WARREN, RI – When we asked a sample of marketers using video advertising, either online or on TV, what effect various tactics would have on their video ads, greater interactivity and creating more versions for more consumer targets proved to be the most popular.

If you have ever spent and evening in front of your television and wondered why any advertiser would purposely fill every available ad break with the same ad over and over, or worse, have the volume so high that you must mute the volume, you are clearly not alone. Among the marketers surveyed, cranking up the volume on ads got the biggest negative response; an overwhelming 69% claim that the practice actually decreases the effectiveness of an ad. Like a pop-up ad, a very loud ad can certainly get a viewer’s attention, but by being annoying, that attention may hurt the brand and have a negative effect on purchase intent.

Showing an ad many times in a short period of time does generally see better results as the frequency of exposure increases. However, as frequency grows, effectiveness will peak, plateau, and then decline with too many exposures. 33% of video marketers agree that the practice can have negative consequences, while 34% think it improves effectiveness.
Because this can be a tricky tactic to master, frequency capping and careful media planning are always good ideas.

On the positive end of the scale, 73% of video marketers agree that adding interactivity to a video ad will increase the effectiveness of the ad. Ads have incorporated 800 numbers and websites for a long time as methods for provoking consumer engagement, but newer ad formats take advantage of non-linear and time-shifted TV viewing to allow for a consumer to interact directly with deeper advertiser content.

One of the benefits of inexpensive digital production is the ability to create more ads with less money. 66% of respondents agreed that creating different versions of an ad, each individually geared to different consumer targets, can be beneficial for ad effectiveness.

Copyright 2009 MarketingSherpa, LLC. All rights reserved. From http://www.marketingsherpa.com.
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