As marketers and advertisers, all we’ve been hearing about is video—how powerful it is, how engaging it is, and also how difficult it is to do right. The reason it’s rumored to be difficult is that brand awareness, and the impact of video, is traditionally hard to measure—but our experts have it down.
We sat down with Tatjana Biallas, Taboola Media Sales Director for DACH and video maven. She recently spoke at dmexco about video discovery—what is it, how is it impacting Germany, and why brands should care.
In the German market, video is evolving fast. Here’s what Tatjana had to say about the future of video for brands in Germany.
How does video in the German market compare to the rest of the world?
“We’re seeing video everywhere in the German market, from advertisers to publishers alike, but we’re not the only ones. We stay on top of the latest digital trends here at Taboola, and recently, eMarketer released data that in the German market, online video views are growing fast. In fact, we’re seeing the fastest growth in Germany, Spain, Italy, France and UK across the globe.
Digital video viewers will reach 45.1 million in 2021—that’s 67.5% of the country. For brands looking to be seen, ignoring such a popular content format and not running video campaigns will become a deficit as they miss out on the opportunity to reach over half of the population.”
How should brands choose whether or not to do a video campaign?
“We’re really talking about choosing between two types of campaigns—text and video. Reaching an audience through one or the other leaves a much different impression.
Watching a video is a passive and automatic process, and doesn’t demand the same degree of careful attention as text does. It’s just easier to consume. Reading text is a more attentive visitor activity. When we read, we actively engage with the task, activate mental patterns, and flex our “inner voice,” which enhances our attention.
This is great when you’re looking for a purchase or some other engaged action, but the difference begs the question—if you’re just looking to get the word out, or are running a brand awareness campaign, is video better because the user doesn’t have to exert as much effort to receive your message? We think so.”
What’s the difference in the effect on your audience with a video campaign?
“Right now, the latest research from the University of Wisconsin and others, shows that the effect depends on the type of person viewing your campaign.
There are two types of viewers—goal oriented searchers that are more utilitarian and driven by a particular goal, and exploratory discovers that have no specific objective, are hedonic and stimulus driven. They’re kind of like a window shopper.
Video has the same effectiveness for those who are goal oriented, but for the discoverers, it’s much more effective—23% more effective to be exact.”
Why is video so great for brand awareness in particular?
“People remember pictures better than text, and this is true for short-term and long-term memory. This is also true for things like recognition or recall. Videos are much more than one picture—they’re multiple pictures to the viewer.
If you’re looking for branding, you’re looking for people to remember you, and the simple fact that people remember videos as multiple pictures is why they’re so effective. The bottom line is that if you use a video, they’re more likely to remember your brand.”
So people remember videos, but are they engaging with them?
“We’ve seen unbelievable engagement with videos in Taboola Feed. They’re driving high click-through-rates (CTRs) and uplifting brands. Aside from what we see, other psychological studies are seeing the same thing.
Eye-tracking studies have found that videos are almost impossible to ignore—really any animated objects that attract users’ attention will help people find you on the page faster.”
How is Taboola adjusting to these needs?
“Content discovery is the latest in a line-up of methods we as humans have consumed content on the web—starting with portals, then leading to intent-based search, and now to discovery.
Taboola Feed incorporates video unlike any other solution on the web—and it’s working.
We power billions of moments of discovery for both video and text campaigns on the open web, in fact, you’ve probably interacted with our recommendations dozens of times a day.”
Branded video is going to be big on the open web, and here at Taboola, we’re constantly thinking of new and innovative ways to help brands reach their audiences. For more information on how you can implement branded video, contact us.