The Seven Rules of Effective Video Advertising.

Diaz Nesamoney, CEO of Jivox just posted an interesting article on Mashable titled How to Easily and Inexpensively Create Eye-Popping Video Ads.  It is great article, but I did not agree with every point he made, and felt others need expanding.  So I built my own list on the framework he provided. (stuff in quotes are his words.)

Jivox is a web-based do-it-yourself tool that aims to make creating and placing video ads easy and inexpensive.  The company raised $10.7 million in June 2008 to build up the service.  In time, Jivox hopes to compete with SpotRunner, a service I wrote about last week. 

Simple strategies for creating great video advertisements.

Online video advertising is growing fast because video ads generate twice the click through rates of banner ads.  "By 2012, Borell Associates predicts that 35% of local ad spending will go towards online video." Time for small businesses to start experimenting. Here are a few rules to follow:

1. Clearly define the objective of your video ad before you start building it.  Don't touch a video camera or look at any online templates until you have created a one sentence description of what you are trying to accomplish by running the ad.  Write down that description, create a short script detailing what's going to go into the ad (a paragraph is fine), and an explanation of how the proposed commercial will meet the defined objective. Get your boss, your business partner, your wife (anybody who could give you grief about the ad later on) to sign off on your written objective and action plan. It is much cheaper to make changes when the ad still resides on paper than when it is streaming off the web.
   
2. One objective per ad works best.  Nuance does not work well with video ads. Creating an ad that builds up your brand, or helps you move products that are going on sale, or lets people know you are expanding your business into new types of services is easy. Trying to create an ad does all three is almost impossible to pull off successfully.
3. Less is more. The simpler, the more concise an ad is, the better the chance it has to succeed.  Online ads usually run in a little window surrounded by other applications.  If you want the ad to work you have to figure out how to make it stand out from all the other clutter on your desktop.  Keep the graphics simple and large and the text to a minimum. Make sure your company name and logo are writ large or no one is going to see them.  
4. Get to the point quickly. If you can't grab an audience in 8 seconds you have lost that audience. "Ads that contain specific, immediate benefits, such as a  promotion or a discount resonate strongly."
5. Visuals need to be relevant, not just pretty. "Visuals should not only be eye catching, they should communicate a relevant message."
6. Target your audience. Online ads can, and should, be targeted at very specific audiences.   If you have more than one audience you are targeting create more than one ad.  Services such as Jivox and SpotRunner provide tools to help you find appropriate places to run your ad. "The more specific you can be in targeting your ad at a predetermined audience, the greater the chance it will resonate with the prospect. This greatly increases the odds of a good response. Also, make sure to offer viewers a call-to-action at the end of the ad."
7. Test and re-test. This is the Internet folks. You can track when each ad runs and them monitor the reponse to the ad.  Keep records about what happens when you run an ad. Does the ad generate more floor traffic, more online orders, a different sort of email query?. Don't be afraid to play around with ad placement to see what happens, or to create and test several versions of the ad to see which one works best. "Set aside a portion of your budget to test different approaches so you can see how response rates fluctuate when you change the visuals, call-to-action, price points or add a promotional offer."