Cost Effective Video Ads = More to Keep

Freeing yourself from the labyrinth of ads options is a difficult task, especially for small ecommerce stores, especially when the end-date beckons you. There is no end-date per se for the coming festive sales, but let’s consider a week ahead of Black Friday as the end- date for launching video ads which for this year is Nov 18.

Now, let me not sound alarming but if you’re still in the conceptual stage (meaning a week behind the actual designing of ads) then your ads will likely not be ready before Black Friday, 25 Nov 2022.

Consider now that your ads are already conceptualized and designed, only some changes minor changes need to e made. And mind you the ads are great! Won’t you feel relieved and content? This is what we provide you at VidBazaar.

At this stage if you are eager to browse our Etsy store of ready-to-use video ads, feel free to do so, meanwhile let me come to the topic of this post – does video ad help small ecommerce stores?

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What is a video ad?

Technically speaking, a video ad is usually a short, informative video that seeks to promote a product or service. These ads can range anywhere between a few seconds to over a couple of minutes and are intended to be a concise representation of what the product and brand stand for and what they have to offer to the buyers.

So far so good, but are all video ads the same? Not really.

At one end you have ultra-professional video ads made by big brands. They usually involve multiple camera shots thereby necessitating cutting, adding, and high-level editing. These are understandably costlier and therefore out of reach of most small ecommerce stores.

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Enter image video ad

Image video ad is a term in circulation of late. While an image ad is considered less attractive in terms of number of views and engagement (studies support this), an image video ad can turn out to be far more promising both for quality and saved cost.

A good example of image video ad is image carousel. A carousel is essentially a slideshow of several static image ads coming one after another thereby allowing an ecommerce store to showcase several products sequentially.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and others took to carousels big time since long because viewers liked them for variation. In fact, a July 2020 study found that the average engagement rate for Instagram carousels was 1.92% compared to 1.74% for static images and 1.45% for videos (surprise!).

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What about video image ad?

Let me turn around image video ad with what I term as ‘video image ad’. What’s the difference I hear you ask. Well, the difference is that in case of video image ad you are creating a single video ad comprising of several animated product images.

What happens is, 2 or more products (4-5 is optimum) move in and out of a video template with cool eye-catching animations, thereby granting the viewer a chance to like the visually compelling ad and, at the same time, giving her a robust idea of what your products are. All of these happen in a short span of say 10-12 seconds or even less.

A video image ad can easily contain such essentials like catchwords, CTA buttons, web addresses, as well as some small design elements. All of these remain static even as the product images blithely rotate their turn with cool animation.

The video image ad can be easily made in PowerPoint and Canva (we use both) and can be produced in ultra-HD (up to 4K) GIF or MP4 formats. If you use Canva, your GIFs or MP4s can be of lesser size than PowerPoint. Look at the following GIF for a first-hand idea about how a video image ad might look like.

Make video ads or …

There are no two opinions on what video advertising can do for your brand. Every year the stats point to the inevitability of video usage for the purpose of marketing and advertising. Here let me quote from a June 2022 report by Outbrain:

82% of sales and marketing professionals say that video content is more important than ever before. As a result, they are producing more video content than ever before too. In fact, 47% say they produced more than 51 videos last year.

Conclusion

With a looming economic slowdown this and next year there’ll likely be cuts in the marketing budgets to minimize fund outgo. While this is reality, what is also true is that companies must make sales no matter what. And the perfect way-out is to opt for non-traditional means of video advertising that don’t compromise with quality yet are less expensive by a very, very wide margin.

#etsyseller #ecommercestore #ecommercemarketing #smallbusinessowners #blackfriday #canvatemplate #powerpointtemplates

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Partha Bhattacharya is the founder of VidBazaar that sells animated Canva & PPT templates on Etsy for ecommerce business. Visit this link for done-for-you service.?