Video advertising is growing popular in just about every market niche. Streaming platforms are also rapidly popping up online to connect people socially and grow businesses. The largest of the bunch is YouTube, where about 5 billion videos are watched every day. Clearly, it is now becoming challenging to make videos stand out and sell.
Video producers now have to rethink production techniques and presentation to make their video more engaging, creative, and productive. Video marketing has seen a new trend in the use of interactive videos. Thanks to advances in web and multimedia technologies, creators can make videos that engage with the viewer on an even deeper level than ever before.
What is an interactive video?
Unlike a conventional linear video, an interactive video incorporates actionable features known as hotspots, which the viewer interacts with. The viewer can, for instance, make decisions on the video, input some information, or branch to another video or resource. 360-degree views can also be added to the video to increase its visual scope.
The hotspots are activated through input actions such as clicking, taping, scrolling or swiping.
Advantages of using interactive videos on ads
Interactive videos are an engaging form of visual media. Their effectiveness in video advertising has won favour with many content producers and digital marketers.
Here are five reasons why interactive video will boost your marketing campaign:
Immersive and engaging
Video creates a form of media that engages two of the most active senses – sight and hearing. Taking this a step further, interactive video immerses the audience in the experience, making viewing active rather than passive. The game-like decision-making experience of engaging with hotspots actively grabs the attention of the viewer.
The engagements result in longer view time and alleviate visual fatigue and boredom, meaning that much of the information in the video is relayed to the viewer during playback.
Exciting and memorable
Being a relatively new trend, many viewers are still finding interactive videos fun and exciting. The ability to make decisions and share input in a video is truly intriguing. Along with this, the visual content, animations, and graphics that accompany interactive videos are usually just as captivating.
The result of all this is a memorable experience. Even when the viewer doesn’t interact with the video at all, interactive video ads are still 32% more memorable than regular videos, meaning the viewer is likely to associate the unique experience with the message or the brand behind it.
Actions are trackable
One of the problems with video ads has always been difficulty in tracking the audience’s behaviour or reaction towards the content accurately. This problem stems from the lack of adequate feedback from the audience and the media itself. But that has changed with interactive videos.
It’s now much easier to gauge the value of your video campaign. Embedded in every interactive video is a powerful video metric tracking tool. You can thoroughly analyse the users’ behaviour through the actions they take, such as branching, and input data.
They convert
Is an interactive video better at converting sales and generating leads than its linear counterpart? The simple answer is yes, and by a considerable margin. Linear video ads have an average click-through rate (CTR) of about 1.84%. Interactive video ads, on the other hand, have at least three times that. What’s more, there is room for creativity, which is an easy way to increase CTR.
Versatility
As a marketing tool, an interactive video can be used to do a lot more than just sell. For instance, such a video can be used to collect data as a form of a survey and to study consumer behaviour. Interactive videos are also commonly used to convey split or contracting information without bias.
Drawbacks of interactive videos
Although the benefits of interactive videos make a strong justification for their use in video marketing, unfortunately, they do have some limitations.
Creating an interactive video is time-consuming
Compared to linear videos, interactive ones take longer to develop and cost a lot more. Due to their widespread use, there are now several inexpensive tools for creating interactions. However, despite this, they are still not what you’d call cheap, or easy to make.
Some may be slow to load
Interactive videos are quite bulky. Sometimes their loading speed can be an issue, especially on slow connections and outdated browsers.
Often confusing to new users
An interactive video may appear confusing when presented to a new user. It is possible for the video to be dismissed as a video game or a poorly made presentation. Creators have to work creatively to make interactions as intuitive as possible.
Final thoughts
If you look beyond the few drawbacks of interactive video (which will hopefully be solved as technology evolves) these types of video ads are very promising. Interactive videos are incredibly compelling, and the results speak for themselves. It’s high time to get creative with video marketing, especially as marketing campaigns lean more and more towards visual content.
Are you looking to get into the video marketing game? Get in touch with us today and revamp your marketing campaigns through the power of film.