Effective Internet Video Advertising
Since the dawn of the Internet age, a lot of marketing efforts have turned to advertising with Internet video commercials. It is a very similar concept as providing video commercials for the television market. Studies have proven that people tend to remember products or services better when they are presented live or in the form of video. Many experts feel that this may be even more true when using video advertisements on the Internet.
While some slow to adapt companies stick to traditional advertising over mainstream media, other more aggressive companies have learned to mix the use of traditional marketing and online marketing, such as videos, thereby creating a more effective advertising plan. In the past, TV advertising has conveyed a lot of information and lasting impressions on the minds of the consumers. This is easily measurable. But with the new media and technology lurking around the corner, traditional TV commercials are being overshadowed by the effectiveness of video advertisements in the Internet at an alarming rate.
The New Media
Today, high-speed Internet connections allow people to watch videos over the web without latency. Moreover, the Internet is now being used by almost everybody, regardless of race, age, country or financial status and has been dubbed as the new world wide media. Blogs and social networks have become some of the primary tools in marketing and video commercial advertising, and are effectively battling against traditional media. This is mainly due to their lower cost and greater efficiency because the potential client or customer can be more finely targeted and communicated with.
This new media is ruled by the people who create it – the bloggers, the Internet surfers and the online shoppers. It is also a channel of collaborations, providing a fast exchange of ideas and feedback from one part of the world to another. Putting advertisements in this new media opens wider opportunities and a much larger market base for companies. Its rapid growth over the past years has made marketers and companies drool with excitement. Seeing this growth, video advertising over the Internet obviously shows a promising way of alternative advertising as compared to printed catalogs, telemarketing and TV advertising. If you own or manage a business, you absolutely must consider creating or having developed for you, a unique video commercial or presentation.
Viral Video Advertising
Let’s face it – YouTube really started the Internet video revolution. The most popular videos on YouTube became popular because people started to pass them around and tell their friends about them – a viral video, in other words. This is something that other marketers crave when it comes to video advertising on the Internet. Many strive to create a buzz around cyberspace so that people will get interested and get hooked. Once they pick it up, they share it with everybody they know, and that includes Twitter, Facebook, blogs, emails and other social networks. Quite often others will also download it and give copies to colleagues, friends and families around their offline world. If these recipients find it interesting, they too will pass it around by shooting off an email with the link, which is passed around from one person to the other. This viral video becomes endorsed by the sender adding a strength of creditability that usually comes from word of mouth.
Viral video commercials on the Internet are something that cannot be replicated by regular TV advertisement. You cannot pass around a television commercial, unless of course you ask other people to actually wait in front of the television for that particular ad, or you have a copy of the TV ad to give around. This is where online video advertising’s effect mainly lays – the ability to be passed around in almost any kind of correspondence and communications to other people, effectively stamping in the memories of its viewers.
On the other hand, TV ads can also benefit from being a viral video. Some of the most visited sites have been due to a company making available their TV ad videos on the Internet.
Easier to Evaluate
Aside from being able to be passed around, Internet video commercials and advertisements are also easier to evaluate. For example, marketers can see how many people have watched the video, how many have downloaded it, how many tweeted about it or how many have shared it in social networks. It makes it easier for advertisers to evaluate if their video advertising campaign is working or not, and allows them to change it instantly. Some new features will even indicate at which point the viewer became bored and when the viewer stopped watching. This offers a powerful way to evaluate the effectiveness of a certain video advertisement on the Internet.
Video Advertising on the Internet in the Future
Because of its promising effects, the use of Internet advertising with videos shows a promising future in the world of marketing. Not only does it offer a cheaper alternative to traditional TV advertising, but it also gives more power to the viewers as well as the businesses. Web videos can interact more with the target market. Therefore, they effectively create a two-way communication as opposed to the one-way communication offered by TV ads.
In addition, there is no industry standard as to how you can or should use an online commercial. Some of the most effective advertisements have been created with a home-style video camera in someone’s backyard (usually requiring some outrageous stunt or death defying feat). Obviously the idea is to make your video advertising more memorable for your viewers, giving your product or service a better brand recall.
Social media networks will surely develop further over the years – and the use of video in advertising on the Internet will definitely boom along with them. The technology behind this form of advertisement has grown so quickly. Who knows where it will be five years from now. More importantly, where will you and your business be?
Article by David Towe
Google
Also see these related articles to help you create better video for websites:
Using Music to Create Emotion in Video Commercial Advertisement
Embedding a Video for Website Marketing part 1 of 2 (using YouTube)