Three Things You Should Look For in a Video Ad Provider

What should you look for when it comes to a video advertising solution?

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what to expect from video, especially as it differs from other media you may buy such as TV and digital display. And with every new buzzword that emerges, it becomes harder to distinguish which factors matter most in choosing a video ad provider.    

To help de-clutter the process, we've put together a list of 10 things you should look for—based on our research into what advertisers and agencies want—and packaged them in new video advertising playbook.

Here are three of the 10 things you should look for in a video ad provider....

Completed Views

Face it, you’re paying to get the right people to watch your message and engage with it. So, can your provider deliver on that and buy completed views?

If so, ask how they define completed views. In some cases, it's a few seconds with or without sound.

The other qualifing question to ask is, are the ads forced on viewers or do they get to choose whether to watch? Viewers are 75% less engaged with forced view ads than those they choose to watch.

The gold standard is YouTube's TrueView ad format, which allows viewers to skip ads after five seconds. A complete view is counted when a viewer watches your full ad or 30 seconds of it, whichever is shorter.

Out-of-the-Park Strategies

Advertisers and agencies want more than a “place it and spend it” approach to video ad campaigns today. That's why a provider's strategic competence is such a big deal.

Great online video ad campaigns integrate several strategies including:

• Campaign structure—i.e., integrating your objectives with your business structure and budget spend rules,
• Flighting,
• Audience micro-targeting, including targeting viewers in every phase of the purchase funnel,
• Creative ad personalization and
• Optimization.

Be sure to look into how providers incorporate these strategies into their solutions.

Programmatic Campaign Scalability

Does your provider have the ability to execute on all those strategies programmatically, creating and integrating multiple versions of your ad for as many different audiences and locations as your objectives, business structure and budget rules demand?

Can their service or platform create as many as thousands of micro-campaigns across all your service areas or locations in different flights, then turn around and run completely different broad national campaign with a different message, designed to first define the precise audience and then optimize to it?

GET IT NOW: The Video Advertiser's Playbook

These are just a few of the key characteristics to look for in a video advertising platform provider. Now you can get our complete playbook that includes the full list of 10 things to look for in a provider, as well as the 10 steps to building killer video ad campaigns.

It's all right here in our colorful new Video Advertiser's Playbook—a snapshot of everything you need to drive those winning results:

• Going-the-extra-mile Service is still a key differentiator among providers
• How to Strategize for killer video ad campaigns
• How to Pay It Forward and get the most out of each campaign