There is no perfect formula for a commercial or a universal checklist that can be used to run through creative and determine: “This one will work, and this one won’t.” But there are some rules and principles that we have developed based on our experience.

Over the 6 years of working with awareness advertising, we have helped clients test different formats. We have seen how some commercials failed, while others have given unexpectedly cool results. In this article, the founder of the newage. agency Oleksii Liakh will share tips on how to make a winning creative for digital.

The Golden Rule of Сommercials in Digital

When you create or approve a commercial for digital, always expect the user to skip it in 5 seconds. Such is the specificity of content consumption – a person is ready to watch a master class or listen to an interview with their favorite blogger, and they are not ready to devote a single extra second to advertising.

That’s why we strongly recommend not using digital ads made for TV. A TV commercial can be the original source from which a video for YouTube is subsequently cut. But in no case do not transfer 30-second TV commercials to the Internet.

At the beginning of the work, we agreed to set up ads for several TV spots. And it was a failure. Viewers skipped the ads before they realized what was being promoted at all. This ad had no media effect – users didn’t even understand what was being advertised.

It may seem impossible – the message is important, the product is complex, and 5 seconds is too short to get to know it. But you have to work within these limits. Transferring a TV commercial to digital is like posting a longread on Twitter: theoretically possible, but why?

Let’s look at a few great examples, where it’s clear from the first seconds what the ad is about. These are not our advertisers, but their work is excellent.

Insights About The Effectiveness Of Ad Videos

Now I propose to compare good digital videos that our clients have run. Let me preface right away that there are no campaigns in a vacuum, there are always external factors that could affect the impact of a particular creative. But here are selected videos that were played for a commensurate audience, at approximately the same frequency, at the same time or close in time, and are generally similar.

Let’s get straight to the performance metrics. We do not focus on clicks from ads, because they make up only 20-30% of clicks from awareness ads. The remaining 70-80% are deferred post-view and cross-device conversions. To fully assess the effectiveness, we used our own methodology for Comprehensive Display Advertising Analysis. We identify all users who have seen the video and track which of them subsequently visited the site from other sources.

Allo

Allo made a native sponsored video with travel journalist Dmytro Komarov. The client decided to test how such a video would work if it was launched as an advertisement. The hypothesis was that the viewer would not immediately understand that the video was an advertising and would not immediately skip it.

At the same time we ran another, openly commercial, which immediately showed the product and brand. Here we did everything to compare them as much as possible. The second one worked better, and by 40% it worked well.

Interesting fact: in Campaign Manager, you can set up creative display scenarios to put ads into a single storyline to make the best use of different formats. Read about it in the article Campaign Manager Features: Creative Rotation

Rocket

Delivery service Rocket has been running several campaigns in its “Rocket Moments” series during the lockdown.

Rocket Moments

These are story videos that shows the moments when it’s wise to order delivery. We played short videos that were supposed to provoke people to buy, and then we compared them.

In transitions, the hangover worked better, and in delivery, the first one showed the best result.

The bottom line is that hypotheses should always be tested. You need to track performance and optimize. Anything can affect the result, including display time, frequency, etc.

Later, based on “Rocket Moments”, videos were made with McDonald’s. Let’s watch three videos.

This campaign and the last one worked differently overall, but in this case, the hangover worked better, and dramatically better.

You need to test. You and I can guess which creative will work best, but we need to run campaigns and tests them to know for sure.

Comfy

This is an old case from about three years old, but it’s very revealing. The client made a number of outrageous videos based on Ukrainian proverbs.

And here are their results: the first one is weak, the second and third are very cool, and the fourth didn’t work at all.

Often, clients evaluate creative by the percentage of viewers who watch the commercial to the end. It is a good media metric that shows whether the creative has captured the viewer’s attention. But we use Comprehensive Display Ad Analysis and we can see all the conversions after the ad. And the example of Comfy shows that reviews do not always correlate with customer acquisition.

The first video is well watched, but not very effective in driving conversions. On the contrary, the 2nd and 3rd ones give quite good results, but the statistics on video views are poor. The “Head” video performed worse than the others.

OLX

Let me give you a backstory. A client came, they made a rather creative video for television, and Banda with us made an alternative version for digital. We decided to evaluate what would work better.

This is the moment when the “wildness” worked. But you have to be very careful with it.

Here it is worth considering that the full videos were already on TV. Part of the audience had already seen them and was expecting a familiar continuation. Of course, there is no perfect “campaign in a vacuum”, but according to our measurements, it worked.

After that, several more outrageous creatives were launched.

Here it is worth considering that the full videos were already on TV. Part of the audience had already seen them and was expecting a familiar continuation. Of course, there are no perfect vacuum campaigns, according to our measurements, it worked.

After that, several more outrageous creatives were launched.

Conclusions

1. Consider the specifics of content consumption when making videos for digital. Users skip videos as soon as possible, so show them the product and brand before the “Skip” button appears.
2. At the same time, do not be afraid to test new formats – you will either get a breakthrough campaign or a unique experience. The only important thing is to follow all the principles of the test: determine the performance indicators and use a standard campaign to compare the results. By comparing in this way, we found out that native videos that look not like ads, but like running videos, work, but are worse than frankly advertising ones. In the Allo case, an influencer video generated 40% fewer clicks than a standard ad for the same product.
3. The effectiveness of a creative depends on many parameters, including the time and frequency of display. For example, the Rocket Moments video, referring to a hangover, worked better than others. Although all the videos of the campaign were similar and reflected the customers’ pain.
4. When evaluating how a creative has worked, it is important to look not only at click-throughs but also at conversions from ads, including delayed post-view and cross-device conversions. The Comfy case showed that even a video that lags behind in views can attract more audience. But here it is important to focus not only on clicks in the search, but to holistically evaluate the effectiveness of advertising.
5. Digital creatives based on TV ads can be difficult to work in contrast to advertising. OLX’s outrageous videos based on TV ads have been very successful on YouTube.
6. Don’t try to predict the performance of creatives — run campaigns, test hypotheses, and optimize ads based on data, not guesswork.