Video ads, as we know, have to be approached differently on digital media channels compared to TV due to the nature of the environment. People on the internet just don't have the time, attention or patience.
Australian online fashion retailer, The Iconic, understood their assignment when they made video ads promoting their sportswear. But it wasn't just about awareness or branding for their sportswear, they needed sales.
What are they doing creating videos if they want sales, you ask? That's where Google's video action campaign comes into play. By opting to use video action campaigns, you can set a specific action such as sales as your campaign goal, which the system will optimise towards. This means that the Google algorithm will look for users who are most likely to take your desired action and drive your CPA down. This isn't brand new, but it is a shift that has taken many advertisers a while to make as video has a strong history as a branding tool due to its excellent storytelling capability. Furthermore, direct conversion results have either been hard to measure or poor for many who have tried.
Now that we have established video as a direct response format, we need to make sure that our creative asset complements our campaign goal.
Here's how The Iconic did it:
This creative complements the video action campaign in 3 ways,
It grabbed the user's attention in the first 5 seconds by front-loading the climax. A person underwater trying to deliver a message with the little breath they had? What's going on? That's how most people would react, and that takes their attention away from the skip button, which most people wait for.
The talent kept pointing to and calling out the CTA button. I know you can't see the blue button, but that was the CTA button that the talent in the video was vigorously pointing to. Telling viewers what exactly to do led to an 87% higher CTR than Trueview campaigns. In addition to the algorithm optimising the campaign for audiences who are more likely to take action, the video creative reinforces this by prompting the audience to take action.
The talent in the video speaks directly to the audience, making the experience a more personal one for the viewer. There is nothing else to distract the user, no one else in the video, just the breathless talent underwater and the viewer. It helps that the message and the video is so direct and to the point as it is clear what the user needs to do. The situation the talent is in also creates urgency and intrigue, while appealing to the empathy of the viewer to help them.
I hope this case study inspires you to break traditional views of media formats and to give creative and media equal importance when running an effective ad campaign. The results are undeniable when they complement each other and work towards a common goal.
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