Mobile video"s 2016 playbook: Apps, location targeting and native placement

By Chantal Tode

January 12, 2016

Twitter’s native video

With mobile a significant driver of video viewing in 2015, forward-thinking marketers will explore the entire range of engagement opportunities for video content on smartphones in 2016, including in-application strategies, location targeting and native placements. 

Key developments in 2015 support the need for marketers to place a big emphasis on mobile video in 2016, from consumers spending more time on smartphones than watching television to mobile video ad views on YouTube surpassing desktop for the first time. As the opportunity for mobile video continues to grow, marketers need to look beyond traditional pre-roll strategies. 

“Video isn’t a ‘nice to have,’ it’s an absolute must and to fully take advantage, mobile must be part of your strategy,” said Tomer Afek, co-founder and CMO of Showbox. 

“’Snackable’ content is going to spread and the more effective marketing teams can be at creating this type of easily consumed and easily shared content, the more they will benefit,” he said. 

“Brands and marketers need to utilize tools that enable professional quality video at scale so that they can produce enough content to drive consistent interest and increase their viral potential.”

Figuring out apps

Apps are dominating the mobile user experience, with consumers typically spending a majority of their time with several favorite apps. 

For marketers, this means one of the important opportunities for mobile video in 2016 is in-app placement. However, many are still struggling to figure out how to best to reach app users. 

“Apps are the biggest new communications channel for brands, and marketers need a better understanding if they want to master mobile,” said Mitchell Reichgut, CEO of Jun Group. “Brands and agencies can’t afford to ignore the size and scale of in-app advertising, especially for mobile video, as the world increasingly becomes not just mobile-first, but app-first.”

Marketers also need to think beyond apps and consider how video is being consumed across devices. Increasingly, challenges related to the length of a video for mobile will disappear, opening the door to more impactful storytelling. 

“As mobile matures, brands will have the opportunity to tell longer and more personal stories – to just the right people,” Mr. Reichgut said. “Native ad formats, larger screens, and quick-loading units will remove the barriers to delivering effective branded content across devices. 

“Over eighty percent of the video Jun Group distributed over mobile devices in 2015 was transmitted over Wi-Fi, so bandwidth is not an issue. Smartphones are the new first screen, and the opportunity to deliver compelling video through these devices has never been greater.”

Informational content

Showbox’s Mr. Afek expects several kinds of video content to gain steam in 2016. The medical community will leverage mobile video for educational clips, cosmetics and fashion aficionados will continue to gain viewers for how-to and inspirational videos, major brands will start providing links to instructional videos and video will play a bigger role in blogs across industries. 

Marketers can also look to boost their video content by applying some of the unique characteristics of smartphones to video, such as connecting location with content recommendation engines. 

“Imagine if you could push videos with fashion advice to subscribers when they were at a mall or integrate video into an app for a personal trainer to better engage with customers,” Mr. Afek said. 

“Brands will also have increased dialogue with their consumer/ fans thus the ability to have a stronger back-and-fourth as well, the consumers can respond by curating responsive content video,” He said. 

Click-to-play vs. autoplay

One of the challenges marketers are likely to face in mobile video will be choosing between the user-initiated video ad units favored by big brands and the autoplay units favored by social platforms. 

“There’s room for two types of formats, of course — some brands prefer reach and some prefer engagement,” Jun Group’s Mr. Reichgut said. “And the social platforms building out autoplay provide big audiences and deep targeting. 

“Yet in the face of fraud and viewability issues, autoplay may not address the new baselines that brands need to feel secure in their media buys,” he said. “Opt-in formats provide specific targeting, longer play times, and make it much harder for malvertisers. 

“However, audiences need a compelling reason to press play, and the number of views is typically less than what autoplay can deliver.”

Perhaps the biggest challenge that brands and mobile marketers will face will be keeping up with consumer consumption. 

“Quality can’t come at the expense of scale, so the key is to identify platforms that enable both simultaneously,” Showbox’s Mr. Afek said. “Without the ability to constantly be creating, brands and influencers will lose their share in the market- to be replaced by professionals with camera crews and green screens which is not a reality for most brands or businesses.”

Senior Editor Chantal Tode covers advertising, messaging, legal/privacy and database/CRM. Reach her at chantal@mobilemarketer.com.

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Mobile video"s 2016 playbook: Apps, location targeting and native placement

How marketers lost out on native video money making in 2015

By Brielle Jaekel

December 31, 2015

Twitter’s native video

While 2015 might have been a huge year for the variety of eyeballs on native video, especially with Facebook, marketers that leveraged short-form fizzled by not precisely monetizing this year.

With the rise of short-form native video on Facebook and Twitter drawing in a large audience of consumers interested in engaging with it, marketers are attempting to execute tactics made use of on long-form platforms such as YouTube and Hulu, but the strategy just does not work here. Marketers have to concentrate on approaches in engaging with users away from the typical interruption ad on this brief medium.

“Money making of short kind video was the losing gamer in 2015,” stated Paul Berry, creator and CEO of RebelMouse. “Everything in that world got murkier and more confusing in 2015.

“The typical monetization tricks on video that have been mastered in YouTube, Hulu design environments like pre-roll, engagement systems, and so on are never ever going to operate in the Facebook and very short-form world,” he said. “A great deal of companies are producing material under the Facebook Zero idea of no natural, which misses the photo of how promoted material should work on Facebook.

“Media business have uncertain guidelines today for promoted content and monetization of that content from their own natural reach. Facebook will now require to take on promoted posts from media business, promoted Instantaneous Articles etc to make monetizing on dispersed reasonable and clear.”

Wins and losses

The large number of views for native video removed this past year, with customers flocking to various social media platforms for short video material while on mobile. Mobile has actually skyrocketed this format of video, as these gadgets promote a much shorter and more pertinent user experience.

Publishers such as Buzzfeed have taken advantage of Twitter and facebook with native video that users are thrilled to engage with and watch. This format of video requires entirely different advancement, with the shorter and more engaging the story, the better.

“We have never seen material reach audience at the scale and speed that we witnessed in 2015,” Mr. Berry said. “Facebook flexed major muscles training device discovering to video views, but more notably, the actual users and audiences are truly taking pleasure in and engaging with it.

“Benefiting from that chance required an absolutely different approach to video production and a new format to story informing that really did not exist at scale like it does now,” he said. “The Dodo, BuzzFeed, Now This are all outstanding examples of break through successes with huge new audience reach in the ideal native video format.”

Look ahead

Next year, social networks feeds are likely to be focused more mainly on video with still images falling to the wayside. Advertisers and publishers are most likely to develop better practices with higher quality to better link with consumers through this popular medium.

Facebook’s Instant Articles provide a big chance to create an enhanced video experience, with a greater story and more comprehensive reach.

“Still images in the feed will become the exception rather then the rule,” Mr. Berry stated. “We will see lovely integrations into Instantaneous Articles that give more story and depth to a video and a dispersed property. And probably most notably, a clear roadmap to monetizing through promoted videos and posts.”

Last take

Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant at Mobile Online marketer

Brielle Jaekel is editorial assistant on Mobile Online marketer and Mobile Commerce Daily, New York. Reach her at brielle@mobilemarketer.com.

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How marketers lost out on native video money making in 2015