When most people think of video advertising, they think of brand awareness. While this a great benefit of video, there’s so much more to it from an advertising perspective. So if you’re running a video brand campaign, why not gather leads while you’re at it?Video can help you achieve your brand consideration goals while gathering tonnes of customer leads. And there’s no better platform to do it than YouTube. By 2020, video is estimated to be a whopping 82% of consumer web traffic.YouTube remains at the heart of the digital boom, with more than 1.8 billion logged-in users each month. As one of the world’s favourite past times, it’s proven its place for reaching a massive fan base and driving upper marketing funnel metrics across verticals.So are you making the most of this captivated audience? Read on to find out how you can combine brand awareness and lead generation to drive conversions for your brand thanks to video.

What is TrueView?

Before we talk about how to generate leads through video ads, we need to talk about Trueview. TrueView for action is a video format that makes your video ad more actionable by displaying a tailored call-to-action during and after your video. This CTA can then be adapted to your specific use case such as “Get a quote”, “Book now” or “Sign up”. There are 2 types of Trueview to choose from:

• TrueView in-stream ads: Play before or during another video from a YouTube partner. Viewers see 5 seconds of your video and then have the choice to keep watching or skip it. You pay when a viewer watches for at least 30 seconds or clicks on a card or other element of your in-stream creative.
• TrueView video discovery: Appear alongside other YouTube videos, in YouTube search pages, or on websites on the GDN that match your target audience. You pay only when a viewer chooses to watch your video by clicking on the ad.

Both types offer fantastic benefits for your brand, including:

• Get more views from an audience you know is interested
• Only pay when someone chooses to watch your video ad
• Not restricted by time limits thanks to opt-in ads
• Freedom to experiment with creative formats
• Scale targeting at your CPA goals and consistently achieve CPA
• Drive more conversions or better ROI
• Save time on manual optimisation

Want to see Trueview in action? Watch this video where TrueView is explained by YouTube Advertisers themselves.

A quick note on paying attention to attention spans

Are you adapting your plan for the attention economy? Not all screen time is equal. In fact, more than half of 18- to 49-year-olds are either light viewers of TV or don’t subscribe to TV, but over 90% of them watch YouTube.And YouTube viewers aren’t just passively watching either - they’re actively engaged - with people 3 times more likely to pay attention to online video ads than TV ads. So you need to know how to advantage during these “learn-forward” moments.

How to generate leads through video ads

Make it relevantThe key to capturing people’s attention is by being relevant. Relevant video ads get 3 times the attention of an average video ad. So to break through, you need to know what people are looking for and in what context. You need to understand your audience’s intent and be able to respond to this intent with the right message, creative and ad format.To make your ads more relevant, you need to move beyond demographic targeting to focus on consumers’ intent signals. Campaigns that use intent signals for targeting on mobile have 50% higher brand awareness than those using demographic targeting alone.You can set your ads up for success by ensuring they’re delivered to users who will find the offer relevant. Using YouTube’s Advanced Audience targeting, you can reach people who...

• Have recently searched your brand (Custom Intent)
• Are looking to buy (In-market)
• Have engaged with your brand before (Remarketing)

Get creative and inspire your audienceSince your ad’s first 5 seconds are not skippable, you have 100% of users paying attention. These opening moments are your chance to capture the audience's’ interest and show them that your ad is relevant so they keep watching. So how do you hook them?Ad content that’s aligned to the video content it runs against can drive higher consideration lift vs. generic creative. So to improve the relevance of your ads, make sure they’re tailored to the content your audience is interested in. Build personalised experiences across a planned sequence of content. Coordinate your message across a sequence of ads, based on how a user interacts with them - be it an impression, skip or view - to give a more relevant and timely ad experience. Here’s some ways you can move away from a single hero asset and towards a more creative format:

1. Front load your offer - Pull them in with relevant messaging
2. Brand authentically - Show your product, not just your logo
3. Have a clear CTA - Make the desired action easy to see and understand

Make taking action easyIt’s critically important to make it immediately clear to your viewers what to do if they like your offer. For example, if your desired action is clicks, consider the CTAs “Sign up”, “Book now” or “Learn more”. Or if lead generation is your goal, consider “Register” or “Get quote”.Then want to take it further? Why not add video success metrics that prove ROI? Adding lead generation results to campaigns provides a strong additional justification that video investment is driving real business results. Thoughtful creative and relevant audience is key to a successful video ad campaign. Have a chat to the Bang Digital search team on how you can use video advertising to increase your brand’s conversions.