Largest Mobile Video Research Study to Date Reveals Five Key Foundations for Marketers and Creatives
NEW YORK – Tremor Video, Inc. (NYSE:TRMR), an advertising technology company elevating brand performance across all screens for the world’s leading brands and publishers, and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), the world’s leading global non-profit trade mobile marketing association, released its research study entitled Crème de la Crème: A Guide to Creating Successful Mobile Video Advertising Units. This research study, the largest focused specifically on mobile video to date, revealed five key foundations that marketers and creatives should consider when developing interactive mobile video ad campaigns. The best practices were presented at the MMA Mobile CEO & CMO Summit in Hilton Head, South Carolina.
“As the industry learns to use interactive mediums in the way they were intended, we open ourselves up to a whole new world of possibilities that when used effectively can build stronger brand stories and more powerful creative executions.”
“The bulk of online video advertising today is simply repurposed television spots, yet the devices where consumers spend the most time are completely interactive with just a swipe or tap,” said Doron Wesly, Head of Market Strategy at Tremor Video. “We want to help marketers realize the opportunity in front of them: the potential for a consumer to spend nearly a minute with a 15 second ad.”
“We applaud Tremor Video’s leadership on creating such a deep and extensive analysis of mobile video creativity,” said Sheryl Daija, Chief Strategy Officer, MMA. “With consumer consumption of video on mobile devices continuing to increase at unprecedented rates, it is critical for the industry to provide marketers with actionable insights and guidance for them to leverage the power of mobile to develop stronger and closer engagement with their consumers.”
After combing through over 300 interactive video campaigns and more deeply examining the results of 20 outliers, the team was able to identify trends throughout the campaigns that outperformed and underperformed. Millward Brown then tested each individual piece of creative with 150 consumers to gauge their receptiveness to each ad.
“We’re delighted to be working with Tremor Video and the MMA on this ground-breaking study,” said Ann Green, Senior Partner, Client Solutions and Innovation at Millward Brown. “The mobile video environment offers a great opportunity to create intimate and immersive brand experiences, but brings with it many new questions about how best to generate engagement and to build brands. We don’t yet pretend to have all the answers, but the five foundations from this research provide some clear and practical tips about how to maximize creative response. I hope this helps brands and agencies to develop great interactive mobile video that really packs a pocket punch.”
The Five Foundations are:
- Entice and Intrigue: Give consumers a taste of your brand so they have a reason to engage – meaning, start the story but don’t tell the whole story. This applies to both getting people to pay attention to the ad (completion rate) and encouraging them to interact (engagement rate). In fact, the results showed that high-performing mobile creative outperformed even TV benchmarks.
- Bring Them In: Great design begins with visual appeal but it’s important to align design, technology and medium to strategically create engaging ad units. Don’t push consumers away from your ad with “tap-out” features in hopes that they’ll spend more time with your brand; let them stay in the video overlay and make the conscious decision to interact. Clear branding is not the enemy of creative success.
- Symphony Not Noise: The ad should sing and flow like a story. Make sure the ad and the engaging overlay have a consistent theme and messaging throughout the layers of content. It’s tempting to overload the ad unit by utilizing every tool in your belt, but too many messages, graphics and functions cause confusion and dilute the effectiveness of the ad experience.
- Make Them Feel _______: Consumers have an emotional connection to their mobile devices so take advantage of that and create experiences that trigger an emotional response. The ads in this study generated more interest and excitement than we tend to see with TV or online video norms. Remember: emotion is the heart of why advertising works.
- Catch the Moment: Mobile devices serve as a first-screen so much of the time, that it’s important to get people in the relevant moment. Find a way to keep consistent creative messaging across different platforms while leveraging the unique role of each device. Design for a diverse set of potential situations to make your own luck and not rely on happenstance.
“Over the last decade we’ve built over 20,000 interactive video ads, and seen a broad mix of creative treatments that work and those that don’t,” said David Sanderson, Senior Director of Creative Strategy at Tremor Video. “As the industry learns to use interactive mediums in the way they were intended, we open ourselves up to a whole new world of possibilities that when used effectively can build stronger brand stories and more powerful creative executions.”
Best practices such as the five foundations listed above help the industry understand the trends that are happening and tools that are available to them.
“You can’t box great creative, communicating rules sounds anti-innovation, but we know good analysis generates insight and illuminates patterns,” said Anthony Rhind, Global Chief Digital Officer at Carat. “The work of Tremor Video, Millward Brown and the MMA has identified very valuable foundations to help frame thinking as client and agency teams approach the development of video campaigns. I hope it helps lift the waterline standard of video creative, to drive marketing outcomes and attract a greater share of budget into mobile video.”
“This research and five foundational elements to mobile content validates many of our initial learnings in the mobile video arena,” said Ron Amram, Senior Media Director of Marketing, Heineken USA. “It really challenges marketers to understand how mobile video will quickly evolve and change how they talk to consumers. These learnings will not only impact our media thinking, but should also change how creative agencies think so that advertising and brand content can be more effective across platforms and screens.”
About the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA)
The MMA is the world’s leading global non-profit trade mobile marketing association comprised of more than 800 member companies, from nearly 50 countries around the world. Our members hail from every faction of the mobile marketing ecosystem including brand marketers, agencies, mobile technology platforms, media companies, operators and others. The MMA’s mission is to accelerate the transformation and innovation of marketing through mobile, driving business growth with closer and stronger consumer engagement. Anchoring the MMA’s mission are four core pillars: to cultivate inspiration by driving the innovation for the Chief Marketing Officer; to build the mobile marketing capabilities for the marketing organizations through fostering know-how and confidence; to champion the effectiveness and impact of mobile through research providing tangible ROI measurement; and advocacy. Additionally MMA industry-wide committees work collaboratively to develop and advocate global best practices and lead standards development. Mobile Marketing is broadly defined as including advertising, apps, messaging, mCommerce and CRM on all mobile devices including smart phones and tablets. Members include, American Express, AdChina, Colgate-Palmolive, Dunkin’ Brands, Facebook, Google, Group M, Hewlett Packard, Hilton Worldwide, Kellogg Co., L’Oreal, MasterCard, McDonalds, Microsoft, Mondelēz International, Inc., Pandora Media, Procter & Gamble, R/GA, The Coca-Cola Company, The Weather Company, Unilever, Visa, Vodafone, Walmart, xAd, Zenith Optimedia and many more. The MMA’s global headquarters are located in New York with regional operations in Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA), Latin American (LATAM) and Asia Pacific (APAC). For information about the MMA please visit www.mmaglobal.com.
About Tremor Video
Tremor Video (NYSE: TRMR) is transforming the video advertising experience across all screens for the world’s leading brands. Our proprietary technology, VideoHub®, offers advertisers and publishers a complete programmatic solution to reach and engage consumers while providing new insights into what drives the success of brand advertising performance across multiple devices. Tremor Video is based in New York with offices throughout the US and across the globe. For more information, visit tremorvideo.com and find Tremor Video on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
