With limited budgets for anything that isn’t going to produce immediate results, local businesses need to know where to get the most bang for their “increase consideration” buck. Is that video advertising, or display advertising?
Let’s start this battle off with a brief definition of what video advertising and display advertising are.
Video Advertising
Definition: Video advertising is the promotion of your brand, products, and/or services, utilizing video content placed across websites, video sharing platforms, television, and other digital media channels.
Display Advertising
Definition: Display advertising is the promotion of your brand, products, and/or services, utilizing static images, GIF’s, or HTML5 animations, placed across digital media channels.
Because people who are surfing the web are not necessarily aware of your brand, or in need of your products and services immediately, video and display advertising are types of push marketing. Push marketing requires marketers to disrupt what people are doing online and draw their attention to their advertisers message. The more memorable the advertisement, the more likely people will think of your brand when they do need your products or services. Let’s take a look at how video and display ads stack up in regard to these things, and then look at which is more affordable.
1. Disruptability
Visibility is one of the most vital elements in producing successful marketing campaigns. But, what if your ads are visible and nobody cares? Being able to disrupt what people are doing by drawing attention to your ad is also essential to marketing success. Disruptability shouldn’t be confused with “disruptive marketing”, which deals more with innovation. Disruptability is the attribute of being able to draw attention away from what someone is doing and towards what you want to tell/show them.
Display ads are often visible in various locations on a webpage, including right above the header, on the right side of the page, and in-between paragraphs. However, many of us have become so accustomed to display ads, that they can be easily overlooked – I.e. they aren’t very disruptive. This is especially true if the display ad is static, or there are already a lot of images on a page vying for attention.
Senses play a pretty big part in disrupting us. If, for example, I’m working in my office and completely tuned in to a marketing campaign, and the smell of fresh baked bread wafts across my noise from downstairs, I’m disrupted. I now need some of that bread. If I continue work and a baby starts to cry, I’m disrupted again. In a similar way to smell and sound, motion disrupts us in a way that’s hard to tune out.
Some display ads use motion, but quickly go static after the animation is complete. Video ads, on the other hand, are by nature full of motion, and for that reason they tend to be more disruptive than display ads.
Of course, there are other factors to consider. If a website uses very few images, then a simple display ad can be very disruptive. If, however, the website is full of images – like most sites are – then display ads will have a harder time fighting for your attention, whereas video ads will likely draw your eye. If the website allows an advertiser to use an abnormally large display ad that is bigger than other content on the page, then that can increase both visibility and disruptability as well.
2. Memorability
Memorability in advertising is an advertisements quality of being memorable. Simple enough.
So, what tends to be most memorable? Let’s start by thinking which advertisements we remember most. How many display ads can you remember? How about T.V. commercials? For me, I can remember dozens of T.V. commercials, especially from my younger years when I watched a lot of television. “I don’t want to grow up, cuz if I did, I wouldn’t be a Toys R Us kid” and “Like Mike” are still stuck in my head from the 90’s. I don’t remember any display ads though – then again, the internet wasn’t around when I was young.
Commercials – a form of video advertising – are memorable for a lot of reasons. They tell a story, address pain points, and often include catchy jingles and slogans like, “ba da ba ba ba, I’m lovin’ it”. Those things are much harder to do with display advertising; they’re not impossible, but they are much more difficult.
The best marketers are able to use the memorability of video to maximize their display efforts. For example, McDonalds does a great job of incorporating the jingle found at the end of it’s video in it’s display advertising. When you see “Im lovin’ it” on an image ad you can practically hear the jingle in your head.
Overall, I think video ads are much more memorable, but at least you can leverage this in your display efforts.
3. Affordability
Companies like McDonalds and Gatorade have a lot of money to spend advertising to people higher up the funnel, but local businesses usually don’t allocate much budget on drumming up awareness or consideration because it doesn’t turn into an immediate profit; and they don’t have a lot of money to “waste” – whether it’s truly a waste or not is a topic for a different discussion – on high funnel initiatives.
However, assuming that the local business sees the potential value in higher funnel marketing initiatives, it should be noted that both video and display advertising can be affordable; of course, they can be very expensive as well. Let’s take a look at some of the costs associated with both.
Video Ad Costs
1. Equipment
Video production equipment is expensive. Cameras range from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars; a good microphone might cost $300-$700, and often times that doesn’t include the transmitter and receiver which range from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars; lighting can get very pricey also. A good HMI light, for example, could cost you over $5K; computers need to have enough processing power to handle video editing, so that’s going to run another $2K+.
However, most local businesses won’t need to invest in the equipment above, but will either rent the equipment, or hire a production crew. More on that below.
2 . Production
Producing content can be split into three categories: pre-production, production, and post-production.
- Pre-production deals with scripting, casting, and scouting.
- Production deals with shooting video and capturing sound.
- Post-production deals with editing, adding music and sound effects, etc.
This is all very time-consuming, so it can get pricey. Brand image should be considered before cutting corners (which will be the temptation) on video production. Like most creative, you’re going to get what you pay for. You can come up with your very own script, shoot it on your iPhone, and edit the clips on free software, but if you’re positioning your business as the best in it’s class, you may want to consider spending the $3K or so it will take to hire professionals.
3. Marketing
Marketing the video content produced will have some fixed costs as well. Fixed costs include: campaign set up, which may include some strategy work beforehand, and is usually a one-time expense; campaign management fee, which is a recurring cost paid to your marketing company for optimization; and ad-spend budget, which is a recurring fee paid to the ad-platform for clicks.
Display Ad Costs
1. Tools
Limited tools are needed to create display ads. Custom work may involve a still camera, and an editing program like Photoshop. But, quality ads can also be made with stock images and a free program such a Canva. Platforms like Google Ads, and Facebook have tools you can use to create ads as well. There are also templates available for purchase online to make the process very quick and easy.
If you choose custom work, the cost of the camera can very from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars; Photoshop can be subscribed to for around $10 USD/mo. As mentioned in the video production section, you don’t need to incur these costs yourself, but can hire someone to create them for you.
2. Creation
If you choose to have a marketing company create custom banner ads, or hire a designer, then you’ll likely end up paying an hourly fee or flat fee for service. The more fancy the design, the more expensive it’ll likely be. For example, it will cost more for HTML5 ad creation than it will to create a series of custom static banner ads.
Exactly how much? That really depends on what you want to do, and which agency you chose. It’s not uncommon to see people on Fiverr charge $25 or so per static banner ad, or $50 per HTML5 ad. A/B testing is important, so you’ll want multiple ads in a variety of sizes.
3. Marketing
Marketing your display ads is usually very affordable. Most agencies, including our own, will include display ad management as a deliverable along with search ad campaign management. CPC’s are relatively cheap, so you can get your brand in front of a lot of people with even a very modest budget.
Champion
If you have the budget, then video ads would be most worthy of the investment; they are both more disruptive and more memorable than display ads. HTML5 ads would come in second, followed by static image ads in third. However, if you can find a way to leverage your video ad messaging into your display messaging, then the most powerful way to gain consideration for your brand would be to use both.