The case against video ads

It’s hard to talk about content marketing without addressing the 50 feet elephant in the room — video. It’s lauded as the future of content marketing, and companies are rushing to cash in.
And understandably so. Online video has become the cornerstone of online virality since a baby bit Charlie’s finger.

Axonn Research found that seven in 10 people view brands in a more positive light after watching interesting videos from them, while a report by Forrester says that one minute of video is supposedly worth 1.8 million words.

Yet there are a lot of disadvantages to video that we’re eager to overlook. Video may become the king of content one day, but it’s yet to take its crown.

Video is linear

Video advertisements are still disruptive to the user experience, and a big reason is because video will for the foreseeable future be linear in its information delivery.

This means the cost of time for viewers is heavy. Viewer abandonment is a real problem for videos, where they click away before its messaging can be conveyed. A study by Visible Measures claims that 20 percent of users leave a video in 10 seconds or less, which gives advertisers a mere few seconds to prove that their video is worth watching.

Video platforms like Vimeo and YouTube have introduced ads without the option to click away. You can argue that is more disruptive than other forms of advertising since it takes away more time from viewers than regular banner ads. Ad-free subscription services like YouTube Red are banking on this annoyance, as are ad blockers.

Video is data-heavy

Credit: Flickr

According to research by Deloitte, the global audio and video traffic combined is expected to reach 82 percent of all internet traffic by 2018.

And that’s because video content is data-heavy. Users are wary to consume videos when they’re on the move and lack access to wifi. This is especially cumbersome in emerging markets like Indonesia or the Philippines where data is inaccessible and expensive. While poor connectivity in emerging markets persists and public wifi remains nascent, video content will stay geographically limited.

This limitation would affect the use of videos in new marketing innovations, like location-based advertising. According to an IAB UK study, 66 percent of marketers believe location-based advertising is the “most exciting” mobile opportunity for 2016. If consumers are resistant to video-consumption on the go, videos will be less effective in place-based mobile ads. A video ad on Starbucks may, in theory, be more effective near an outlet, but that doesn’t matter when consumers lack wifi access.

Video is a hard language to speak

Because watching cats in shark costumes sit on a Rhoomba while a duckling chases it around is more fun than watching an ad.

Professionals often struggle to speak to younger demographics. While advertisers figure out how to get users to buy their products through a video, netizens prefer watching videos of cats killing zombies or pranks gone wrong. Understandably, the concept of online video virality can be hard to understand, but getting it wrong can lead to painfully ineffective video advertising, like HTC’s attempt to initiate a rap battle with its competitors in 2015.

There is no hard or fast rule on what makes videos viral or popular, and there is a lot of competition out there.

While YouTube, arguably the granddaddy of online video sites, is said to receive more than one billion unique visitors every month, more than 400 hours of videos are also being uploaded every minute, (as announced by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki in 2015). That means if your video is five-minutes long, you’re competing with 399 hours and 45 minutes worth of content in that very minute.

With that much noise, you need to make your videos count.

Video is not searchable

Videos also struggle in its searchability. Its SEO health pales in comparison to text-based content, which search engines like Google find easier to parse. Bots can’t interpret video the way they understand text and code, and video not supplemented with text will struggle to match up to written content.

This limits discovery of videos — with poor SEO health, users are more likely to search for videos and creators they already know about, making it hard to discover new videos. Brand discovery end up suffering as well, as video ads do nothing in helping businesses get indexed better.

So what are the options?

Video is a great medium to reach out to your audience, but you need to work hard to get it right. So when working on your content marketing, don’t bank all your efforts on video just yet. Diversifying your strategy helps reach out to a wider audience.

Working with video producers would also help ensure that your messaging gets to the right audience. Online personalities or production houses can help you get access to their viewership and expertise. Creating native content instead of in-stream ads wouldn’t be disruptive and holds the potential to become shareable.

Video may be the hot topic of the season, but with more videos being produced by publishers and brands, it’s beginning to look like a 19th century gold rush. If we rush into video, we risk saturating the medium too quickly, negating the quality of the videos we aim to produce. Instead of prioritizing creating more videos, producing good videos should be paramount. The last thing we need is yet another news publication to create one minute news clips with bright yellow words.

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Brand Pulse is Tech in Asia’s very own take on sponsored content. Our Brand Pulse team works closely with reputable brands to create educational, insightful, and credible content for our audience. To find out more, visit us at brandpulse.techinasia.com, or drop us an email at brandpulse@techinasia.com.