In 2017, YouTube published their study gauging how efficient their YouTube 6-second ad format offering can be.
When they surveyed the performance of 122 bumper ads in the United States just shortly after the release of bumper ads, they found that 70% of these campaigns garnered a significant life in brand awareness.
In fact, 9 out of 10 of these campaigns drove ad recalls - viewers who saw the 6-second YouTube ads were able to remember seeing those ads and what brand they were from.
This is just the tip of the iceberg for how effective bumper ads have been during the product release.
Bumper ads have this surprising ability to capture and retain viewers’ attention - it’s so short and sweet that users do not need to look away for the few short seconds, and if you play your cards right, you might just be able to get your audiences to remember you.
Below are some tips that you can utilize to improve your bumper ads performance.
4 Ways to Improve Your Bumper Ads Before You Launch the Ads
Define Your Bumper Ad Objectives
Every campaign needs a plan, an understanding of your audiences and the goal of the campaign.
Bumper ads are effective for brand reach and frequency. You can use bumper ads to extend the reach for your existing campaigns, or to complement a broader messaging.
In fact, several Google studies have shown that a higher ad recall can be produced when bumper ads are run after YouTube TrueView Ads!
If you're considering upper-funnel goals such as ad recall and awareness, then bumper ads will work well for you.
Integrate Bumper Ads into Your Wider Media Plan
While bumper ads can generate sufficient impact on their own, running a series of bumper ads as part of your long-form video campaign or a wider media strategy - this can include TV, radio or anything else that you might be running.
YouTube has a '
Tease, Amplify & Echo
' strategy that they always recommend for short- and long-form video ads.
Integrate this video model into your video campaign strategy ad you'll have a series of videos presentable as an ad sequence.
With an ad sequence, you won't even need to say much in the short six seconds of your bumper ads! Without many words, you can repeat your brand messaging in the video, and build towards a stronger ad recall rate.
Keep Things Simple
It's easy to speak lengths about your brand and products. However, when you have to speak of it in limited time and words, you'll need to ensure that your message is still clear, concise and memorable.
It's best to keep in mind that your video should be simple and have a single clear message. You can even think of your video storyboard as a joke!
Think of a punchline for the joke (video) first, then work backwards and build up to that point!
Structure Your Video Ad Campaign Effectively
Remember how bumper ads are really short and easy to digest? It just so happens that there is yet another formula for video campaign structuring!
YouTube introduced a short and sweet guideline - Attract, Brand, Connect and Direct, which you can easily remember as ABCD. While originally formulated for 30-second ads, you can still apply this guideline to the short 6-second bumper ads!
More guidelines will be provided in our following posts, so do stay tuned!
Keep Testing, Measuring & Learning
Bumper ads may have been around for a few years, but it will still take many trials and experimenting before you find the best way to produce bumper ads for your own business.
If you are just getting started on bumper ads, we know how challenging it would be to convey a meaningful message in just six seconds. However, add the video into a sequence of other related videos to form a good story, and you might just start seeing some real results early one!
