. 

By the end of 2020, more than 30% of households in the United States were streaming video content through Connected TV or CTV. That figure exceeds the number of cable TV subscribers by several million. According to a Nielsen report, total streaming TV time has increased 74 % among viewers since last year.

The study also revealed that 25 % of adults have subscriptions to multiple video streaming services. Current projections show that this trend is expected to continue with no end in sight as the number of video streaming services increases. As a result, media buyers are now allocating ad dollars once intended for linear television to CTV; the latest delivery vehicle in the realm of digital advertising.

 Making The Marketing Spend Economical and Effective

Digital marketers are following their example, with more and more of them reconfiguring budgets to accommodate more CTV channel advertising than other digital platforms. To stay relevant to consumers, brands are rapidly adapting to this new shift in the media landscape.

The need to remain flexible to maximize this latest form of advertising, is motivating advertisers to readjust their marketing strategies completely. Savvy marketers who have seen new media outlets emerge, realize that it’s only a matter of time before CTV becomes the dominant platform on which to advertise as we move further into a digital world.

Marketers across all product categories are incorporating CTV into their marketing plans due to its hyper-targeting ability, A/B testing capability, the potential for personalization, and the same measurability of metrics as found on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.

Connected TV: Smart TVs And Smarter Target Audiences

The surge in CTV digital advertising results from the rising ubiquity of smart televisions with internet connectivity in American homes. While this trend was already clearly visible as smart televisions quickly became more and more affordable, the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting quarantines forced the entire country to rely on their televisions or computers for entertainment.

Consequently, the number of smart TVs purchased and subscriptions to streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video has skyrocketed. Marketers have seen the writing on the wall and realize that CTV advertising is not only here to stay but will most likely become one of the dominant methods of marketing and promotion.

 The growing popularity of CTV advertising can be attributed to several factors. First, media buyers love the bang for the ad buck they can get due to CTV being a fraction of the cost of buying time on broadcast and even cable TV.

CTV advertising becomes even more appealing from a marketing budget standpoint because pre-existing creative assets used on other platforms can be repurposed. Spending becomes more strategic and less of a gamble than linear television and traditional cable.

 Next, the ability to target specific audiences and, to a certain extent, personalize ads means brands can create digital video advertising messages that are more likely to resonate and leave an impression on viewers.

 Finally, the testing and precise measuring capabilities of CTV advertising allow marketers to track results in real-time as consumers move through the marketing funnel.

 Anyone who streams their visual content from the internet can be targeted according to several criteria. Brands can target consumers based on their demographics, location, interests, in-market cues, or buying behaviors. With first-party data, brands can target current customers to increase loyalty or attract new customers.

It doesn’t matter which streaming service they use, which platform, which device they’re using, or when. As with other digital media platforms, by strategically applying data, advertisers can connect with the consumers they wish to target whenever and wherever they are watching.

 With the data-driven targeting of CTV, personalization of messaging to the consumer and tracking their customer journey has never been easier. This applies to repeat customers, first-time buyers, or prospects considering whether or not to transact.

 Any marketing plan which includes CTV, like all digital channels, is sure to provide invaluable data and unique, actionable insights into customer behavior along with measurable results. CTV allows for data collection across the entire funnel since it offers the targeting and measurement capabilities identical or, in some cases, superior to comparable media channels.

 Advertisers have quickly recognized that CTV advertising offers the unique benefits previously mentioned, plus the ability to identify someone who has viewed their ad on other platforms.

This allows for the retargeting of those customers across multiple devices. Different ways to measure the impressions generated by CTV include: using QR codes, foot traffic studies, brand life studies, and search demand lift studies, to name a few.

CTV enables brands to adjust their marketing strategy during the campaign using real-time creative performance measurement data. When integrated into a cross-channel marketing plan, CTV, with its audience-first angle, is a powerful complement to campaigns on other media delivery platforms. 

 Since CTV advertising seamlessly integrates with other digital programs, including social media efforts, it can supply an advertiser with data to define a brand’s entire media mix. CTV can be woven into a brand’s social campaign using the same creative across multiple devices.

This type of cross-device targeting is rapidly becoming standard practice as consumers now own numerous connected devices in addition to their smartphones and connected televisions. With access to key insights like the video completion rate and ad exposures that lead to transactions, CTV advertising can provide brands with user intelligence more definitively and precisely than linear TV ever could.

 

CTV viewing is expected to increase with additional content providers delivering their programming via streaming platform services based upon current trends. Furthermore, traditional TV advertising is on the wane as consumers continue to cut the cord in favor of streaming their entertainment.

As the technology develops and SMART TVs become even more sophisticated and video advertising becomes more personalized, the shift to CTV devices as the sole source of viewing content will accelerate. Marketing agencies have been waiting for the chance to focus their strategy while staying agile enough to capitalize on new opportunities among their target audience.

Much to their delight (and that of their advertiser clients), it has finally arrived as video streaming platforms become the next step in the evolution of digital video entertainment.

There has been a significant change in the past ten years in how we consume TV and entertainment. Millions of households have abandoned traditional TV watching due to the wide use of internet-powered television, or Smart TV. The programing continues to expand and improve, giving the consumer tons of affordable options to choose the type of content they prefer and when and how they want to watch it. They can stream on the big set in the living room or watch it privately on their tablet or over their phone. The options are many!

This means smart marketers have to adapt and transition to being where the viewers are. Connected TV video ads or CTV ads are a part of just about any good marketing mix today. It is challenging for traditional ads to keep pace with streaming technology, and OTT is beginning to outperform the conventional. 

What are CTV or connected TV Video Ads?

Connected TVs (or CTVs) are simply televisions that have access to the internet and can load or stream digital content. A Smart TV has an internet connection built-in, and standard TVs can be connected using smart devices like Roku, Xbox, or Playstation. The content that streams are usually video streaming via apps that have been downloaded. The content may also come from Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, or Chromecast. 

What is OTT (Over the top)?

Over the top (or OTT) is the video content shared, while CTV is the internet-connected TV. OTT stands for “over the top,” meaning the top of the “box.” It refers to video content that is accessed via the internet and not via traditional cable or satellite. Some examples of OTT providers would be Netflix, Disney+, or Peacock. 

OTT (Over the top) vs. CTV (Connected TV) – What’s the difference?

Many people use these terms interchangeably, but CTV is the method for delivering the content, or the device, while OTT is the actual content being viewed via CTV. Most OTT content is viewed via CTV. 

What is programmatic advertising?

Programmatic advertising is the use of software to buy distal advertising. It used artificial intelligence and algorithms to purchase display space. An advertiser would not be able to efficiently choose each channel, site, and app for ad placement. So space is bought through DSPs or Demand Side Platforms that have partnerships across many sites. They use automation and artificial intelligence to bid, buy and place media efficiently. Google display ads work similarly. Google reached up to 70% of all sites out there through their network. 

OTT advertising vs. traditional cable or satellite advertising- what’ the difference?

Every marketer struggles with where their ad spends will work best for them. Video consumption is steeply rising, and we want to get our ads in front of those viewers, right? But how do we best achieve that? Marketers have relied on TV for many years, but with the shift in viewership to online-connected devices, programmatic OTT ads are now taking over. 

Traditional TV can be thought of as more of a shotgun approach. The stations have spots, and the advertisers buy and fill them, getting in front of whoever is watching and then hoping for the best. 

OTT ads have emerged as an option that is more efficient and focused and a much more measurable way to get in front of your audience. OTT ads offer lots more controls to ensure the messaging is airing at the optimum times for your ideal customer. Data collection provides detailed demographics, info on relevant audience segments, are in specific consumer interest categories. The ads can even be placed based on real-time bidding to get to the target audience at the right time. 

All of this technology means the brand can better control targeting, spend, timing and performance. Remember, traditional TV is shown to anyone who flips on the TV. Targeting is limited to gender, location, and age. With programmatic OTT advertising, every impression is served up to relevant audience segments. We are talking about a laser-focused campaign.  

CTV viewers are more engaged in the content they view and usually can’t fast forward through the ads. That’s a good thing. But also, it is a responsibility to produce appropriate and engaging advertising. From a cost perspective, CTV advertising helps reach audiences efficiently and at a much lower cost than traditional advertising. 

CTV ads are viewed all the way through, with an average completion rate of 98%. They run full screen, meaning no “below the fold ” issues that other digital opportunities may present. You can also retarget your OTT and CTV viewers across multiple devices, including laptops, tablets, and mobile phones. This keeps your message top of mind through the decision-making process. 

How does OTT targeting work? Personalization comes from “listening” to cues and sending messages to our segment, income range, zip code, ethnicity, and education level. They will also target interest categories, which is enormous for a marketer. They can target our ideal “avatar” or “persona,” bringing a level and targeting and efficiency previously unknown. 

Tracking Capabilities

Every marketer knows that tracker is everything. This sort of campaign “post-mortem” will ensure your future targeting and campaigns continue to build on learning and improvement. Some of the key metrics measured are video completion rate, the device’s performance, how consumers interact, and ad placement performance across various platforms. 

Sales or online engagement is an opportunity to drill down on the tracking to see what influenced the action taken and what calls-to-action were most effective. 

Some core metrics:

• Video completion rate
• Clicks from ad to the website
• Ad delivery by device
• Performance by the time of day
• Performance by specific days
• Ad viewer demographics. 

Content

OTT advertising is consumer-focused so that when a viewer logs into their favorite service, it is more intentional. They have chosen that platform at that time and will be more receptive to an ad. And the ads are not skippable. (This puts the burden on the marketer to make it good!) Your content must be designed for the consumer you’ve targeted, meet their personal needs, and give them an experience that feels personal and tailored for them. A random traditional TV ad can never approach this level of focus and targeting.

What is the future of traditional ad serving?

OTT subscriptions and CTV ownership continue to grow exponentially, creating a huge opportunity for marketers to reach ultra-targeted audiences across multiple devices. 

Some people have even given up traditional TV watching for all internet TV. 

In 2020, 80% of homes (or about 96 million Americans) had at least one connected TV. Americans are reported to spend more than an hour daily engaged with OTT content. 

Many believe we will see the “sunset” of traditional TV advertising in the coming years. CTV is the future of video advertising, and like Netflix, Amazon, and the other big guys produce more popular shows, more and more people are opting for the convenience of CTV. Millennials love CTV, and it is getting hard to target them on traditional TV or elsewhere. 

While conventional TV may have the ability to deliver enormous reach, CTV ads seem to be delivering the targeting and the performance. There is no doubt that OTT advertising belongs in the mix of every serious marketer. 

Leaders in the digital marketing field are building their cross-device marketing capabilities to take your audience targeting to a new level. Their focus is on intelligently connecting brands with their target audiences via connected TV (CTV) and other devices. This cross-device marketing enhances brands’ ability to reach their customers across desktop, tablet, mobile, and CTV devices. 

Cross-device marketing takes advantage of the many methods of device identification per person available and allows for real-time analytics and targeting that lets brands optimize their ad spend and target the right viewers on the right devices. This gives the viewer a holistic experience and increases the impact across multiple devices. Retargeting across different devices for a viewer can lead to more conversions. 

Clients seeing CTV ads and getting to your site on different devices

CTV advertising is at the center of cross-device marketing. According to a Facebook study, 94% of TV-watchers have their smartphone in hand as they watch TV! The power to drive the first impression through a connected TV, then retargeting the user via a separate device, is enormous. Traditional TV advertising has the goal of getting in front of as many eyeballs as possible and hoping for results. It’s almost impossible to measure results and adjust in real-time. Your campaign is often completed before changes can be made. 

CTV, along with retargeting is far more interactive, real-time, and A/B testable. You can follow the customer’s user journey with cross-device tracking, perhaps moving from CTV to laptop to a mobile device. You are meeting them where they are on their journey. A 2020 survey reports that an average American has access to more than ten connected devices in their household. Accurate, real-time cross-device marketing is vital! 

What data points are used for cross-device marketing?

Remember, buyers are not able to convert on your TV. So tracking them from when they see your ad to when they convert on your site is critical. The two main strategies for collecting data across multiple devices and tying them to an individual are probabilistic data and deterministic data.

Probabilistic data uses anonymous data points ranging from page visits to time of day and operating system used. This is complex but scalable. Deterministic data is collected based on login info for IDs, websites, and apps that link various devices. This would include logins for Hulu, Gmail, Netflix, Spotify, and more! So can we get the right message to the right person at the right time on the right device? Yes. Connected TV is at the heart of the strategy. Someone watching your CTV ads can be retarte4ed right after on one of their other devices. This takes the viewer from an unactionable CTV ad to relevant messaging on another device. You are now driving a curated experience that is moving the view along the customer journey. 

The point of advertising is to get your potential buyer interested and engaged, and then encourage them to take the action you are promoting- buy, fill out a survey, visit a site, etc. The best way to promote this is by meeting your buyer where he is on the journey. Track and target specific behaviors across devices. 

Cross-device tracking bridges the gap between CTV advertising and the retargeting that happens on another device. The tracking only retargets those who fully engaged with the TV ad, making it super-efficient. 

Cross-device tracking allows us to see a person who cycles miles per week because they log it on their smartphone. Geographic info comes into play for the local businesses. Demographics and technographic-like internet speed all come into play. And now you have a hyper-targeted campaign.  

Using data to increase sales

CTV ads are not clickable, but the ads are designed to create interest. Then cross-device marketing takes over to get your viewer to click, purchase, or take other action that you want him to take. You encourage this action by meeting him where he is on the customer journey. You are now serving up a curated and guided customer experience. 

Optimum targeting with CTV ads

People don’t like to feel targeted, so your cross-device marketing should be subtle and not heavy-handed. Nuance is everything. CTV allows for a “smart” approach to targeting and provides the platform for optimizing your campaign. Total viewing time on connected TV jumped 81% last year, with millions of shoppers in front of streaming TV at any time. Ad-supported TV is getting a big piece of that viewership. Research says that 73% of streaming viewers watch ad-supported CTV content and 45% of streaming viewers watch ad-supported CTV the most. CTV allows for direct-response performance and tying specific goals to the ad spend. 

Connected TV is excellent for putting your brand before new audiences and reconnecting with site visitors. Target your non-purchasers with a more aggressive offer to lure them back. Although viewers can watch CTV on mobile or desktop devices, the majority watch it on TV. Close to 90% use a second device while watching TV, making a solution that targets the TV screen important. 

Serving CTV ads to screens on networks like Hulu or ESPN makes sure you deliver a great experience. 

Most agencies track site visits following a completed ad view in a defined window of time. This is integrated into Google Analytics, letting you measure all the key metrics.

Example:

• Your viewer watched an ad on CTV.
• The user visits your site on his laptop within our defined window.
• The user converts on the laptop. 
• You now know that sales can be attributed to the ad and can manage your campaigns accordingly. 

Tracking and attribution

Tracking conversions driven by your advertising is essential. This means following the customer journey across devices and acquiring accurate, cross-device measurements. User visits from CTV campaigns are integrated into third-party solutions like Google Analytics. 

Cross-device marketing will facilitate “smart” marketing and help you optimize your spending. You can reach a broad audience through CTV advertising and yet, still have control over your advertising by purchasing by impression, which is targeted and personalized. You can set frequency caps, which limit the number of times a viewer sees your message to reduce waste and get you more out of every CTV dollar. 

You are also moving the customer along the buyer journey as you home the messaging and move him from a non-actionable platform to a purchase or action on a clickable device.

Cross-screen marketing can be a more significant investment than traditional, but the quality of the data is usually good enough to by far outweigh the cost. The real-time monitoring and post-campaign analysis provide valuable customer insights and a level of engagement that traditional advertising will never approach. 

Get ready to immerse and engage your audience and bring your conversions to a new high. CTV and cross-device marketing is here to stay and should be included in your marketing mix. 

In 2021, advertising with video online is king. You can stream video ads almost anywhere, including company websites. There is educational video, mobile video, video carousel ads, interactive video, explainer video, etc. The digital video inventory gets bigger every year, and the average video ad spend does too.

Marketers should consider best practices for the entire lifecycle of a video ad campaign. The Creative, Storytelling, Production and Distribution of digital video ads have best practices that take an idea and turn it into a dazzling video that exceeds client and ROI expectations.

Creative Best Practices

1. Align your stakeholders: Digital video is booming but hypercompetitive. Innovative ways to stand out and the machinations of the primary digital video advertising platforms continue to develop. Whether a brand is making one video or saturating the waves, a new level of marketing expertise is required to guide stakeholders through the many options they have. One size does not fit all. Each channel has its language and culture, and the most effective video ads are customized to thrive in each specific environment. Align your stakeholders on a creative video strategy.
2. Know your target audiences: Never before has the personalization of ad campaigns been so easy. Traditional demographic data along with real-time online analytics allow marketers to know their prospects better than their mothers. Each audience responds to a different creative approach.
3. Hold well-managed brainstorming sessions: Assemble your top creative talent, put them in a room (or Zoom, if you must), and hold inclusive, open, and documented brainstorming meetings that are a free-flow exchange of ideas.
4. Write an alluring logline and synopsis: The material goal of your brainstorming sessions should be to produce a pitch sheet with a great logline and detailed synopsis of the story your video tells. The logline and synopsis are the foundation of the following two stages – Storytelling and Production.
5. Conduct due diligence on how to create a real-world video production budget: At the end of the Creative stage, make a production budget. You and your production partners will revise the initial budget multiple times as the video campaign progresses. Familiarize yourself with the equipment and language of scriptwriting, video production, and, to the most significant degree possible, the tricks of the trade to keep your project budget from spinning out of control. If you hire a video production company, they will have their budget to reconcile with yours.

Video Storytelling Best Practices

1. Hire professional writers: To maximize the success of your video, partner with people whose expertise is words. Many people listen to video ads without watching them, so every word counts. Prospects should be able to understand your product and brand message even if they’re listening to it from the next room. The screenwriter and the production crew speak a common language.
2. Use the “Rule of Three” to tell the hero’s journey: Your hero is your customer. Tell their story in three acts: The Separation (beginning), Initiation (middle), and Return (end). The brand is the guide that helps the hero “Slay the Monster” or accompanies them on “The Quest.”
3. Create “silent” visual stories: Many people watch videos without sound. Your video storytelling should be easy to understand with no sound and have an emotional impact without voices and music, both accelerators of engagement. The video content should stand on its own.
4. Hook the viewer early: In the case of a digital video ad, hook the viewer in the first five seconds. We’ve all waited impatiently to click past an ad after a five-second countdown to get to the main content. Not every ad has a countdown clock, but marketers should proceed as if they are. A Facebook analysis of video marketing shows an almost 25% increase in brand awareness retention in videos that feature the brand in the first five seconds. Even if the viewer skips the ad, it still has enormous power.
5. 30-second videos are the sweet spot: Once again, each advertising channel is different, but digital video ads that are 30 seconds or less are the most effective and have the highest completion rate as a general rule. Yes, videos of other lengths are important, and some have greater engagement on specific platforms, but 30-second video ads are the most popular.

Video Production Best Practices

1. Hire a professional video production company: Video production is like getting your arm caught in a threshing machine. A video campaign can end in ruin if the quality of the ad doesn’t meet audience satisfaction. In addition, advancements in technology allow production professionals to create more for less money.
2. Listen to the pros: Video directors, editors, production designers, and other above-the-line talent are professional visual storytellers and know how to convert your 30-second script into an eye-grabbing brand bonanza.
3. Make sure your video has professional high-quality pictures and sound that is in sync with the video: Shooting video and syncing it with audio is complex, and many video productions end in disaster because the content lacks technical proficiency. Your target audiences may tune out if a viewer hears background noise or air conditioner noise instead of the brand’s advertising objective.
4. The higher the shooting ratio, the better: The shooting ratio is the amount of video footage you shoot vs. the amount you use. Your video ad will be many ads cut from the same footage, or, if you have a large budget, multiple ads cut into many versions. Strive to have as high of a shooting ratio as your budget, time, and talent allows. Give editors as many hours of video as possible to assemble an unforgettable brand message.
5. Almost anything can happen in an editing room: Once your footage is “in the can”, the creative process begins again. Yes, the editors cut and splice to client expectations, but as professional storytellers they can produce brand new spots not previously conceived, solve technical failures that may have occurred during shooting, and are masters of accommodating last minute client changes and additions. “Fix it in the editing room” is an expression for a reason.

Digital Video Distribution Best Practices

1. Hook the viewer with more than the story: You want your video’s story to hook the viewer in the first five seconds. Bolster those chances and enhance the user experience and increase retention by adding product photos, brand logos, other eye-catching graphics, and captions.
2. Optimize your video’s length and format for whichever social media platform on which it will/ run: All of the social media networks have different, ever-evolving technical specifications and algorithms. Analysis of video ads proves video ad formats, and other video ad specs impact the success of an online video. It takes extra effort to customize video advertising campaigns but your average conversion rate increases when video content fits with the channel and its regular users.
3. Mobile video ads are different: Keep in mind that a social network’s technical specifications may differ between “desktop” and “mobile/tablet” versions. Users’ viewing patterns vary as well. Mobile users have an average attention span that is short, so they respond to shorter videos. Most mobile users prefer vertical videos to landscape videos. While “mobile-first” ad spending is not as dedicated as overall video ad spends, mobile use and mobile-preferred user-generated video content platforms like TikTok are rising. Knowledge of the mobile ad space is critical to leverage video’s power entirely.
4. Test, Test, Test! Digital advertising platforms such as Google AdWords allow you to place different types and lengths of video ads on multiple platforms/sites. After a test run, analytics provided by the advertising platforms show which ads perform the best and on which channels. Marketers can adjust campaigns to maximize ROI.
5. Get the data: The most nerve-wracking part of any ad campaign is waiting to get the data that will tell you whether or not you’ve struck gold or struck out. Not only can you test your ads as described above, but the volume and depth of online analytics guarantee that no guesswork will be necessary to determine success or not. Get the data. Analyze it. Synthesize it. Then make course corrections as necessary.

Your brand should be engaged in an ongoing conversation with your marketing team or agency about the advantages and disadvantages of traditional television advertising vs. digital advertising.

Cost, which is the focus of this article, is only one factor to consider when developing a marketing strategy. Brands with the resources may pursue a marketing mix that includes TV ads and digital video ads. Whatever the circumstances, the cost differential between TV and digital is easy to calculate.

Television Commercial Advertising

The cost of advertising on television is immense. Traditional television commercials cost much more to produce and air than digital video. TV’s three main expenses are 1) scriptwriting and development – hiring a screenwriter to write the script, 2) production – the making of the ad, and 3) airtime – the distribution of the ad.

Ancillary costs include time and effort developing the brand’s message and other miscellaneous expenses related to commercial advertising before production.

Production Costs

The production cost is flexible. Regardless of the budget, a reputable commercial production company should create dynamic television ads with high production value. “Production value” is the art of making professional-level content with limited resources.

• A great writer and production team can turn $1,000 into compelling content with a bit of creative brainstorming. However, if your commercial production goes full of “Hollywood magic,” it will run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Stock footage costs a lot less than special effects. A celebrity spokesperson costs more than the hourly rate for a voice-over actor/actress. Those are just two small creative decisions that impact your budget and production value.
• Production costs are spent in three stages: pre-production, production, and post-production. Pre-production is the creative and administrative work on a commercial before the first day of principal photography. Production is “the shoot,” which should only be as long as needed to get the footage “in the can.” Post-production is the picture and sound editing, voice-over, special effects, motion graphics, music, and the like.
• The bulk of your budget is spent during production, and the most expensive part of production is the above-the-line talent. Above-the-line talent includes writers, actors/actresses, directors, cinematographers, and editors. Below-the-line talent is crew and operators (e.g., camera operators, mic operators, crane operators, etc.
• Depending on the state in which production occurs, TV commercial shoots may require a union cast and crew. If your production is union, your costs are more than if you are in a right-to-work state.
• Commercials run in 15-second, 30-second, or 1-minute timeframes, which may seem to provide the producer-director-editor with options that may reduce the cost. It seems logical that a 15-second spot costs less than a 1-minute spot. It does not. The shooting ratio, or the ratio of footage shot vs. footage used, should be high enough to edit into a 1-minute spot and subsequently into 15-second and 30-second versions, all of which run at different times on different channels.
• Your production costs also vary according to a brand’s ad strategy. A single commercial, even three versions, is less expensive than multiple commercials that have different scripts and messages. However, the overall cost of numerous commercials can be mitigated by simultaneously shooting footage for the various commercials using the same production team and crew.

Distribution Costs

TV commercials are distributed on local, national, or cable television stations. The marketing real estate is called “airtime” and can vary in cost. Factors that influence air time prices are:

• Media market (national vs. local).
• Size of the audience (broad vs. targeted).
• Time of day (day time vs. prime time vs. late night).
• Day (week vs. weekend).
• Nielsen ratings (popular shows vs. less popular shows).
• Length (15-second, 30-second, 1 minute).
• Repetitive broadcasting (length and frequency an ad airs).
• Availability (In 2019, the average ad time per hour of primetime national TV on five major cable network groups was 14.32 minutes – 17.49 minutes).

For example, a 1-minute national commercial that airs multiple times during “prime time” on a network’s peak day and the most popular show may cost millions of dollars. Still, a 30-second commercial that airs late at night on a local niche cable channel and targets a specific demographic or zip code can be economical.

A savvy ad buyer knows America’s 210 media markets and broadcast stations. He or she buys air time in the right market at the right time to reach the audience with the highest probability to connect with a brand and buy its product.

With the one legendary exception of Apple’s “1984” commercial during the 1984 Super Bowl, commercials are not produced to air once. Advertising packages that may include multiple air times, days, channels, lengths, and duration.

• The average cost of airing a national TV commercial: $115,000. (Statista)
• The average cost of airing a local TV commercial: $5-$10 per 1,000 views. (Skyworks Marketing)
• The average cost of airing 30-second commercials during the 2020 Super Bowl: $5-5.6 million

Digital Video Advertising

In 2016, online advertising outspent traditional television advertising for the first time, a trend that continues to this day. Marketing budgets now favor online digital channels such as YouTube, Facebook, Google, Instagram, and TikTok over TV.

Of that increase, online video advertising is the fastest-growing segment of a brand’s marketing mix. Digital video’s demonstrable ROI far outpaces other forms of digital advertising and traditional media.

Digital video is so effective and competitive that new forms of digital video advertising evolve at a rapid pace to meet demand and buck the competition. For example, “explainer” videos, which a brand can use to introduce a product and guide buyers through its setup and use.

According to Pitchy.com, the average cost for a digital marketing campaign is $4,000 – $8,000, a range which includes the content creators, social media managers, paid advertising costs on various digital platforms (e.g., Facebook Video Ads/Instagram Ads, Google AdWords, YouTube, Twitter), and data analytics.

It does not include video production costs, which can vary depending on the creative concept and budget.

A digital video goes through the same production process as a TV commercial. However, the unique nature of the world wide web has cost advantages and disadvantages. Many factors drive up digital video advertising production and distribution costs:

• Television has a finite amount of air time. Digital advertising has unlimited time and space, which can be a liability. In a crowded marketplace, it’s more challenging to stand out.
• New content must be produced and distributed on a more frequent basis.
• One size does not fit all. Social networks have their language and culture as well as their own online marketing rules and regulations. To be effective, one must develop content customized for each channel.
• Social media channels operate 24/7, and marketers must be agile and ready to tackle PR issues that may arise and affect a brand’s reputation.

A specific digital video ad campaign may be less expensive to produce and distribute, but digital video content’s life cycle and maintenance go way beyond a TV ad.

Content lives online forever, which is great for SEO but may conflict with a brand’s shifting priorities. Therefore, over time the actual cost of an “inexpensive” digital video ad may be greater than an “expensive” TV ad that runs for a limited time.

Distribution Costs

The cost of digital video ad distribution is much lower than television advertising. While the production and initial distribution costs can be the same as a TV ad, the global, in-depth reach of digital advertising gives a brand way more bang for its buck than TV.

On television, there is only so much information you can deliver in 15-seconds to 1-minute. A brand must stick to a central message and create original, memorable content to impact potential customers in a way that converts to sales or increases brand awareness, ideally both.

The success of TV advertising is beyond question if applied in today’s marketing landscape with informed media acumen. However, it will always have limitations that digital video ads do not have.

Digital video ads are also standard 15-second, 30-second, 1-minute lengths. However, unlike TV ads, they are part of a more extensive advertising web of content that works in harmony to expand reach and micro-target messaging.

A digital video ad may be more effective because it can direct viewers to a website or promote a call to action that increases the probability of a sale. A digital video can reinforce a brand’s message and connect with viewers when it runs alongside a digital still ad promoting the same product or service.

Prices on popular streaming services vary, but the examples below provide a glimpse into the pricing.

• YouTube: $10-$30 per 1,000 views. Average cost of 100,000 views is $2,000. (YouTube)
• Hulu: $20-$40 per 1,000 views. (Hulu)

Conclusion

The cost of TV ads vs. online video ads is not competitive. Though ranges vary and low-budget ad campaigns executed by professionals can be very effective regardless of medium, traditional television advertising costs are higher than digital video advertising.

Production and distribution expenses are not the entire story and should not be the sole factor a brand considers when determining what type of marketing mix provides the most significant ROI and achieves its sales goal.

Studies confirm that the most effective advertising is branded content with advanced storytelling, a strategic combination of traditional TV advertising and online digital channels.

The future of advertising has been digital video for so long it is safe to say the future has arrived. Significant indisputable data proves the rise and dominance of digital video advertising isn’t a trend but the new cornerstone of any compelling marketing mix.

Five reasons video ads are the future of advertising:

1. People like video ads.
2. Reach.
3. Measurable analytics.
4. Options.
5. Video is the perfect vehicle for emerging marketing trends.

People Like Video Ads

Online marketers know that digital video has demonstrable positive ROI because prospects engage at higher rates with video than any other medium. Video elevates the user experience. Statistics, surveys, and studies continue to validate the power of video marketing and the online digital landscape in which it lives:

• 85% of people feel more connected to a brand through video. (Renderforest)
• 69% of people prefer video over text when learning about a product or service. (SmallBizGenius)
• Video ads are the primary way prospects discover a new brand. (Renderforest)
• Online video’s global popularity continues to increase. By the end of 2021, Zenith Media predicts the average person will watch 100 minutes of online video per day. That equals twenty-five days of watching online videos. (Zenith Media)
• People watch four billion YouTube videos a day.
• 81% of people prefer video content on social media. (Renderforest)
• TikTok has 689 million active users. (DataReportal)
• Marketers’ ad spends on video have steadily increased and will continue to do so. (Wyzol)
• One-third of consumers purchase a product after seeing an effective video ad.
• Businesses reported video ads increased conversion rates by 31%, sales by 34%, website traffic by 51%, and brand awareness by 70%. (Renderforest)

The list of statistics that support video as king of the digital marketing domain could go on for another ten pages. The more ubiquitous online digital video becomes, the more it becomes a regular familiar feature of a prospect’s virtual world.

For example, it is hard to imagine an online search for a recipe that does not include an instructional video on preparing it. The recipe video is now standard, increasing a brand’s marketing real estate. For example, the brand can be The Food Network, which created and posted the video on their recipe page, or a kitchen knife company that runs a 30-second ad before the instructional video begins.

The result is a more significant number of people who see your video ad and an elevated customer experience that increases retention and brand loyalty.

Reach

The universe is infinite, and so is the world wide web.

Digital video has a reach hitherto unknown in the epic history of global communication. Like the spokes of Rome’s Via Appia stretching out to connect the furthest corners of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, the internet has increased the number of people a message can reach in a transformative way.

Advertising channels optimized for video dominate the internet.

• A brand or business’s website.
• Video-friendly social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn. A brand is likely to have a presence on multiple social media platforms, giving their videos a direct connection to their customers.
• Video creation and sharing platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, and TikTok.
• Audio streaming platforms like Spotify and Pandora.

Other factors that increase digital video’s reach include:

• Content sharing. The digital age’s word of mouth is content sharing. When people like a video, they share it with their friends. For example, almost 1,000 videos are shared on Twitter every day. That costs the brand $0. Each time a video is shared, the ad’s ROI increases.
• Mobile advertising. People watch more videos on their phones than anywhere else, including tablets. Video ads optimized for smartphones create another opportunity for brands to reach their target audience. Nationwide 5G networks will accelerate mobile use.
• Email marketing videos. Direct email marketing is an effective way to connect with customers and drive action. The introduction of video into email marketing is new. However, 44% of people surveyed responded that they would view a video ad included in an email.
• Hyperlinked video ads. Hyperlinking video ads to post-click landing pages gives marketers a boomerang effect. The digital ad pushes across multiple online marketing channels. Still, with one click, the brand can direct prospects to a personalized web page designed to convert views/clicks to sales or some other desired action.
• Search Engine Optimization. The algorithms used by the major search engines favor video. A business website that includes video has a higher search ranking and leads potential customers to spend more time on their website. Win-win.

Measurable Analytics

In 1946, The Ford Motor Company hired ten World War II Air Force veterans called The Whiz Kids to apply military “operations research” and “management science” to its business. The Whiz Kids transformed Ford’s Planning Department into the first full-time private data science center.

The analytics research the department conducted resulted in, among other things, the design and manufacture of cars with safety features that made the death rate from auto accidents plummet.

The automated real-time data analytics at the modern digital marketer’s fingertips is beyond The Whiz Kids’ wildest dreams. Every online advertising platform offers advanced marketing analytics to track results like Google Analytics, Facebook Analytics, etc.

Digital video benefits from these tools because the data supports its preeminence. Numbers tell a story, and digital video’s story is one of absolute supremacy. Almost 90% of digital marketers are happy with the ROI their video ad campaigns generate.

Options

Not all digital video ad campaigns are created equal.

There are so many types of digital videos that the options may seem overwhelming. Like an all-you-can-eat-buffet, there is something for everyone:

• Brand marketing videos
• Explainer videos.
• Corporate videos.
• Educational videos.
• Animated videos.
• 15-second videos.
• 30-second videos.
• 1-minute videos.
• Long-form videos.
• Logo animation.
• Entertaining
• Stories
• Reels
• Carousel ads
• Video discovery ads
• Bumper ads
• Masthead ads
• Collection ads
• Instant Experiences

The list goes on. Digital video’s flexibility and customization allow marketers to create the perfect type of ad that’s the ideal length for a specific audience on a particular channel. The number of creative options and video formats a brand can choose to advance its message is one of the primary behind-the-scenes benefits of video marketing.

The hypercompetitive online marketing world is ever-evolving. Marketers invent new types of videos to stay one step ahead of competitors and the marketplace.

Digital Video is the Perfect Vehicle for Emerging Marketing Trends

The future of advertising has many facets, only one of which is video. However, video is a medium that can leverage the full potential of significant emerging marketing trends.

The future of video advertising will incorporate storization, personalization, branded programmatic advertising, and psychological marketing, rolled into one mega term yet to be coined. Integration as content strategy aligns with an overall move toward marketing techniques that produce a positive emotional response with the viewer.

The idea is that marketing efforts that create lifelong loyal customers are a more noble and cost-effective use of advertising dollars than a quick one-time sales conversion.

Video with great storytelling that conveys a relatable message is ideal for advancing digital advertising devices designed to form a long-term emotional bond with the customer.

Conclusion

The digital video wars have just begun. Video as a marketing kingmaker is a foregone conclusion, yet its future is more powerful and complex than previously predicted. Competition to produce video stories that resonate with viewers and allow a brand to stand out is intense, leading to innovation and heightened out-of-the-box creativity that benefits businesses and consumers alike.

Website design and SEO strategy go together and can seamlessly drive more of the right traffic back to your website. We will talk about your website’s basic requirements and share some pro tips for maximizing your organic and paid traffic and driving your content to a higher ranking in the SERPs. SEO alone won’t accomplish this if your website is not well designed. You want to avoid losing your hard-earned organic traffic due to poor web design, and driving your paid traffic to a site that is not optimized is wasting your time and money. 

Some design elements can even interfere with your SEO efforts. When designing a website with SEO in mind, a designer must think about the back-end – architecture, navigation issues, search engine direction, and the front end. The front end is what we see and the general usability of the site. Both aspects are equally important. The days of the designer taking the lead to create an aesthetically pleasing design without regard for SEO and usability are long gone. A good web designer will take a more complete approach and understand both design and SEO. 

What are the basic SEO requirements for your website?

Some basics are mandatory for an SEO friendly website. Your design must provide excellent customer experience with an easy-to-read design. Here are some top considerations:

• Sitemap: If you want to optimize how search engines crawl your site, give them a roadmap by supplying a sitemap. A sitemap guides them through the site and content and tells them what pages are most important. They also contain metadata about your pages to help them rank. 
• Mobile-Friendly: The importance of a website that is mobile-friendly can not be overstated. It has been a huge factor to Google for years now and introduced mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor in 2017. Desktop visitors have been declining for years while mobile visitors continue to grow. Check your metrics now if you haven’t. Over half of today’s web traffic is from mobile devices, either phones or tablets. If your site does not load quickly and correctly and quickly on mobile, your bounce rate will soar, which can cause your ranking to drop. 
• Readability: Your site’s design can have a significant impact on your content and how you present it. Google rewards meaty and longer content. If your font is difficult to read, or you show long blocks of content without breaks and visuals, the user will abandon you. Too many hyperlinks can also be damaging. Remember, they came to you for the answers. Think about the color of your text and your background. If you have an older audience, increase your font size, and keep it simple. Think about line length and spacing. This all will contribute to overall usability. 
• Website speed: If your site loads too slowly, you will lose visitors. Period. Page speed is also a ranking signal, so be sure you are optimizing your images, monitoring plug-ins that slow you down, caching, and watching your metrics. If your website is not loading in two seconds, it is too slow. Page speed matters to your users and Google. Google will crawl fewer pages on a slow site, so you will have fewer pages indexed. And don’t forget about website security and using “HTTPS” encryption.
• Trust: User trust is everything, and it takes time to build. Your user wants to come to a clean and modern site that is simple to navigate, and that provides the information, product, or services they are looking for. Don’t make a bad impression with a sloppy or poorly designed site. 

How do search engines rank webpages and deliver SERPs?

Learning SEO at a professional level can take years, but you should not move ahead without basic knowledge of how search engines rank pages. It is a combination of classifying a query, determining the context, and which signals matter most. 

Search engines rank pages to make the web as usable as possible for the user. Work with the assumption that you are trying to satisfy the search engine’s user, and we must establish the trust that we can answer the queries sent to us. If you fail the search engine, that will impact your ranking moving forward.

The steps to ranking a page is a basic process that every query goes through. They will first classify the query in buckets like local, unseen, adult, question, or YMYL. There are numerous classifications. They will then apply some kind of content to the query to determine what factors come into play to help determine relevant factors. They look at what signals are most important. The algorithms are doing the work! They will also look at the layouts and choose what to include on the SERP. 

What can metrics and data tell us?

If you genuinely want to improve your SERPs ranking and drive increased traffic, you need to understand your website’s data, and your campaigns can tell you. Study where your site visitors are coming from and what happened when they got there. This is your best roadmap for improvement. Pay attention to your metrics, monitor them regularly, and learn from them, making adjustments to your site as you go.

A bounce rate that is too is high is sending you a message. Some potential answered could be that your content does not deliver on the intent of your keywords, or maybe a landing page could better warm your traffic up. 

Is your referral traffic spiking? Drill down on your analytics to see where it is coming from. What are the demos of people coming to your website? These metrics will help you better target your campaigns moving forward. 

What is your most popular content? Does it drive repeat visits? An understanding of what content resonates with will tell you a lot about your target audience and maybe show you the assumptions you’ve made about them are incorrect. 

Watch your data for insights, and watch your data for trends over time. Algorithms change over time, as well. Stay up to date on those and look there for significant or abrupt changes in your traffic. 

What are some web design elements that work against your SEO strategy?

Some web design elements disrupt SEO. They may work against crawlability, readability, navigation, or usability. A good marketer will learn to spot and correct these conflicts. Listen to your clients and listen to the data. In general, these flaws are the result of site redesigns without studying your analytics. 

Here are some design techniques to avoid:

• Navigation: Navigation that is not intuitive is a big one. Some outdated strategies are mega menus, using search to build categories instead of filters, dropdown navigation that doesn’t link to the main category and force a sub-category selection. 
• Design: Some design elements don’t help push the user through the experience and can frustrate the user and make them go off the site. Some elements to avoid include the infinite scroll, huge images at the top of the page, failing to use the alt text option for image uploads, or sliders down the side of the page since all images must load first. 

How do you avoid having a website that works against your SEO strategy rather than supporting it? Study your analytics. Work with a professional that understands SEO. The more SEO they know, the better your result will be. Discuss your analytics, your target audience, and your goals for the site. Build with scalability in mind, and remember that your site is an investment, so don’t make your decisions on price alone. Study your metrics, test, and adjust as you learn.

The linguistic history of “brainstorm” is brief but worth noting. A noun (brainstorm), an adjective (of or related to brainstorming), and a verb (to conduct or practice brainstorming”), “brainstorm” originated in the 1890s and was defined as “a transitory disturbance of cerebral activity,” and, “a sudden mental aberration.”

Since brainstorming has evolved to mean “a conference technique of solving specific problems, amassing information, stimulating creative thinking, developing new ideas, etc., by unrestrained and spontaneous participation in discussion.”

If you’ve ever participated in a creative brainstorming session, you may believe the original definition of brainstorming is more accurate than our more modern one. Having a storm in your brain does not sound like a good thing and our reflex to apply the scientific method to every subjective endeavor is not unlike trying to lasso a tornado.

Brainstorming is our attempt to structure what was once considered mental aberrations but is now considered great ideas that could go viral.

Step 1: The Pitch Sheet

The first step to take an idea from concept to reality is to write a logline. The material goal of your brainstorming sessions is to produce a pitch sheet that guides the entire production of your company video.

A logline is a sentence that tells your entire story. Writing a logline is difficult, but the process of writing and re-writing it serves a critical purpose. A well-conceived logline provides a common starting point for the creative team and, to continue with the storm motif, is the lasso you use to reign in an otherwise uncontrollable force.

It seems counterintuitive to brainstorm about a single sentence, but once you have the perfect logline, the result is more creative space for your team to operate. Here are three examples of loglines from classic feature films:

• “The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.” (The Godfather)
• “During the early days of World War II, a cynical American expatriate struggles to decide whether or not he should help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape unoccupied French Morocco before the NAZIs capture them.” (Casablanca)
• “A young man is transported to the past, where he must reunite his parents before he and his future cease to exist.” (Back to the Future)

Here is a logline for Apple’s “1984” Super Bowl commercial:

• “An individualist free-thinking Olympic athlete runs through a dystopic, conformist, state-controlled future of George Orwell’s iconic novel “1984” and liberates the world’s creative forces with the introduction of the Macintosh personal computer.”

Here is a digital marketing logline for an animated “explainer video” that highlights a brand’s charitable foundation that promotes a set of values, not a product.

• “A suburban husband and wife make a wrong turn in their car and take a journey through underserved parts of their town, learning empathy for their neighbors and collective responsibility for lifting struggling local communities.”

It may take an entire brainstorming session or two to hone your logline. Be patient. Everything that follows is dependent on getting your logline right.

Step 2: The Facilitator

Someone must organize and steer the chaos. Brainstorming sessions are a free-flow exchange of ideas, but it is much more difficult to capture and transform those ideas without a team leader to chair the meeting and facilitate the creative process.

The Facilitator should be the person with the temperament most suited to the task, not necessarily whoever is the highest on the org chart. The Facilitator is not making decisions about the creative content. They keep a cumbersome collaborative process moving. It is easy to spend too much time on bad ideas that end up a waste of time. Keep the creative juices flowing and avoid awkward silence.

The Facilitator may also have the common brainstorming challenge of leading virtual brainstorming sessions with virtual teams. A virtual brainstorming session flows differently than teams that brainstorm in person.

The Facilitator needs to be adept at a range of disciplines to pull it off. It is difficult to gauge whether a remote team is communicating the right way to produce actionable ideas. Mitigate issues with a greater focus on team bonding and research any virtual brainstorming tools that may be right for your circumstances.

Step 3: Recorder

The most skilled communicator on your marketing team should be assigned the role of Recorder. Documenting what occurs during a brainstorming session is more complex than taking minutes at a quarterly board meeting. To track and connect creative ideas takes diligence and three-dimensional thinking.

Ideas that gain momentum early on may be scrapped by the end of the day. A word or phrase tossed out and dismissed may return and become the cornerstone of your video. If you aren’t tracking a list of ideas with notes (e.g., wild ideas, brilliant ideas, unusual ideas, etc.), you may not have the most successful brainstorming session you can.

Along with the Facilitator, the Recorder keeps things moving. Visibility is the best way to keep team members connected. If the Recorder writes the big ideas with the most traction on whiteboards or giant post-its, the creative team sees concepts and themes take shape, or conversely, why a particular line of thinking does not accomplish the desired messaging.

If your team has access to a smartboard, there are many creative brainstorming tools online to help document creative ideas.

Step 4: Check Your Ego at the Door

If you want to decide everything and make everything the way you want, make a billion dollars. If you’re going to make a compelling marketing video that exceeds client expectations, you must work inside a collaborative framework. Not every idea is going to work, and some of those non-starter ideas may be yours.

The benefits of team brainstorming outweigh the results when one person brainstorms. Your average person may have innovative ideas and creative solutions that only a group setting that fosters effective brainstorming techniques can draw out. Creative video ideas – fresh ideas – come from a storm, yes, a storm of ideas.

Do not skim over this step with a perfunctory “yeah, yeah, yeah.” Interpersonal conflict during the brainstorming process can be a poisonous pill and doom your end product. When people argue about ideas, some may take criticism personally, and the creative process balkanizes.

Or two competing ideas have strong support. In which direction should the campaign go? In the best interests of the group’s mission, the Facilitator should establish rules of civility and ensure that the creative team works in harmony toward a shared vision.

Step 5: Equal time

Video production is top-down like a military dictatorship. Brainstorming activities should be the opposite.  Give equal time and measured consideration to each team member’s ideas. Lightning strikes when you least expect it. When your entire team floats and considers a wide range of opinions, your story will be better.

You want your creative team to share ideas and to focus on the quality of ideas, not the quantity of ideas. A range of viewpoints will improve your message and the story you tell to deliver it.

There are many ways to structure equal time, and no brainstorming exercise is better than the other. Team members can show up with an idea to present. The Facilitator can periodically go around the conference table and allow each person to say what they are thinking (Round-Robin Brainstorming).

Summaries generated and distributed to each team member allotted time to offer their suggestions. It does not matter how you democratize the process, effective brainstorming benefits from enthusiastic participation.

Step 6: Institute a “magic wand” policy

There are so many obstacles and changes any creative campaign will undergo during its life cycle; strive to make initial brainstorming sessions free of restrictions. Ideas should be offered and discussed on the merits of the concept only, not potential limitations in the future like budget or the sudden undiscovered creative genius of your advertising partners.

Save the “You can’t do that because…” for later. There will be plenty of them. Brainstorming sessions are not the time for making bottom-line business decisions. The Muses cannot be caged.

Step 7: Periodically revisit your logline

As creative campaigns evolve, you may need to institute some good old-fashioned corporate change management. Remember, the material goal is to have a pitch sheet with a dynamite logline and synopsis. Once you have the perfect pitch sheet, your campaign can enter the production phase by hiring a professional screenwriter. Until then, continue to revisit and revise your logline and synopsis.

Step 8: Learn to let go

As a collaborative creative team member, you most likely let go of at least one of your favorite ideas during brainstorming. Your co-workers did too. When the brainstorming sessions are over, and you’ve decided upon a direction, the marketing team must turn the reins over to other skilled professionals who will put their creative stamp on the project.

Any artist will tell you their work is like a child. Sending that child off into the world isn’t easy. You must believe that the next wave of artisans will love your story as much as you do and take good care of it. A simple leap of faith sounds easy until you hear the universally loved funny moment your team spent a week crafting, ended up on the editing room floor. Let it go.

Conclusion

Digital video advertising is the crown jewel in the marketing crown, providing outstanding and measurable ROI. Video email marketing and explainer videos are two examples of how digital video reinvents itself to take advantage of the medium’s excellent results.

The video process starts with your creative team tackling the basic building blocks of storytelling – a compelling logline and synopsis. Through effective brainstorming, a brand’s message can begin its remarkable creative journey from concept to going live.