B2B Marketing Blog

Have you noticed the sudden explosion of video ads? They’re sure hard to miss, and that’s the point. Unlike the animated banner ads of the “Web 1.0” era – or what I like to refer to them as “flip book ads”, video ads engage the user in a way animated gif’s or even Flash ads can’t or haven’t. And it makes sense as 90% of Americans list TV as their primary source of news…we are a visual society.

A funny thing has been happening too, TV viewing is on the decline. No, Americans aren’t reading books again, their spending their time online – watching videos on YouTube, researching that next purchase via Google, gathering their news via RSS through their feed reader. As we become more accustom to the content-on-demand lifestyle, video ads have captured our attention and made us curious again.

People! The next wave of advertising has begun, and it’s online video ads. Don’t believe me? A Wharton School of Business study shows that video speeds up buying decisions by 72%. That is an important fact as the B2B buying cycle normally is a 6 month to a year process – sometimes longer! A Harvard Business School study showed that only 20% of what a person heard was remembered, while only 30% of what they saw was remembered. Yet a staggering 70% of what that same person saw and heard was remembered. These stats are sure hard to dismiss, and make me wonder why the B2B world isn’t all over this stuff.

B2B Companies that do get into this early will sure benefit from improved click-through rates not to mention the wow factor. Speaking of click-through rates, Double Click, which is one of the largest online media service providers, found through research that video ads experience click-through rates ranging from 0.4% to .74%…by comparison click-through rates for plain GIF/JPEG image ads ranged from 0.1% and 0.2%. So as you can see, online videos ads are quickly becoming the medium of choice to drive both brand awareness and sales.

The consumer world is spurring this revolution, but B2B companies shouldn’t wait to benefit from the cost-effective sales power that online video ads can produce for your services or products.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Interactive, Interactive PR, Creative, Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.