Bryan CarantoIf you want to learn how YouTube video ad sequencing can increase your brand awareness, reinforce your marketing message, and convert more leads to sales, read on.
In this post, you’ll learn:
- Why you need to use YouTube video ad sequencing
- 5 video concepts you can use for your ads
- How to keep your audience engaged in your video ads
- How to track down a YouTube Ad
Let’s get started!
What is video ad sequencing?
Video ad sequencing allows you to dictate the order that Youtube serves your ads in.
Instead of showing only a single video ad asset, you can create multiple assets to tell different parts of the story in varying lengths.
This helps you reinforce advertising messages while gauging how your viewers interact with each ad and make data-based adjustments later.
When ad sequences have three or more steps in them, they can drive 60% higher brand lift than single assets.
And here’s why.
By delivering information in bite-sized ads, you avoid overwhelming your viewers and saturating your message. If they didn’t engage with your first ad, they might engage with your second or third ad.
Ultimately, it increases your brand and product awareness, drives more traffic to your site, and nudges your users to complete the action you want them to take.
Need some inspiration for creating your video? By the end of this post, we’ll give you some useful tips on how to do that.
Now, just creating a bunch of video ads and sequencing them probably aren’t enough. You have to have some creativity in coming up with a good story to tell.
Without a good story, your viewers will skip your ad. Remember, you’re working off of people’s attention span that lasts for only 3-5 seconds.
If your ad is not engaging right off the bat, you’ll lose a big percentage of your audience immediately. So if you want to build effective video ads, you need to grab your audience’s attention with a great hook.
Fortunately, we’re not only going to give you one but four tips to accomplish that.
4 tips to keep your audience hooked and engaged
1. Start from the climax. Drop your viewers in the middle of the action – the most exciting, dramatic, or interesting scene in the plot.
When you start at the peak of the climax, you successfully catch their attention.
A great example of this is from TNT’s ad called “A dramatic surprise on a quiet square.”
In the video, you’ll see a big red button placed in the middle of a quiet square with a sign that says “Push to add drama.”
When pushed by a passer-by, a series of dramatic events set-off, stopping the passer-by and getting him to watch everything with full attention.
2. Make sure that the story is relevant to your audience–and specifically made for your avatar. Address your viewers’ wants and needs and make them feel like the story is about them.
By doing so, you’ll be able to connect with them on a much deeper emotional level.
And we all know that people buy based on emotions first, then justify their decisions with logic.
3. Use imagery and language (e.g. script) that your viewers aren’t expecting. This helps in disrupting behavioral patterns, beliefs, and any preconceived notions about your story or offer.
By showing the unexpected, you’ll significantly increase your viewers’ engagement and make them stick till the end of your video.
Which brings me to the last tip…
4. Keep your viewers guessing. They say that once you know how a movie ends, chances are, you probably won’t watch it.
If you want people to keep watching, you need to add the element of surprise to keep the anticipation going. Only reveal enough information that will make your audience curious to find out more.
Now that you know how to keep your audience engaged, let’s take a look at incorporating them with video concepts to maximize the effectiveness of your ads.
5 Video Ad Sequencing Concepts to Use for YouTube Ads
1. Tease, Amplify, Echo (3 videos)
This sequence is composed of 3 videos. You start with a 6-second video to tease the audience. Then, you amplify your message with a longer video that explains your offer. After that, you end with a 6-second ad to reinforce your message and nudge viewers to take action.
2. The Direct Shot (3 or more 6-second videos)
This type of sequence uses the same video format but from different angles to avoid repetition and viewer fatigue. We recommend that you limit your videos to 6 seconds and make sure you break down products or services into clear value propositions.
3. The Mini Series
These are like the direct shot, but with longer form videos. One of the things that makes the mini series so effective is you can sequence the video ads based on how users engage with your content.
Someone viewed your video? Great! You can serve more ads they might be interested in.
Did they skip your video? No problem! Show them another video that’s more straightforward and has a clear CTA.
With the mini series, you can break videos into different parts of the story––the conflict, the climax, and the resolution.
4. The Follow Up (2 videos)
In this video ad sequence, you start with a long form video that explains your brand and your offer. Then, follow up with a shorter video to keep the message alive and drive your viewers to your CTA.
5. The Lead-In (2 videos)
This video sequence involves two videos. First, a 6-second video that introduces the narrative and teases the story.
Next, show a longer video that presents your product’s features, benefits, and USP. Don’t forget to end with a strong CTA.
Bonus: How to track down a YouTube ad
The problem is, unlike Facebook Ads Library, there’s no official public database of every ad currently active on YouTube.
So if you’re looking for inspiration or trying to reverse-engineer your competitor’s ad, it’s going to be quite difficult…but not impossible.
And because you’ve reached up to this part, you deserve a bonus! So here are a couple of ways on how to track down a YouTube ad.
1. Search for the company’s ad on Google or YouTube.
The easiest way to track down a YouTube ad is to simply search the company or the product on YouTube. Oftentimes, their published ads will be available on their own YouTube channel or someone else’s.
However, if you can’t find the exact ad that you just saw, this next step should help.
2. Find the direct “unlisted” link of the ad.
For this one to work, you have to capture the ad while it’s playing on YouTube. It’s a little technical but just follow the steps and you’ll get it.
- Pause the ad while it’s playing.
- Right-click anywhere on the video and select “Stats for nerds.”
- Copy the code under “Video ID” and paste it to your notepad
- Open up a new tab. In the URL address bar, paste this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
- After the “=” sign, paste the Video ID code you just copied. It should look something like this:
And now, you should be able to see the exact ad that showed while you’re watching!
I mentioned before that there’s no public database of every ad currently active on YouTube.
That’s true.
But if you’re only looking for inspiration, you can find YouTube ads on sites like Ad Video.
Conclusion
Using YouTube video ad sequencing can make your advertising more effective and less of an interruption.
By combining storytelling and marketing techniques, you’ll be able to see incremental lifts for critical metrics such as your branding, ad recall, and most importantly, purchasing intent.
