Trueview 2019

[Ariel Wascom]

Whendesigning an awareness media plan, and by extension any media plan at all, it is quite easy to get lost in all the different options that are available on the market. Choices need to be made regarding which platforms to advertise on, the type of the ad to go for, the format of the ad, and much more. The scope of this article will focus on two types of video ads on the Google platform, namely Bumper and Trueview In-Stream videos. The aim of this article is to better understand what these formats are, and which of these formats is best suited for an effective awareness campaign.

Awareness is the first, widest phase of the acquisition funnel (cfr. Image below). The funnel is shaped the way it is because the closer we get to the end of the acquisition process, the narrower the audience becomes. Indeed, there are far more people that know about the brand Mercedes-Benz, than people buying a Mercedes car for example. There are also probably more people wanting to buy a Mercedes car than people that actually proceed to buying it. The phase after the awareness phase is called consideration. Here, the aimed audience will already know the brand, and is still considering if it would be worthy or not to do a purchase (or any other relevant action, based on the business) from the brand in question. In this phase, an advertiser can already give more details on its offerings, rather than on the pure brand image and recognition. The last phase, namely conversion, is where an advertiser will really try to induce an action from an user. It might be filling in a form, subscribing to the newsletter, or adding a product to a cart. An user in the conversion phase already knows what the brand has to offer, and is mostly looking to make the move.

On the other hand, a disadvantage of bumper videos is that it is not possible to create remarketing lists out of views on bumper ads. Indeed, a view on a bumper ad will not be added to the view count, and is considered as an impression.

The first main difference as compared to bumper ads is the bid strategy that is based on pay-per-view. This means that an advertiser pays per actual view of the video, instead of paying per impression. To shed more light on this, the advertiser basically pays once a user watches at least 30 seconds of the video, or the whole video if the length is inferior to 30 seconds. The advertiser also pays whenever the user engages with the video (through clicking on the website link or any CTA on the video). This leads us directly to the second main difference between bumpers: the video length. Trueview videos are videos of a longer format as opposed to the 6 seconds max of Bumpers. They allow to tell a longer, more complex message, and can include some sense of storytelling. The downside is that users can skip the video after 5 seconds, so the chances are much higher that they end up not watching the entire video, and thus do not get the whole message one wants to transmit. This being said, if the video lasts 15 seconds or less, the advertiser has the option to make the ad unskippable.

Now that we have a clearer understanding on what bumpers and trueview videos are, as well as what awareness is about, we should be able to decide which video types suit best the first phase of the acquisition funnel.

In order to answer this question properly, we will look at two different points of views on the subject: by definition and by experiment.

For one of our clients here at Semetis, we were also challenging which of the two formats was the most relevant for our Awareness campaigns. For this reason, we had both campaign types running alongside each other. After 6 weeks, we compared the results of both campaign types.

If we base ourselves solely on the above-mentioned metrics, then the conclusion is very clear: Bumpers work better for awareness. Not only do we have cheaper CPMs, we also have much cheaper CPVs and CPCs. The CTR also shows us that people tended to click on the ad more often via Bumpers than Trueview. It is basically cheaper to reach people and acquire visibility through running bumper ads than trueview ads. But it is important to understand that these video types are not in competition, and that an advertiser should take advantage of their complementarity.

The first option, which actually seems quite logical, is to run both types of ads alongside each other in order to generate awareness. We could for example retarget users that saw our Trueview ad with our bumper ads. In that way, we ensure people saw our entire message (if the ad is unskippable) or at least got the opportunity to get to know more about our brand (if the ad is skippable). We then follow-up by showing these same users the bumper ads. Indeed, the six second format would kind of lose its disadvantage of not allowing to transmit a lot of information - as these people could recall the trueview, full message ad they saw earlier. Bumpers could then be used to gently remind people about who we are, and maybe even add to the storytelling of the trueview ad.

Even without using it in a retargeting mindset, it is always inters ting to have the two formats running side-by-side in our awareness layer. As previously mentioned, they are not in competition, but complement each other in order to raise awareness about the brand.

No matter which options an advertiser would go for, it is not recommended to merely run either only bumper videos or only trueview videos. They are really complementary to each other and their synergy is much bigger than the sum of the performances each video type would reach alone. The strength of the message is much bigger when both type of ads are combined. At first glance, it may sound bizarre to keep investing in trueview videos if bumper videos show better metrics, but the longer length of the trueview videos is at the basis of its more expensive nature. You pay more, but your brand is exposed to users for a longer period, and you can deliver a much longer message.

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