Online video advertisements spend is rising leaps and bounds in recent years. Although television advertising spend still dominates the overall advertising spend in dollars, its growth is expected to be minimal ranging between 3-5% p.a. over the next 3-4 years whereas the spend in online video advertisement is expected to grow in double digits. This is a trend and forecast that is quite straight forward to read into given the digital boom we have been witnessing.
However not all online video advertisements strategies succeed. While several reasons could be attributed to a successful or a not so successful acceptance, targeting the right audience is an important factor which can make or break the acceptance. And given the diverse large user base across digital platforms, the reach may not be a sure shot to plan for at the get go. You will find a number of actionable tips online to enable you plan for your online video advertising success, but in all of those we often go with the most obvious when it comes to targeting the right audience, but miss to see there is a significant piece of unnoticed audience too that is very relevant. For example, this insightful article from Google talks about 56% of target audience for sport goods on mobile devices to be female, 68% of skin and body care influencers to be men, per a recent study. While a lot of ground work in terms of predictive data analytics around target users, usage patterns, platforms to target to reach the audience are all done upfront, given the dollars that go into this and the need for the entire strategy to be effective, organizations also heavily rely on post advertising validation to confirm the reach and its effectiveness.
This also enables them to be nimble for any on demand changes that may be necessitated as the full strategy cannot be envisioned with 100% accuracy upfront. In addition, the data sources that feed into your target advertising audience repository has to be diverse and fool proof. You are better off tapping into all data sources even if it means the advertisement may not be 100% relevant to a given group rather than taking the risk of omitting them. While a conservative strategy may be ok to go with in this space, planning the right frequency of play and ensuring the video content is extremely appealing to the audience is very important in ensuring the overall success.
At the end of the end, determining the right target audience for online video advertisements is not a silver bullet that can be struck in one go. It needs a lot of iterative and thought through strategizing and with a team that understands that an effective content along with agility in delivering it to the audience are important, the strategy is for sure set to be effective.