Several of the major social networks have now embraced video in one form or another. Twitter has Vine which offers 6-second video posting, Instagram just recently began offering 15-second video capabilities, Facebook is working on video ads (said to be delayed until autumn) but allows videos from sites like YouTube to be embedded and played in a post which can be useful for brands. What does it all mean for you SMB’s who are currently advertising or thinking about using online video advertising?
Super-Short Video Marketing Potential
With Vine and Instagram now offering video options, though Vine is a short 6 seconds, this gives SMBs a fast, trendy way to show off some inventory or get the brand out into the wild. According to Statistics Brain, Twitter has over 554 million users and attracts 190 million of them each month. With the Wall Street Journal stating that Instagram has 90 million unique users a month. However, that’s not the true power of Instagram anymore. Instead it’s the added benefit of sharing those videos on Facebook, where they will play right on the page, and to Twitter as well, where they’ll be posted as link.
Some businesses might not see the value in making these extremely short videos. Sure, the quality might not be all it can be and the time limits are tough to work with, but if you can master telling a story or making some amazing videos with these apps it will really help you to connect with the younger audience, who are the whole new generation of potential customers just waiting to be tapped.
B2B is EZ2
LinkedIn is one of the most successful and useful social business networking sites on the planet. They’ve also seen the value of video, not only on profile pages but for advertising purposes, and have implemented video ads on the site. LinkedIn gives you more control over the ads as you can control costs through pay-per-view or pay-per-click ads which can start and stop almost at will. The added bonus of LinkedIn video ads is that they can also work with YouTube, allowing you to create your videos and post them on your brand’s YouTube channel, subsequently increasing the potential reach of your ad.
[EDITOR: show a LinkedIn video ad unit image from http://marketing.linkedin.com/video-on-linkedin-ads]
You can target your video ads based on:
- Location
- Company
- Job Title
- School
- Skills
- Group
- Gender
- Age
At LinkedIn, videos show in a 300×250 ad unit that will fit almost anywhere on LinkedIn. When clicked, the video fills the ad space and plays for up to 30 seconds. When it has finished, it will provide a Call To Action (CTA) to your website or LinkedIn page.
Facebook Video Ads
With the launch of video for Instagram and its integration with Facebook , video ads for Facebook are surely to be launched in the coming months. For now, your best bet for video marketing on Facebook is embedding videos from your YouTube channel, via Instagram or simply uploading them straight to Facebook. Facebook text ads have also gained popularity but with little targeting capabilities, ads may be exposed to users that are not wholly relevant to your business. With Twitter’s launch of more targeted ads, Facebook are sure to follow suit with video ads and more targeting capabilities.
That’s a Wrap
The biggest change this brings to the video ad landscape is, businesses can directly connect with their customers and potential customers in a far quicker, and less costly way. With specific targeting and clever implementation of these new video tools available, you can finally position your brand in front of the correct audience, very quickly and in a manner that will not be perceived as intrusive, in your face marketing and advertising. LinkedIn has definitely becoming a great place for marketing B2B and with proper presentation there you could see great results in no time as well. But if you’re looking to rapidly expand your potential customer base, Instagram and Vine embedding to Facebook and Twitter along with a good YouTube presence may be the fastest, cheapest way to do it.
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- Video Ads Predicted to Bring $1 Billion in Ad Revenue to Facebook (socialmediatoday.com)
- Recipe for video Ad success (viddyad.com)
- Reaching Automotive Consumers Online with Google Advertising and Online Video Ads (YouTube) (firstdigital.co.nz)
- How to Take Advantage of the Upcoming Facebook Video Ads (pschaecker.wordpress.com)
- Running Your YouTube Ad campaign (viddyad.com)
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- Digital Video Advertising is Growing; Marketers Get Excited (business2community.com)