Creative strategy and execution are critical to maximizing your streaming ad success. Here’s some creative tips and best practices to help your brand stand out:
Building the best video ad:
Clear Messaging: Keep your narrative clear, casual, and compelling. You'll have 30 seconds or less to resonate with your customer. Focus your ad on your brand, what you're offering, and the action a customer should take.
Grab Attention: first 5-7 seconds is when attention grabbing happens. Make those seconds count.
Be Remembered: the last 3-5 seconds is the time to remind the user who you are and where they can go to take action. Always have your logo, URL, address, and/or phone number up to close out your ad.
Keep it current: Lean into new events, trends, or themes. Connecting your ads to trending topics will help you connect with your audience and be remembered.
Creative components: make a lasting impact with these creative components
Calls to Action (CTA): CTAs inspire the action you most want your customer to take: sign up, buy now, subscribe, visit our store, etc. CTAs should be clear, omni-present, and easy to remember.
Logo's & URLs: Stay top of mind during the ad and after by highlighting your logo throughout the ad. Streamers should know who you are, what you're offering, and how to get in touch.
Sound & Motion: unlike social, most streamers have the sound on from the start and watch ads to completion. Utilize sight, sound, and motion in your ads for maximum impact and awareness.
Building the best action ad:
In addition to the above video call outs, consider the below when building action ads:
Test & Learn: engaging with ads on the TV screen is a new action for most streamers. Set up multiple action ads with different variations to test what works best for your brand.
Video: create action ads from all your standard videos to see which performs best with an overlay.
Overlay call-to-action: Buy Now vs Learn More, Shop Now vs Sign Up
Overlay messaging: add or remove the product price, test % off vs. dollars off, test different value props of the product
Overlay image: logo vs product, productA vs productB, one product vs. multiple products
Text copy: try different copy to drive users to your site more effectively
Video length: The longer the video runs, the more opportunity the viewer has to "press OK" with their remote. Try for :30s or longer, but :15 will do in a pinch.
Video call-to-action: within your video, have a call to action early and often to remind the viewer to take the next step.
Activating your creative:
Asset quality: Streaming ads with Roku mostly show on TV's, and that means high-quality assets are required to make your ad look it's best. Check our our specs here.
Test & Learn: test, test, test! With Ads Manager, you can test many creatives at the same time. See what works and what doesn't, and then increase spend on the creatives that're driving better results.
Objective alignment: make sure sure your creative build aligns with the ad objectives you're looking to drive:
For awareness campaigns: be informative, highlight your top value points, and keep your branding present at all times.
For conversion campaigns: prompt action from the start and clearly state how and where they should go to take that action.
Audience alignment: running campaigns in different locations, to different demographics, or to behavioral audiences creates opportunities to personalize your ad. Speak the city you're in (i.e., "Hey, Chicago. Check this out!") or the audience you're targeting (i.e. "Sports fan know...") to increase message retention.