AdWords Video Ads - Taking the plunge

abbottsys · #1 06-29-2007

Well, I decided to take the plunge and produce a video ad so I can test the adwords "click to play" video format. Anybody got any feedback on adwords video ads that might be useful?

abbottsys · #2 07-10-2007

Well, judging from the feedback to this post I'm assuming that video ads are still lagging way behind

No problem. Testing is what adwords is all about. Our video is almost ready and I plan to go ahead and get some real world numbers. I'll report them back here if anyone is interested.

abbottsys · #3 07-13-2007

Our video ad is now live, so I'll get real world performance numbers, although I'm expecting them to be poor. We went with a simple and modest ad, so at least production was fast and low cost. Got the whole thing produced in 48 hours for $500.

Who knows, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised

beu · #4 07-13-2007

Got a link to the video?

abbottsys · #5 07-13-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by beu

Got a link to the video?

Yes, here it is parked on youtube..

http://youtube.com/watch?v=k9obEne7mhI

Basically, it's just a "powerpoint presentation" converted to video format.

beu · #6 07-14-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by abbottsys

Yes, here it is parked on youtube..

http://youtube.com/watch?v=k9obEne7mhI

Basically, it's just a "powerpoint presentation" converted to video format.

It looks good! Did you use iMovie HD to produce it?

abbottsys · #7 07-16-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by beu

It looks good! Did you use iMovie HD to produce it?

We used an outside contractor, and I believe they used Adobe Premiere. We simply emailed them the text and they did the rest. Turnaround was about 48 hours.

Discovery · #8 07-16-2007

Abbottsys, I like you too much not to not give you hard feedback.

I like the music and the change in tone and cadence from the negative to the positive message. However;

To me an ad is supposed to engage and convince a person who was only slightly interested or is discovering your product/service for the first time.

You have created a video of text - I dont think anyone will stick through he ad and read everything. You need to engage them with real video or images.

Message points: I didnt get it; It says I save time, I save money,
I get a baby gaurantee

But none of this is backed up with any real information. Just because I pay for 4 IVF's upfront doesnt mean it costs less, nor does it speed up the process, nor does it gaurantee me a baby. Coming from a person who has never tried such a service (thank God for the strong swimmers in the family) I could be totally confused, but that is what a good ad needs to do, give me real knowlege and make me say Ya, that makes sense, I should try that, I'm no longer confused. Especially for men, we deal in hard numbers and are generally very pragmatic.

60% less expensive than traditional IVF methods
50% faster to results since we take all eggs at once and can attempt conception at a faster interval.
Lowers your financial risk as you can take comfort in knowing that if you are the 1 in 10 that are not successful in getting pregnant your money is refunded.

If real video is not financially feasible, then you need to polish up the ad with imagery of the couple and a baby.

I offer my humble opinion with the best of intentions

Discovery

abbottsys · #9 07-16-2007

Thanks for the feedback Discovery. Brutal feedback is especially welcome! Your points are well taken, and I agree with them. This ad was something we created quickly in order to test the video distribution channels themselves.

And it's just as well we didn't spend more on production -- since the ad went live on adwords on 7/13 it's not received a single impression -- forget clicks and CTRs - adwords is still reporting zero impressions. I suspect it's the usual reason i.e. publishers are simply not signing on to this format, and staying with text ads. Anyway, I'll report back here if and when I see some action

abbottsys · #10 07-17-2007

Turns out there are a few tricks to configuring these video ads in adwords. For 3 days I got zero impressions, first with the ad as a variation, then with it as a member of an ad group. But, when I moved the ad to its own dedicated campaign, and made sure it was the only ad in the campaign, things took off like crazy. I just got over 30,000 impressions in the last hour. So now I can focus on the next step - clicks.

Discovery · #11 07-17-2007

Can you put some context around the number of impressions in relationship to your normal impression rate for your ads/service.

Was it all from myspace or youtube?

I may draw about 100k or more impressions on a small adgroup, but this is for a service with a very wide market. I can only imagine that for IVF 30k impressions is pretty big?

Discovery

abbottsys · #12 07-17-2007

Turns out I jumped the gun. Sorry, but it was late at night

The impressions were for a text ad that was part of the same ad group but which I had deleted in order to make the video ad the only one in the group. For the short time the text ad was live (before deletion) it gathered great impressions which I mistakedly assumed were from the video ad. They were not. The video ad still shows exactly zero impressions. Gotta say that so far video ads are very, very dissapointing.

abbottsys · #13 07-17-2007

After waiting almost 4 days and seeing zero impressions for my video ad I contacted adwords support and was told the ad had still not been approved. They offered to expedite approval. Of course, adwords gives no indication of approval status, so there was no way for me to know this was the cause of the problem.

BTW: I contacted the adwords team using their live chat feature (they use Live Person) and found the service fast and accurate. It was nice to get the problem resolved in "real-time".

abbottsys · #14 07-18-2007

True to their word, the adwords team expedited approval of my video ad. I logged in this morning and saw impressions. Only 7 impressions so far, but at least that proves the ad is live. It took just over 4 days to get it approved. Now I can start to monitor ad performance stats:
impressions --> plays --> clicks --> conversions

AussieWebmaster · #15 07-18-2007

Keep us in the loop mate... though obviously you are already. Great job.

abbottsys · #16 07-20-2007

Here are some initial performance stats for my video ad. The ad has only been live for a couple of days, so these numbers may well change. But so far I'm seeing this..

1,000 impressions/day with a play rate of about 1% and a click rate of about 0.1%, and no conversions yet.

To put this in perspective with the rest of our adwords campaign, the impressions are about the same as I get for text ads on my lowest volume keywords. So, not out of the ballpark. But, with 1,000 impressions/day yielding 10 plays and 1 click this is clearly very low volume stuff at the moment.

I'll continue to report as I play with this some more.

AussieWebmaster · #17 07-20-2007

I was at the ClickZ one day seminar on Video and this got a little conversation during lunch.

abbottsys · #18 07-20-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

I was at the ClickZ one day seminar on Video and this got a little conversation during lunch.

I was there also.. so we missed each other again. I think that makes it 2 martinis you owe me now

AussieWebmaster · #19 07-20-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by abbottsys

I was there also.. so we missed each other again. I think that makes it 2 martinis you owe me now

That's funny.... you weren't the guy who was asking the panel after lunch about video ads in Google???

abbottsys · #20 07-20-2007

Quote:

Originally Posted by AussieWebmaster

That's funny.... you weren't the guy who was asking the panel after lunch about video ads in Google???

Yup, I was that guy. But not particularly impressed with their response.

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