New Tools and Services Make it Easy for Small Companies to Create Video Ads
Here are several excerpts from an article by Shelly Banjo, Camera Ready:
Getting noticed by potential customers on the increasingly crowded Internet is a challenge, especially for small businesses with small marketing budgets. But there’s one way to stand out amid the clutter, even for those with limited resources: online video commercials.
Online video ads — typically less than 30 seconds and appearing in Internet yellow pages, local search directories, news sites, blogs or social-media sites such as YouTube and Facebook — give consumers a more detailed view into a business and what sets it apart.
Less passive than television commercials, online video ads encourage viewers to click through to the company’s Web site for more information or to make an instant purchase.
Once limited to companies with the resources to hire advertising agencies and production companies, online commercials are now within the reach of smaller firms…
Software and services sold by companies such as Spot Runner Inc., Mixpo, PixelFish Inc., TurnHere Inc. and Jivox Inc. allow small companies to create, deploy and monitor video ads at a fraction of the cost of hiring an ad agency to do it for them.
Small-business owners can choose where and when their ads will play, targeting customers by location, demographic and the types of Web sites they surf. They can keep tabs on how many views of the ad have occurred, how many people clicked through to their Web site, downloaded a promotional coupon or made a purchase after watching the video.
These programs offer “small businesses a way to capture their target audience…on a larger scale and at a cheaper price,” says Josh Martin, a vice president and director of emerging media for New York-based ID Media, a member of Interpublic Group of Cos. “Video commercials offer a compelling way to engage consumers.”
Spending by advertisers on online video ads is expected to nearly quadruple by 2011 — rising to $1.9 billion from $505 million this year, according to New York-based research firm eMarketer Inc. Part of the reason: Click-through rates for video ads are higher than they are for plain-image or text-only ads, statistics from Google Inc.’s digital-marketing firm DoubleClick show.
In addition, more people are watching videos online than ever before — 154.2 million this year, compared with 114.3 million in 2006, according to eMarketer. While many are watching news and entertainment videos, a survey by the Online Publishers Association found that 80% of those who watch online video have seen a video ad at some point, leading 31% to check out the advertiser’s Web page and 12% to make a purchase.
