Viral Ad Network

Its easy to see the benefit of running an online campaign to reach your brands audience. What’s more difficult is deciding on the exact channel and medium to use.

There are many formats available to the online marketer. At VAN, the most common channels we deal with are video, games, and micro sites. To reach your audience, you may need to use a multi-format approach, although sometimes a one channel strategy will be suitable to meet your campaign goals. What is certain however is each medium has distinct advantages and disadvantages. From our own experience dealing with these kinds of campaigns on a daily basis, we’ve outlined the pros and cons of each medium to help you make the right decision.

This first part concentrates on online video.

Online video is essentially our “bread and butter”. Our sister agency Rubber Republic specialise in producing viral films, whilst VAN deal with video seeding every day. We like to think we know what makes a great video, and also how to best go about making one.

Pros:

- Can be made to fit your budget. Production doesn’t necessarily need to be highly polished. Some of the best viral videos have a “user generated” feel.

- It’s easy to guarantee exposure by buying views. Using a seeding service such as VAN’s, you can ensure your video is seen. Just sit back, and watch the views rack up. If you have struck the right chord with your audience, the initial push from using a seeding service will kick-start the viral effect.

- Online video is a very portable medium. There are countless platforms for you to upload the video to. By using popular sites such as Youtube, users can embed the video on their own sites, promoting sharing (which is vital to viral success).

- By hosting your video on Youtube or other video sharing sites, you enable an additional communication channel to reach your target audience. This works not only through the content itself, but through activating your channel profile and making friends/chatting to people who comment on the videos.

Cons:

- Like most advertising you’ve got to cut through the noise, and video is a noisy place to be. Hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded every day – 24 hours of video every minute on Youtube alone. How will you make yours stand out?

- The audience is cynical. Users see branded videos every day, so you’ve got to work extra hard to persuade them to watch yours.

- The audience can be cynical, especially with branded videos. Don’t be offended by negative comments and be aware of the parody. The internet is rife with videos being “mashed up” and remixed into something else. Sometimes, this can be great for your brand – other times, it can be damaging.

If you’d like to know more about using online video, please get in touch. In the mean time, see how Cadbury used online video successfully as part of their digital advertising strategy.

Tags: Advertising, Online advertising, Online video, viral

This entry was posted on Monday, January 24th, 2011 at 10:44 am and is filed under Advertisers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.