Measuring Online Brand Building

Online video advertising has marketers shifting the company budget away from TV. Why? By adding online advertising to a companies marketing-mix, they are able to accomplish a variety of things they could not with TV. Although TV reaches a broad audience, it does not have the ability to engage or measure highly-fragmented groups of consumers.

Online video advertising can raise brand awareness and persuasion metrics by a mind blowing 90 percent. The Clickz article Measuring Online Video Ads goes further into the added benefits of online video advertising as well as a list of helpful hints while deciding what would best suit your company.

The first decision is format. The two most popular are pre-roll and in-stream ads that appear before the video content. Themes should work in conjunction with TV and other offline advertising but online ads that are the most successful have been made specifically for Web use. Ads should work on a variety of media players and to encourage interaction between the consumer and the site such as hot spotting, which allows users to click on various parts of the ad or video.

As online video advertising becomes part of a marketing-mix, it is important to extend the online video's reach. This is a simple way to increase effect this facet has on the overall marketing plan. By cross-promoting video advertising on your Web site, via email blasts, RSS distribution and by offering viral functionality such as forward-to-a-friend, the campaign reach is greatly increased.

While the return on online video advertising can be substantial, remember that this is still a new format. Measurement is still being perfected but current metrics include views, time spent, click throughs, and viral quality. Also trackable are content, behavior, daypart, interactivity, and engagement. With this enhanced level of measurability, companies must remember the basics of every format: reach, audience and targeting, which must be applied across the spectrum. And never forget the power of a survey in determining real brand impact.