Customer engagement has long been the holy grail of social marketing, and interactive video advertising gives you an unprecedented opportunity to tell your story in a way that's entertaining, relevant and shareable.
At the heart of interactive video advertising's effectiveness is the ability for consumers to pause, go back, click on links and participate in your message. The more time a customer spends engaging with your ad, the more brand awareness you generate. And the more engaging you are, the more you benefit from customer evangelism. When your customer shares your message with like-minded friends, it greatly extends your reach.
eMarketer predicts that video's share of digital display ads will make steady gains, increasing from 26.7 percent in 2014 to 30.1 percent in 2018. And Adobe's U.S. Digital Video Benchmark Report shows that Americans watched or started to watch 38.2 billion videos in the second quarter of 2014, a 43 percent increase year-over-year from that quarter of 2013. This data shows that compelling, visually stimulating video is vital to building brand awareness and moving customers down the sales funnel.
Engagement
In our social world, the end goal of your marketing strategy shouldn't always be a hard sell. You need to focus on connecting with your customers — really connecting. How? By offering information that makes their lives a little better, and doing it in a way that's informative and fun. The strength of interactive video is that it makes this exchange of information more like a conversation than a lecture. When consumers feel that they're getting information because they've asked for it — whether by clicking, hovering or answering a question — they are more likely to stay engaged. eMarketer reports on the different ways to add interactivity to an ad, either to provide more information or simply to up the fun factor.
Effectiveness
Because of the autoplay options on sites like Facebook, looking at video analytics can be misleading. Your focus should be on making sure your video is compelling enough for your audience to interact with it and watch it to completion. The best way to do this is with a great script and great creative. Then, add text overlays with relevant information, a call-to-action at the end of your video and icons to make sharing easy.
Integration
You can convey more information in a compelling way with video advertising than with other most other ad types — and you can convey even more when your video has an interactive component. With video, you typically have 15 to 30 seconds to make your point, introduce your brand and capture your customer's imagination. Use that small window to present great creative that maintains the integrity of your message and positions you as an expert and viewers will be far more likely to engage with interactive components for more information.
Ultimately, a more engaged and more educated buyer is more likely to convert. And the more your customers are able to interact with your videos, the more engaging they will find them to be — and the more likely they are to share and explore what you have to offer.
