Welcome to the final installment of CHANNELS—the series where we review the top performing programmatic channels available today to help you decide if they are right for your marketing strategy.
Don’t worry: this isn’t the end of our thought leadership. We have more topics to come on programmatic technology and other relevant topics in today’s advertising environment.
If you missed last week’s post on In-Email Display, catch up here!
To see every post in the CHANNELS series, scroll down to the bottom of the post or click here—we’ve linked them below for easy reference.
Today, we’re covering In-Banner Video (IBV). Read on to find out more about this ad format.
Introduction
Non-intrusive, engaging, and cost-effective—in-banner video combines the targeting options of programmatic and the viral qualities of digital video, while still letting the user choose their experience.
How effective is IVB? Video advertising returned a total revenue across the industry of $11.9 billion in 2017, and in 2023, there is a $55.2 billion projected spend on digital video.
What does “In-Banner” mean?
Banner ads are a type of display ad that are image or video based, are embedded into a webpage, and link to the advertiser’s website when clicked. They usually live on the top, bottom, or sides of the page.
Banner ads have been around since the 2000s, with in-banner video ads being launched in 2010. At first, IBV ads would first play automatically with sound when a user landed on a webpage. This, as you can imagine, was a poor user experience, and advertisers have subsequently removed auto-play from the repertoire.
In the present day, in-banner video ads have several different methods to begin playing—none with sound, and usually with captions in case the user does not turn on the sound at all. This way, advertisers can get their message across, and the user has a better experience, which gives them a better overall perception of your brand.
What are the types of in-banner video ads?
These are the main types of in-banner video ads that you’ll likely come across. Note that all should have captions for best user experience:
Click to play
With Click to Play ads, a user must click on the ad to start it.
Autoplay without Sound
Autoplay with Sound means that the video starts playing automatically, but with no audio.
Hover to Play
Hover to Play requires the user to hover over the video in order for it to start playing.
How is in-banner video different from other types of video advertising?
These are the predominant kinds of video ads available:
- In-stream video ads play before, during, or after video content, such as on Youtube or streaming services like Hulu. This includes CTV inventory.
- Out-stream video ads play within articles on web pages, either between paragraphs of content, or on the side of the content. Out-stream is also called Online Video.
- In-banner video ads play within display/banner ad slots, which do not require a video player to run
Can I use programmatic advertising to run in-banner video?
The short answer is: Yes! And as with most other ad formats, programmatic advertising provides many benefits to advertisers over traditional buying, including:
- Targeting options: Programmatic platforms like Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) give advertisers hundreds of options for targeting, including first party, third party, retargeting, contextual, behavioral, and more. These platforms have billions of datapoints that can be used to find the best audience for your offering.
- Real-time analytics: DSPs provide analytics during the course of the campaign, including ways that the campaign can be optimized during the campaign. You don’t have to wait for the end of the campaign to make changes!
- Reporting: Discover insights at the end of your campaign, including where to reallocate, increase, or decrease spending for the next campaign.
- Automation: DSPs provide a single place to upload creative and collaborate across teams, as well as entirely automating the bidding and optimization processes.
What are the benefits of programmatic in-banner video ads?
In-banner video ads are great for the beginning of the sales funnel, when you are introducing people to your busines, service, or product. Some of IBV ads’ benefits include:
Non-intrusive format
IBV provides the perfect balance of attention-catching versus non-intrusiveness. Video is a very compelling format, even without sound, so it performs well in the awareness arena. Giving the user the opportunity to determine their own experience—whether they want to play the video with sound or not—can increase their perception of your brand.
Don’t need a video player to implement them
In-banner video ads can be slotted into existing spaces for banner ads, meaning that you don’t need to implement a video player into your site.
Great for building awareness
IBV’s inherent qualities make it the perfect format for building awareness of your brand, boosting engagement and recall. Video captures attention, even without sound. Captions make it even more captivating.
What are the KPIs of in-banner video ads?
Below is a list of the main KPIs that you will likely be using to measure your campaign. Some are specific to video campaigns, while some are applicable to every type of programmatic ad format:
- Impressions: The total of viewers, including repeat viewers
- Revenue: The amount of revenue generated by the campaign
- Reach: The number of unique customers reached by the ad
- Frequency: Amount of times the ad has been viewed per household.
- Cost Per View (CPV): How much the advertiser paid for each view
- Cost Per Thousand (CPM): How much the advertiser paid for each thousand views
- Video Completion Rate: Times the ad was viewed in its entirety
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Amount spent on the campaign versus the revenue generated
- Conversions: How many people completed the intended action of this campaign
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Divide the total revenue generated by number of conversions
How do I buy in-banner video ads?
The main method to buy programmatically is through a DSP. The major players in the space include The Trade Desk, Amazon Ads DSP, Google’s DV360, Zeta, Basis, or Quantcast.
However, because of the expense to create these platforms, DSPs will generally charge a minimum spend that can be out of budget for all but the largest companies.
As marketing veterans, we observed this problem and wanted to create a solution. Our answer to this—being able to provide amazing technology to companies of all sizes—is our proprietary platform ORION.
ORION
Create campaigns across multiple platforms, measure your results during the campaign, and get in-depth, white-labeled reporting post-campaign to help optimize future spend. Plus, we provide our signature Always-On support, and creative consulting as required.
Work with an experienced marketing team and get the best results across the open internet. Intrigued? Tell us about your project here. We’d love to provide a solution.
CHANNELS
Want to know more about your advertising options? Read our entire CHANNELS series:
