Looking for a way to build your brand online? Advertising on YouTube gives you a unique chance to build brand awareness and connect with potential customers. With over two billion active users per month, you will definitely find the right audience there.
YouTube allows you to choose from multiple campaign goals that will help you achieve your objective. If you want to increase awareness about your brand and reach more potential customers, bumper ads are the answer! Bumper ads are short videos that can play before, during, or after YouTube videos. Since most viewers on YouTube tend to skip ads, the benefit to bumper ads is that they do not have the skip ad button.
Wondering what you should include in a bumper ad, how to present your brand and encourage people to take action in just 6 seconds? The truth is you don’t need more time to grab people’s attention. Bumper ads can be a great tool for reaching a large audience efficiently, as the bidding option is based on CPM, and therefore they are usually cheaper per view than TrueView format. To get the most out of it, you need to make your ad memorable. Here are some good practices on how you can achieve that.
STRATEGIES TO MAKE YOUR BUMPER AD MEMORABLE
1. First things first – attention!
Think of something that keeps peoples’ eyes glued to the ad. The beginning of the video is crucial, even for extremely short bumper ads. If you fail to attract users here, it doesn’t really matter what you present later. You can attempt to grab the attention of viewers either by showing interesting visuals or with some upbeat music. Nobody likes watching boring and monotonous ads. So don’t hesitate to use vibrant colors and vivid animations, but at the same time make your video visually pleasing. And remember, as your goal is to increase awareness, be sure to show your brand as much as possible. Be creative and make sure that your video sticks in the audience’s mind for longer than 6 seconds. It is critical that the visual elements always follow your brand guidelines to provide a coherent brand experience. With only 6 seconds, there is no time to tell a story. Your message needs to be simple and clear, so choose just one product or service feature and focus on presenting it in the most intriguing way. Do not include all possible information in your video – this will overwhelm your audience, which can be damaging to your brand. If you want to drive action (and of course you do!), do not forget about the powerful CTA. Building a story out of bumper ads can definitely strengthen your visibility and help you to convey your brand’s messaging in a more meaningful and memorable way. Bumpers are more impactful when considered as in a series by combining them into a sequence of ads that users see and interact with over time. Using promo codes can certainly catch customers’ attention and help you to measure the performance of Bumper Ads in an indirect way. Bumper Ads are mainly designed to increase brand awareness and the primary KPI for evaluating the performance should be the unique reach or additional measurements, such as Ad Recall or Awareness Lift. If your goal however is to increase the awareness and see if the ads have reached the right audience, you can display a promo code on the ad and then measure the usage of it using your third-party tracking tool. Bumpers can be a very cost-effective advertising format to reach millions of YouTube users. However, the right targeting is key to the success of your video campaign. Amongst the many available options, there are few which can help you to reach the desired audience through the bumper ads. If you are able to outline the main characteristics of your target audience, you can leverage the demographic targeting to reach the audience that is the most important to your business. In your campaign, you should be very specific when it comes to age, gender, or even household income. By narrowing the targeting to people who will be the most responsive to your ad, you can increase the chances of your ads’ success. Affinity targeting, including the custom-built groups, can help you reach audiences that have a strong interest in your product. Affinity audiences are built based on the interests of users and the websites they browse through. For instance, you can reach the “Technophiles,” people interested in “Sports,” or “Beauty & Wellness” – the list of available categories is quite long and the usage of affinity targeting can maximize the likelihood that your bumper ad is displayed to the right people. You may also choose to display the ad to people who have visited your website before or maybe are on your email list. You can choose a different way to interact with an audience who already knows your brand. For example, you can attempt to build a sequenced story and remarket to users who have seen another ad or watched the videos on your YouTube channel. You can also think of displaying a special offer to people who have shown strong interest in your website and reached the checkout page but have abandoned the buying process. Bumpers can be a super effective way to stay on top of the minds of people who have interacted with your brand before. At Monsoon, we believe that the best strategy is the holistic one. Therefore, we recommend using bumpers alongside other YouTube video formats or to design a proper ad sequencing flow that will maximize the potential of your video campaign. Bumpers allow you to connect with a lot of potential customers, so make sure your message is memorable and also remember to choose the targeting option that reaches the most receptive audience.2. Visuals
3. Focus on one USP
4. Call to action
5. Sequencing
6. Promo codes / special incentive
CHOOSING A TARGETING OPTION
1. Detailed demographics
2. Affinity
3. Remarketing
CONCLUSION
