Archive for April, 2009

Reports – It’s all about the numbers

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

For you and your advertisers, it’s all about the numbers.

Advertisers want to know what they’re getting for their advertising dollars.

You sell advertising based on its ability to perform.

In this post, we’ll walk through the performance reports available in the VideoAd platform and describe some best practices for accessing and generating them.

We’ll answer the following questions:

What types of performance reports are available?

As a group manager, you have access to:

All reports are in PDF format that you can easily open, save, print, and email to advertisers.

Summary reports by VideoAd

Summary report for several VideoAds in an account

Summary report for several VideoAds in an account

Useful for: Providing advertisers with a high-level snapshot of how one or more of their VideoAds are performing.

Includes: Graphical displays of views, clicks, interactions, and playthrough. A tabular presentation of engagement and exposure rates for each VideoAd.

Generated by: Selecting the VideoAds you want to include, specifying a date range, and clicking the Generate Report button in the Dashboard.

Detailed performance reports by account

Detailed account report. Data shown for one VideoAd in report.

Detailed account report. Data shown for one VideoAd in report.

Useful for: Analyzing a VideoAd’s performance on an on-going basis and optimizing the VideoAd to perform better.

Includes: Summary engagement and exposure statistics for each VideoAd accompanied by detailed graphical displays of impressions, interactions, views, and clicks.

Generated by: The platform, automatically, every week and every month. Available in the Advanced Analytics section of each advertiser account or by email.

Tip Not sure what a particular statistic means? Check the glossary of performance terms included as the last page in each account report.

Summary performance reports by group

Group report with summary data for each account.

Group report with summary data for each account.

Useful for: Maintaining a high-level perspective on the account activity within a group. Comparing the performance of accounts across the group.

Includes: Summary of activity across all accounts. Tabular presentation of engagement and exposure rates for each account.

Generated by: The platform, automatically, every week and every month. Available in the Advanced Analytics section of the group manager’s account or by email.

I’d like more details about working with reports.

How can group managers easily monitor their accounts?

The easiest way to stay informed about the performance of VideoAds and accounts in your group is to receive automatically generated account and group reports by email.

Setting up email receipt of automated reports

Setting up email receipt of automated reports

To set up email receipt of reports, sign in to the account with reports you want to receive and go to the Reports tab in the Advanced Analytics section.

For example, to receive group reports by email, sign in to your group manager account. To receive specific advertiser account reports by email, sign in to each advertiser account.

You can have reports sent to just one or several email addresses. In the Email to list, separate multiple addresses with commas or spaces.

I’d like more details about setting up email receipt of reports.

Can group managers generate custom reports?

Yes they can.

From within an advertiser account, you can generate account reports customized by date range and the specific VideoAds the report includes.

From within your group manager account, you can generate group reports customized by date range.

You generate custom reports on the Reports tab in the Advanced Analytics section.

Generating a custom report

Generating a custom report

This picture shows how to generate an account report that covers the time period from January to April, 2009 and includes only VideoAds with data.

As custom reports are generated, they are placed into a Customized Reports list on the Reports tab.

Customized reports list

Customized reports list

To open a PDF report, click the link. To delete a report, click the red x.

I’d like more details about generating custom reports.

Tip

You can quickly generate custom account reports for specific time periods from within your group manager account. Under Individual Account Reports, select a time period, and then click to open a PDF report.

Individual account reports for a specific week

Individual account reports for a specific week

When you generate individual account reports using this method, you can’t specify which VideoAds the report includes.

The power and glory of overlays

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

Say you’re running an advertiser’s 30-sec TV spot as a VideoAd.

Arguably, the most powerful way you can add value to that VideoAd is through overlays.

Overlays are text, image, or video objects that you place on top of the content of a VideoAd.

A recent study shows that text overlays increase the amount of a video ad that viewers watch and the percentage of viewers who watch the entire VideoAd.

While the power of overlays may lie with their ability to increase viewers’ exposure to an advertiser’s brand, the true glory of well-designed overlays is how they engage viewers and encourage them to interact.

To understand how you can harness the full power and glory of overlays, take a look at the following demo VideoAd featuring a hypothetical pizza restaurant called Best Pizza.

The VideoAd illustrates how you can:

Transition overlays onto the screen

Every overlay in the VideoAd, including the Best Pizza logo, takes advantage of transitions, the most recent overlay feature added to the platform.

  • The logo in the upper left corner grows in toward the beginning of the VideoAd and shrinks out toward the end.
  • Authentic Italian Pizza!, a plain text overlay, slides in and out from the top.
  • The animated Contact Us! overlay fades in and after a few seconds fades out.
  • Click to order now! slides in and out from the left.
  • See our full menu! grows in and shrinks out.

Adding transitions brings overlays to viewers’ attention and adds visual appeal to the entire VideoAd.

How do I set overlay transitions?

Keep viewers who click from leaving your website

You want your advertiser’s VideoAds to perform well. At the same time, you’re not real crazy about the idea of viewers clicking overlays in VideoAds and leaving your website.

Now both you and the advertiser can get what you want.

Play the demo pizza VideoAd again. When the Contact Us! overlay fades in, click it.

The Google map of the hypothetical restaurant’s location opens in a frame on top of this blog post. Click Close in the upper right corner of the frame and you’re right back on the website where you started.

How do I set links to open in a frame?

Add interest with animation

You probably noticed that the Contact Us! overlay is animated.

Advertisers who want to add a light touch to an offer or promotion have a small collection of professionally-designed animated overlays to choose among.

Animated overlays collection

Animated overlays collection

How can I animate overlays?

Use calls to action to capture leads

Play the demo pizza VideoAd until you come to the Click to order now! overlay. Click the overlay.

A color-coordinated lead capture form opens where viewers can type their names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and pizza orders.

When a viewer clicks Send, the pizza restaurant receives the order in an email message at a specified email address. The message will look something like this:

Lead capture email message

Lead capture email message

In addition to having a convenient way to process delivery orders, the pizza restaurant also has an on-going supply of contact information for highly qualified leads to whom it can send newsletters, special promotion announcements, and more.

Tip Go ahead and submit a pizza order. Just don’t expect to actually have a pizza delivered.

How do I set up lead capture?

I’d like to read more about lead capture.

Encourage clickthroughs by making the entire VideoAd a link

Place your cursor anywhere over the VideoAd as it plays and notice that the cursor changes to a hand. The entire VideoAd is hot.

This greatly increases the likelihood that viewers will click the VideoAd and end up right on the webpage where the advertiser wants them to be.

How do I turn my entire VideoAd into a hyperlink?

Add depth with image (and video) overlays

Seconds after the demo pizza VideoAd begins playing, the pizza restaurant’s logo transitions onto the screen. The logo remains in the upper left corner throughout the VideoAd, reinforcing the Best Pizza brand.

The logo is an image overlay. Image overlays work just like text overlays. You can associate them with URL’s or lead capture forms.

In this demo, clicking the logo opens the Mixpo home page. An actual advertiser can associate a logo with the URL that best supports its promotional goals.

Tip Take a close look at the Best Pizza logo. It’s transparent. The VideoAd platform supports transparent images in GIF and PNG format.

I’d like to read more about transparent images and image and video overlays.

To see detailed instructions for adding video and image overlays, visit the Create page, and then click How do I add videos and images as overlays?

Studio Tip

With this release of the platform, overlays are easier than ever to manage in the Studio. You can now select all or multiple overlays and move them as one unit.

To learn more, visit the Best Practices page, and then click Move elements together on the Timeline.