How to Increase Brand Awareness with Mobile Video Advertising

Executive Summary

Mobile video advertising is one of the best ways to increase your brand visibility online. Even though there are several ways to advertise your brand, products, and services, recent methods have proven to be more effective than others.

With the number of smartphone users predicted to reach about four billion users in 2021, there is a high correlation with the massive increase in mobile ads’ numbers.

Estimates show that mobile Ads in the US alone will hit twenty-five billion in 2022 according to Emarketer.

With the above figures, you can be assured that Mobile video advertising has the potential to take your brand to the next level given the massive number of active smartphone users.

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Apart from the potential video marketing presents to marketers, it is a well-established fact that videos can be understood faster and easier by the audience.

Even a micro-video for up to ten seconds is able to tell a brand story in a way a wider audience will be able to understand faster and better than any other form of digital content.

With these great opportunities given to digital marketers, how can they make good use of mobile videos to increase brand visibility which will extend to an increase in sales, revenue and profit?

Read till the end to learn all you need to know about mobile video advertising and the best tips for effective video advertising.

First things first, let’s look at the definition of mobile video marketing.

What is Mobile Video Advertising?

Mobile video advertising is a form of digital advertising that is displayed in the form of videos on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets that mostly use wireless connections.

Due to the nature of these devices, they typically have smaller screens than other traditional electronic devices used for digital marketing such as laptops and desktop computers, these forms of advertising are designed to display on mobile screen sizes.

Also, the portable nature of these devices makes it easier for marketers to target their audience anytime and anywhere as these mobile devices are always carried along with their users.

The earlier digital marketers understand the importance of mobile video advertising, the better for their video advertising campaigns.

That being said, Let’s look at the formats used in mobile video advertising.

Formats Used in Mobile Video Advertising

Just like every other type of digital advertising, this type of digital advertising also has specific formats used by marketers.

Let’s look into them…

• Mobile App Interactive pre-roll: These are types of mobile video ads that are shown in Apps before the user is given access to use the Apps. These types of mobile video Ads are usually six seconds or less.
• Mobile Web and App Standard Pre-Roll: These mobile video Ads are shown on mobile devices through web browsers and mobile Apps. They usually show before the content is displayed.
• Tablet Web Tap-to-Play Medium Rectangle 300×250: Similar to the above-explained Ad format but usually different in size and is shown in full screen and sound only when the user taps the video on the mobile device or mobile web browsers and only seen on tablets.
• Smartphone App Tap-to-Play Banner 320×50: These are animated banner mobile Ads shown on smartphones when the user interacts with the Apps. These Ads are shown mostly in App games during user interactions.

The above-described types of mobile video Ads and other forms of mobile Ads are mostly used by digital marketers to run mobile Ad campaigns.

Benefits of Mobile Video Advertising Campaigns

After understanding what is mobile video Advertising and its Ad formats, let’s look at the benefits that come with it.

• Reach highly engaged content viewers: With mobile advertising regardless of all the mobile devices, you stand a chance of getting your audience to engage with your content and take actions that enhance your visibility.
• Expand reach: With video advertising campaigns, marketers can expand their reach by reaching more mobile users aside from other various campaigns on desktops and other formats of advertising giving brands more visibility online.
• Drive up to a 3x viewer engagement: Because videos are more easily understood by viewers than other types of digital content, your audience is more likely to watch your videos and get engaged or take the right action leading to an increase in brand visibility.
• Deliver highly viewable mobile video ads with full-screen executions: Another great feature of this Ad format is that it gives the marketer the opportunity to optimize for full-screen in order to capture their audience’s attention.

As stated earlier at the beginning of the post, Video advertising and video marketing is growing at a high speed and will continue to grow as the number of mobile subscribers keep growing. Therefore, the benefits are endless.

Mobile Video Advertising on Social Media

Mobile and social media is a match made from Heaven. Both platforms are revolutionary and necessary tools for digital marketing and most importantly, they both go hand in hand.

With more people spending countless hours on social media platforms using their mobile devices. It has become a must-do, I mean video mobile advertising and to a larger extent video marketing on social media.

Mobile advertising on social media

Social media giants such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Snapchat are constantly filled with video content in users’ feeds. Mobile video advertising on these platforms has also seen a tremendous increment in the last few years.

It is believed that mobile advertisement constitutes more than 70% of Facebook revenue while Instagram mobile advertising is almost 100% as it’s mostly used on mobile devices.

In 2018, mobile video ad spending quadrupled to a whopping $6 billion and is believed to grow even more in the coming years and all credit to social media.

Hence, let’s look at the most used social media platforms for mobile advertising.

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Facebook

Facebook is the biggest and most popular social media platform. This means advertising on Facebook gives you a big opportunity to reach a wider audience.

Facebook has the largest number of active users all over the world and boasts of having the most diverse audience. This means you will surely get your customers on Facebook.

Apart from that, Facebook gives advertisers the opportunity to target their audience using the standard mobile video ads which are shown like other forms of Facebook Ads in user feeds.

Facebook has a fantastic App installation Ad drive that allows advertisers to advertise their Apps in order to increase their downloads and exposure.

Facebook Premium mobile advertising, on the other hand, are mobile video Ads that start showing automatically in silent mode but when tapped, it enlarges to full-screen mobile Ads with sounds.

With Facebook Ads, digital marketers or brands can target audiences based on their demographics, location, behaviors, interests, and connections.

Advertisers can also use auto-play video ad format, multi-image carousel ads, and dynamic product ads to reach a targeted audience. 

Facebook charges advertisers based on Cost Per Click (PPC). That means campaigns that are PPC charge advertisers only when people click on those ads.

Twitter

Twitter is another great social media platform that has always encouraged a mobile-first concept.

With over 800 million active users monthly, Twitter presents a good opportunity for digital marketers to grow their businesses.

Mobile video advertising on Twitter is done in several ways to target the right audience. It allows users to upload their videos and promote them to inform of pre-roll or mid-roll ads.

Twitter video ads are auto-play and also allow for direct App installs.

Just like any other Ad network, Twitter also allows advertisers to target their audience based on their demographics, location, behavior, and interest.

Twitter uses a Cost per view (CPM) pricing model to charge its customers. This means you will be charged only when someone views your mobile video Ads on.

Instagram

This is one of the biggest mobile advertising platforms nowadays. Instagram does have over a billion active monthly users. All these users’ feeds are always fielded with video content.

It has also become the most engaged and active social media platform.

Analysts believe viewers of video ads on Instagram are 75% more likely to take action either by visiting your website, converting, or buying your goods or services.

The beauty of advertising on Instagram is that It is integrated with Facebook which means advertisers are able to use the same Facebook data for targeting their audience.

Mobile video advertising on Instagram is believed to be very effective as more than 75% of the viewers take action. They either purchase or product or service, convert or visit your website.

Also, over 37% of adult Americans are said to be active Instagram users which also presents targeting opportunities for advertisers.

When it comes to the cost of advertising on Instagram Ads, It varies based on certain factors. However, the average cost of Instagram mobile Ads ranges from $0.25 to $0.75.

Your Ads could cost less or even more than the average cost depending on several factors. It is worth trying mobile video ads on Instagram as it offers a lot of opportunities for brands and businesses.

YouTube

YouTube is simply the biggest video content platform online. Also, YouTube is also the second-largest search engine with over a billion active users every month.

YouTube has several ad types such as InStream Video Ads, Mobile Roadblocks, and Brand Channel. All these Ad types are designed to target audiences precisely using the Google Ads platform.

The beauty of YouTube is that it’s owned by Google and is all managed by the Google Ad platform with a lot of features allowing advertisers to target their audience using their demographics, interests, behavior, industry, keywords, topics, devices, etc.

YouTube also offers mobile and desktop InStream Ads which allows advertisers to target specific devices and Apps. Brands use these InStream Ads and Brand channels in promoting their products and services to target their desired audience.

Another plus of using YouTube mobile Ads is the management and adjustment platform in the Google ads which allows for daily analysis of Ad ad performance and improvement for better results.

YouTube also allows digital marketers to target their audience using keywords, Topics, demographics, industries, sectors, devices, locations, ad extensions, etc.

Since YouTube is the biggest video content platform, It’s worth giving it a try for brand exposure and growth.

Tips for Successful Mobile Video Advertising

Since mobile has become more important than desktop in several regions, it is very important to pay attention to mobile advertising.

With over two billion mobile subscribers in the world, there is every reason to take into account the potential these figures present to digital marketers.

Mobile users often spend their time on various social media platforms on a daily basis interacting with content fields in their feeds.

It is very important for digital marketers to make good use of this great opportunity by engaging their audience through mobile devices.

Even though there is no specific way to win in mobile video advertising, there are several tips that enable one to get better ROI in mobile video ads, and here are a few of them.

Optimize For Size and Length

Video marketing on mobile devices needs to be as light as possible to enable them to load faster and better on all mobile devices. This is achieved by making sure the video is short in length and the file size is not heavy.

This will enable the video to load faster even with a low bandwidth connection. It is advisable that your mobile video should be 15 seconds or less and crafted to load faster and fine on smartphones.

Ensure the quality of the video is not lost while making your brand story well communicated.

Offer Value for Your Audience

The goal of your mobile video campaign is to get more conversions and sell more products or services.

It is common knowledge but that does not mean putting only that in your video. I mean your product and services and then the call to action.

Oftentimes you need to offer great value in your video Ads so people can relate to your content, share it, and remember it.

Providing value here entails creating quality videos that educate, entertain, and possibly inspire your audience. These are the types of videos that are shared more and probably gain more attention.

It is always good to have a video strategy that will capture the hearts of your audience and make them remember your video and come back to visit your website or take other actions that will increase sales and profit.

An example of such a video is the Starbucks video shown below.

Maintain Brand Consistency in Your Mobile Videos

Many marketers often forget that branding is required in their video Ads. Because their focus is to capture the attention of their audience, they forget to include brand attributes such as Logos, brand colors, font style, and voice tune.

These attributes keep brand identity alive and visual identity alive.

As you craft your video as a marketer, you need to make sure your brand attributes are present in some form no matter what. It can be in the beginning, middle, or at the end but make sure it appears.

By communicating your brand identity, you help your target audience remember your business and also recognize your brand anytime they see your brand features anywhere.

Most large brands such as Apple, Amazon, and McDonald’s are all known by their logos and colors. So it is vital you remember to include your logos at least in your mobile video ads to keep your brand alive.

See the example video below

Craft quality mobile videos that make sense even without voice

Social media like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have autoplay enabled on mobile devices. This means your videos automatically start playing before your target audience will tap on it before the sound will start playing.

Normally when these videos are tapped, they display on full-screen and then start playing sounds also. The fact is, the majority of viewers will not enable sounds on their mobile devices.

This means you have a short time to capture your audience’s attention and send a message within the first few seconds before they will scroll down and leave your mobile video.

One of the perfect ways you can send a message through your video without sound is to use captions in your videos. Captions or Texts are simply a great way of delivering your message.

You should also understand that using Text or captions too much will be bad for your mobile video. Therefore, keep things clean and simple for better mobile video marketing.

Have a clear call to action (CTA)

Even if you manage to create a great video for your mobile ad, if you are not able to add a clear call to action, you won’t be able to get your audience to take action.

One of the most important things to do in your videos generally is to be specific on what action you want your audience to take after watching your video.

There is a reason CTAs are called calls to action. It could be asking your audience to click on a button such as “Learn more”, “Sign-Up”, “Download your ebook” or “Subscribe” etc.

Without a clear call to action, your mobile campaign will fail to produce the desired result.

Here are the best places you can place your CTAs

• Pre-roll CTA: Place your CTA before the video starts so that the viewer sees it even if they don’t watch the whole video.
• Mid-roll CTA: Here place this anywhere between the beginning and the end so that viewers see it in a moment when they are most engaged with your mobile video.
• Post-roll CTA: Put this at the end of the video when the viewer is most interested and, since they’ve watched the entire video, they may be more likely to buy your products or services.

My advice would be to use the Mid-roll CTAs as a study shows they convert better.

Optimize For All Social Media Platforms

Since most people access social media platforms using various mobile devices, It will be beneficial if you take your time to review your mobile video before you post it on all social media platforms

See the image below for the right dimensions for each social media platform.

Conclusion

Mobile video advertising and marketing have become one of the most important ways to engage your audience. Hence, it is very important for digital marketers to know the most effective ways to get their audience to take actions leading to conversion, purchase, or subscription.

It is important for marketers to know what works best for specific brands and when exactly to implement it. understanding what your audience needs will help you achieve your mobile video advertising better.

Make sure you know which platforms your audience is spending more of their time on so you will be able to target them better.

If you have been in the practice of video advertising, please do not hesitate to share your audience in the comment section to help improve this post. Also, if you have any doubts, please do not hesitate to ask your questions below in the comment section.