Today's Biggest Video Marketing Challenge Is Form vs. Function

The biggest challenge brands have in video marketing today comes down to one issue: form vs. function.

Ignore formats and delivery issues and you'll negatively impact your brand's ability to reach viewers. Put a recycled creative message out there and you'll turn viewers away. We spoke to experts from across the video marketing ecosystem about what's important to get right. Here's what they said.

Form

Video Formats Are a Battleground

Robert John Davis, Executive Director, Content & Social, Ogilvy

The social networks are all seeking to gain a leg up on each other, and video formats continue to be a battleground. Snapchat is vertical video, Facebook audio-off, YouTube audio-on. For now, brands and agencies need to make tactical production decisions based on distribution strategies. The content either has to be created for each platform or shot in a way that is adaptable, which in my opinion does not result in good experiences. We can't expect brands to make three or four different versions of their video content to satisfy varying platform requirements.

Balance Costs With Device Impact

Noah Fenn, Head of Video Sales & Strategy, AOL

Brands should leverage data and programmatic platforms to both build and deliver assets. One of the biggest challenges brands face in marketing is ensuring they allocate asset creation budgets for all the devices viewers are on. Brands need to balance asset creation costs with device-specific impact. Using the same creative for all platforms is not a winning approach. Designing for device, demographic, context and time of day has been shown through research to have the biggest impact. We see brands succeed in maximizing ROI when they do all of this.

Create Assets for the Living Room

Mike Fisher, VP, Product Strategy & Business Development, BrightLine

OTT is the newest platform advertisers are targeting. When it comes to marketing on OTT devices, brands need to remember this is the living room. Viewers are more receptive to advertising because that's the model they are most used to. Simply porting mobile and web ads to the TV doesn't resonate well. Creating separate ad content exclusively for the living room increases engagement and retention, as opposed to trying to make web and mobile assets work on the 60-inch screen. To boost engagement, brands should include content customization driven by data and analytics.

Function 

Use Influencer Outreach to Spread a Message

Social Platforms Should Complement Your Business Strategy

Stay on Top of the Trends

daily ranking on what the most popular content trends are. By looking at this you can follow content tips and tricks that work for people right now to create better engagement. For food videos right now there's a lot of stop motion images of food that's very quick and punchy to makes the recipe in 10 different steps. It's pictures of the food, not of the person making it. In the news vertical there's videos that have a lot of text because Facebook plays with the sound off, so it's important that you have captioning that talks about what is going on.

Nadine Krefetz's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net