Video Takeover & How To Move On From Static Ads

With video taking over much of the digital landscape, static ads are becoming increasingly obsolete. As a consequence, Marketers need to shift their efforts into video. But they don’t just need video. They need video fast and they need it at scale. These new demands are putting a strain on creative budgets as well as traditional production solutions that haven’t adapted to meet these new requirements.

How have we arrived at this point? And how can marketers succeed in today’s digital landscape? Read on to find out.

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The video takeover

If—like most—you’re an avid social media scroller, then you’ve probably noticed that over the past couple of years, your scrolling sessions have become increasingly dominated by video content. 

You may be thinking that this is nothing new. And you’d be right, social media and the larger internet as a whole has been shifting to a video-centric norm for over a decade. However, in late 2017, something happened that changed the game, rapidly accelerating the degree that video is consumed online… TikTok burst onto the scene. 

The arrival of TikTok also heralded the arrival of the ‘full screen all-video feed’. This immersive way of delivering video content was met with unprecedented popularity from audiences, causing other platforms to take notice and offer their own versions.

In 2020, Instagram launched Reels, an all-video feed which now accounts for over 20% of the time users spend on the app. On the back of this success, Instagram is now testing a full-screen home feed aimed at positioning video front and centre on the app. Following suit, Snapchat and YouTube also launched their own full-screen video feeds, with Spotlight and Shorts respectively released in late 2020 and early 2021. 

What's this got to do with ads? 

This rapid rise of video in digital media is causing static/image ad creative to become increasingly obsolete. As remnants of print media, static ads are simply no longer fit for purpose in the current digital landscape.

Yes, static ads can make sense when placed in static environments. However, video has taken over much of the digital landscape as the preferred content format, meaning that statics are no longer viable in these placements. Instead, these video-majority or video-only placements require video creative. 

Why? Because ads that match the format of the content they are placed within are able to engage audiences with greater effectiveness. TV is a good example of this. For all of TV’s history, ads have always been video. Why? Because advertisers want their ads to blend in amongst regular programming, maintaining the attention of audiences watching at home when the ad break arrives.   

The same logic applies when it comes to video-oriented digital placements. Take TikTok for an example. Imagine you’re scrolling away, enjoying your For You feed, and then suddenly you come across a static image. This jars you, so you immediately scroll past it in order to return to your video flow. A video ad however—especially one that is optimized and follows best practice—is much more likely to keep you engaged and successfully deliver its message.

The problem is: marketers don't just need video, they need video at scale

On the surface, the solution seems simple: marketers need to stop deploying static creative and focus their efforts into video. Problem solved, right? 

It’s not quite that easy. 

The need for video has coincided with the need for an ever-increasing volume of creative. Dozens of assets are often required for a single digital campaign, for multiple reasons: firstly, the number of digital channels and ad formats on offer is continuously growing, each needing their own unique, optimized creative. Secondly, ad fatigue has become a serious problem, requiring marketers to refresh assets on a regular basis. And lastly, reduced targeting capabilities are forcing marketers to test more creative variants in order to derive learnings and further optimize their creative approaches. 

So, when you consider that video creative is more costly and time intensive to produce in comparison to statics, along with the fact that creative budgets have remained relatively unchanged, how then are marketers able to achieve video creative at such scale? 

Creative agencies? In-house teams? These traditional methods are unable to meet such scale unless marketers are prepared to experience a budget blowout or a lengthy production timeline. Therefore, marketers must look towards new solutions, solutions that are tailor-made to efficiently produce high volumes of digital video creative. 

A fresh approach to creative production: CaaS (Creative as a Service)

CaaS offers a fresh approach to creative production, one that has scrapped tradition and returned back to the drawing board, presenting a solution that combines people, processes and technology in a unified manner in order to satisfy the creative requirements of modern marketers. Fixed price? Yip. Scale and speed? You betcha. Quality? Guaranteed. With CaaS, you can truly have it all: say goodbye to creative compromise!