Online video: advertisers need to start asking what success really is

Online video has made it easier than ever before for brands to connect with consumers, but has created challenges when it comes to defining success.

A great article in Media Week recently explained why CTR really is a hopeless metric for judging the success of campaigns using video. Whether it’s a pre-roll ad or an expandable banner it is vital that the client establishes what the KPI for the campaign is – and if it’s CTR then you probably using the wrong format!

Crimtan’s creative division builds bespoke video ads for clients based around the specific objectives of the campaigns – branding, engagements, social sharing, online sales – and optimises the campaign based on this KPI to ensure that the client gets the performance they want from the campaign.

Here are a few excerpts from the article that echo’s our thinking on success metrics for online video. If you want to read the whole thing then click the link at the bottom of this blog.

“[Online Video has] created challenges with regard to both measuring the effectiveness of video advertising, and actually defining what success will look like – and indeed what the real point of the activity is at the outset of the campaign.

“We should kill the distinction between brand and direct response and simply ask: “What does success look like for this client and this campaign?” and “How do we ensure we can actually deliver and measure what’s relevant in this individual case?”. What we should absolutely not be doing is asking the activity to be all things to all men, but measuring VTR and CTR as part of the same campaign – the two are diametrically opposed.

“Online video advertising allows us to marry the very best of both worlds – brilliant ads that are intelligently deployed. However, if we cannot get to grips with what the objective of the advert is in the first place and the impact we want the activation to have, we’ll become mired in a world where competing metrics work at cross-purposes and will miss out altogether on the powerful opportunity online video affords.”

The full article was written by Martin Galvin, director of agency sales at Specific Media and is available at Media Week.