Planning and setting online video objectives

Written by Bryan Magee, business director, Mindshare - Sharon Braude, group account director, Media Contacts - Daniel Daynes, account manager, Media Contacts

1.Strategy

Once you have established that your media strategy requires online video to achieve its goals you must understand what success looks like, gain insights into your audience and decide your brand’s positioning and characteristics.

2. Planning

Once the strategy has been agreed between all relevant parties, the next step is to begin the planning process. Online video campaigns work best when planned in conjunction with other media (see the earlier integration chapter).

Online video is no different to any other discipline and should be a seamlessly integrated part of the campaign. This means that video adverts, in the same way as other parts of an advertising campaign, should be created with each other in mind. For example, use similar imagery, branding or wording.

i. Site selection

Various factors are involved when selecting sites for a campaign. Firstly, website audience research data explored prior to developing the strategy will provide a guideline. This enables you to decide how best to target the audience by their viewing habits. Secondly, areas within these sites allow you to target accurately and reach the right audience efficiently. Thirdly, and importantly, you can choose the type of programmes/video content to advertise around and associate your brand with.

Other levels of targeting can be added depending on the publisher’s capabilities - for example, geographic, age, gender, industry sector and behaviour. The key when selecting sites is to evaluate how relevant the sites and placements will be to the target audience and the strategy of the campaign.

ii. Format selection

Once the site selection has been established, the creative formats need to be selected. This will heavily relate to the role of video within the overall strategy of the campaign. For example, if you would like to run video advertising before a new TV show starts, you could run pre-rolls across relevant areas to generate awareness online, or if you want people to learn more about a product you could use interactive video that incorporates more information. Once again, you must evaluate how effective each format will be in targeting its audience and how well it fits with the strategy of the campaign. Listen to the advice of your agencies.

iii. Adserving and measurement

At the moment, pre/mid/post-roll adverts are usually hosted and served by publishers. For video in display banner adverts you will usually pay for a third party adserver (where the advert files are stored online). Adservers are generally used to provide unbiased results to the client. The specialist third party adservers enable you to serve heavier files, such as video, and can provide deeper levels of reporting than a standard adserver.

There are various types of offerings from adservers. Most can provide both standard and rich media advertising (e.g. DoubleClick, Eyeblaster, and Flashtalking). You can also employ rich media adservers to only serve the video element of the campaign. These suppliers can incorporate their results with an existing standard adserving system, so that the reporting is in one location. Rich media adservers also offer various levels of measurement beyond standard advertising measurement metrics i.e. interaction rate, complete video plays, video replays.

The type of adserver to use is down to your own discretion, although at the moment pre/mid/post-roll is usually served by the publisher. One decision making factor will be the level of measurement that a) the adserver offers, and b) the campaign needs. This decision needs to be assessed on the measurement criteria decided in the strategy.

iv. Video length

Video length can vary by platform. Each publisher will have their own guidelines for video content. Buying across these platforms means a combination of buying catch-up TV, long form (films, documentaries, soaps etc.) and short form (clips, music videos etc.) made for online. The length of your creative will usually help you decide on what length of content you should be planning (shorter time lengths suit short form content).

The current trend is to take a 15 to 30 second ad that has been used for TV and run it online, but ads made or edited specifically for online are better. The best solution is to brief the creative agency as early as possible so that the online version of the creative is created at the same time and not an afterthought.

v. Multimedia planning

Make sure the online video plan reflects what is happening with other media and that the look and feel of the campaign is seamless. Consistency of the campaign message, look and feel is very important if multiple mediums are being planned. Are there any opportunities for the other media to work harder together, e.g. cross platform deals?

vi. Setting objectives

Once you know what you want to achieve from your online video campaign and how to measure that, you can set the final objectives. Due to the detailed measurement metrics of online video, you should set objectives on a campaign by campaign basis.

Some of the objectives that online video can help to deliver are:

• High frequency at a low cost: achievable through video networks.
• Communicate a brand or specific product message: video content can be tailored to different environments.
• High interaction rates: video creative has performed well in direct response (DR) campaigns.

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