While views and completion rates are the most common video success metrics, there’s no way to guarantee a human audience.
A recent study by the Association of National Advertisers found 23% of video impressions are probably bogus. Thus, marketers are clamoring for engagement-based metrics, which is why kitchen appliances brand Cuisinart is installing calls to action in video placements.
Many brands still have a difficult time aligning their video strategy with the proper success metrics, said Jonathan Stefansky, CEO at interactive video platform Viewbix, which is working with Cuisinart.
“Brands usually say they want to drive people in-store or drive more app downloads, but when we ask how they use video to support it, they usually just say ‘pre-roll,’” said Stefansky. “There’s really no alignment between the content and the actions they want to drive.”
Cuisinart has video assets between 15 seconds to 2.5 minutes, mainly drawing from TV ad creative, said Stephen Plotsker, chief operating officer for Cuisinart’s agency, BPS Digital Media.
BPS used Viewbix to add rich media and interactive elements directly within the video container. For Cuisinart, this entailed calls to action designed to increase conversions in other channels.
For instance, Cuisinart uses email sparingly, so consumers are “happy when they get communications from us because we’re not in their face all the time and we’ve built a rapport with the customers,” said Plotsker. The brand’s main goal was to drive email sign-ups, and it just so happened that this need coincided with its desire to ramp up its video output.
Because Viewbix integrates with a host of rich media, marketing automation and email apps (including Oracle Eloqua, Marketo, Hubspot and Constant Contact), Cuisinart could tie its video ad campaign back to its email and customer CRM list, resulting in 3.2% of viewers who submitted their email address through an in-video prompt.
By incorporating branded content and encouraging various actions like “learn more,” Cuisinart found 7.1% of viewers ended up clicking through a call to action. Additionally, social channels performed particularly well for Cuisinart’s Viewbix campaigns – 23.8% of users who viewed its videos also liked its Facebook page.
It also determined users were more likely to watch 15- and 30-second videos than longer content and optimized campaigns accordingly. Cuisinart uncovered qualitative results, like the fact that how-to videos did not get that much interaction.
“We’re now considering a tips series – how to use a certain product or cooking tips shot alongside a product that might be associated,” said Plotsker.
Stefansky added that interactive elements can be swapped easily, without changing tags. This means retailers swapping out creative hosted on different sites won’t have to tinker with each individual video, but can update everything at once through the Viewbix dashboard.
Viewbix can also be used to determine at what point attrition occurs and on what device so brands can tailor the creative by distribution network or device.
“We’re helping brands understand when users take action in a video, so we can say, ‘After five seconds is the most important time to surface a call to action,’ or, when the video ends, we may want to change a ‘learn more’ to ‘click to call,’” Stefansky explained.
Viewbix, he claimed, increases engagement rates by an order of 20% across millions of impressions. In Cuisinart’s case, it drove a 34% engagement rate increase.
