media update’s Christine Gerber ventured to Google’s ‘Unskippable Future of Advertising’ MasterClass at the
Loeries on Friday, 17 August to find out how advertisers can ‘tell it all’ in six seconds.
Jonathan Andrews, relationships agency manager at Google South Africa, opened the MasterClass by stating: “Consumers today are more curious, demanding and impatient. They dictate what they'd like to pay attention to, as opposed to brands telling them what to pay attention to.”
This is why, he says, YouTube provides individuals with ‘choice’. Consumers nowadays are able to choose what they’d like to view, and what content they’d like advertised to them.
“How does YouTube get to such a large audience? Give them choice – choice drives actively engaged users.”
With the ability to view analytics (and demographics) on YouTube, advertisers can see what type of content individuals like to watch, what gender and age those individuals are and will, therefore, know what ads to place where, and at the right time.
“Inpatient and demanding consumers
want an experience that is personalised. It’s [therefore] important to give consumers experiences that are personalised,” Andrews said.
However, just because an advert pertains to a consumer’s particular interest, doesn’t mean that the consumer will engage with it.
So, how exactly can advertisers connect with these consumers on YouTube? By utilising ‘bumper’ ads.
Bumper ads: How to say it in six seconds
According to Andrews, when advertisers combine bumper ads with YouTube’s TrueView feature, they can achieve up to 70% more reach, amplifying their campaigns.
This is not to say that you should go back and cut your extensive ads to six seconds.
“Cutting a 30-second [brand] story into six seconds cannot be done. But you can make a specific point with six seconds,” says Billy Corbyn, creative director at Unskippable Labs EMEA.
How do you correlate visuals and copy to different types of audiences? Corbyn says it all comes down to experimentation. "Attention is always changing. It's all different everywhere. There is never a silver bullet. When we can experiment, we should,” he says.
“[But] can you use bumpers to test if you can make someone feel something?” Corbyn asked.
His answer: this can, in fact, be done. An ad that combines visual images with animated text is bound to keep your audience engaged while telling a story at the same time. Like Airbnb did in this video:
But what if a brand story cannot be told in a mere six seconds? This is where sequential video storytelling comes in.
According to Corbyn, it’s possible to create a timeline with a series of bumpers to tell a story, as opposed to having one long ad, for example.
This way, there is a variety in the brand’s selection of ads that can pertain to different audiences. For example, if a brand produces a bumper series of three adverts that are all part of the same story, each ad may cater to a different audience to the others.
"If [the consumers] show interest, we show them more. If they don't show interest, we show them something different altogether,” Corbyn says.
"Attention is always changing. It's all different everywhere. There is never a silver bullet. When we can experiment, we should.”
The Loeries 2018 kicked off with a Masterclass hosted by Women in Marketing, which highlighted the gender stereotypes in advertising. Read more in our article, #Loeries2018: How are women represented in marketing?