The Reasons to Use Video in Your Amazon Advertising Strategy
Video ad tools are expanding and becoming more accessible than ever. Within Amazon’s advertising products, you can utilize a combination of video ad tools to impact all the stages of the consumer’s path to purchase. At the same time, the advancement of technology and creative tools is making it easier to generate assets for video. And yet, we have regular conversations with advertisers who don’t quite understand why video is worth the investment.
To help with that, this blog post is intended to explain three reasons to use video in your Amazon advertising strategy:
Our brains are wired to notice and remember the combination of sight, sound and motion.
No other tool can impact the consumer journey in the same way.
Video is uniquely equipped to help you with 4 strategic goals.
Video Works with Our Brain’s Wiring for Attention and Recall
Every advertiser wants a consumer to be compelled to act; to learn about their brand, explore their catalog, and fall in love with their products. However, there are two problems:
Attention is in short supply. 4,000-10,000 ads per day are trying to gain the attention of the American consumer (source). Most are ignored either due to the ad content being irrelevant or unimpactful, or our brain’s inability to simply recognize and respond to it all.
The “Forgetting Curve” makes it hard to recall information. Even when we are most attentive to information (listening to a lecture or presentation), our brains will typically forget 50% of the information within the first 24 hours, and we’ll retain only 10% of the information after 1 week (source). The forgetting curve drops even more dramatically with information that our brain deems unimportant, like an irrelevant and unimpactful advertisement. That information is quite literally in one ear – or rather, eye – and out the other.
With the average consumer’s attention extremely limited, and recall being an uphill battle, any advertiser looking to make an impact on their audience must stand out from the crowd.
The elements of sight, sound and motion are designed to do just that. Why?
First, because our brains are wired to prioritize visual stimulation.
The human brain can comprehend images 60,000 times faster than text, which results in visual information making up 90% of what is transmitted to our brain (source).
For example, which of these descriptions is your brain able to comprehend faster—the graphic description or the textual description?
Second, the combination of sight, sound and motion increases retention.
While images gain our brain’s attention, the combination of sight, sound and motion align with what our brain needs to remember what we’ve seen.
In his book, Brain Rules, John Medina found that information which is communicated through a combination of audio and moving imagery is 6x more likely to be remembered after 3 days (source).
If video naturally works with the way our brains are wired for both attention and recall, then how do we imagine the right and best use of video within our broader advertising strategies?
How Can Video Impact the Consumer Journey?
Each ad type will create a different kind of impact along the path to purchase.
If we think of our ad tools as opportunities to catch fish, then starting at the bottom of the funnel with Search is similar to focusing your impact on the lake—the final destination for the fish.
Search is where you are most likely to have the quickest return, while also being surrounded by a crowd of advertisers who all want to fish in the same spot. While video can be incorporated at the point of Search with Amazon’s Sponsored Brand Video (SBV), it’s not the only ad tool option available here. But if you’re new to video, SBV is a great first step to add dynamics to your search strategy, test the nuances of video versus other tools, learn what generates the strongest impact, and look for opportunities to optimize and scale for performance.
Moving upstream from the lake, you can imagine Display as an opportunity to create a meaningful impact along the consumer's journey to their point of conversion. You’re not as likely to catch as many fish mid-stream, but you are more likely to generate familiarity and comfortability by the time they reach their final destination. Sponsored Display Video (SDV) is a strong video option to consider in conjunction with other ad tools within the Display portion of the path-to-purchase. SDV can be used to get in front of consumers who are on and off Amazon but not actively shopping your products. Like Search, video can be used to strengthen your Display strategy, but it’s not the only tool available at that stage of the funnel.
However, the mouth of the river is where video is one of the only tools available to advertisers looking to impact this portion of the path-to-purchase. Amazon’s Streaming TV (STV) is the video solution that impacts furthest upstream, and you can also leverage Online Video (OLV) to help widen your reach and drive more direct traffic to your PDPs. Investing this far upstream requires a highly calculated strategy and a long-term view that prioritizes upper-funnel metrics.
Is Video the Right Fit for My Amazon Advertising Strategy?
We know that video works naturally with our brain to gain the attention of consumers and increase their ability to remember our brands. We also know that video has the strongest impact at the very beginning of a consumer’s path to purchase. However, those details aren’t enough for an advertiser to choose to invest in video for their strategy.
The best way to discern if video is the right fit for you is to ask these questions:
Do you need a creative way to stand out in a crowded category?
Do you need to explain the value of an expensive product?
Do you need to create or grow brand demand?
Do you need to expand outside the aisle to reach new-to-brand consumers?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then chances are video is the right fit for your strategic goals.
Once you determine if it’s a fit, you can focus on setting the proper expectations for video.
For instance, a typical investment in video today could generate sales in 2-4 weeks. That’s a much different expectation than Sponsored Ads, with investments potentially triggering sales within 24-48 hours.
However, focusing on sales alone is too narrow of an expectation because an ad-attributed sales metric like ROAS doesn’t align with the right and best use of video. Remember, you’re focusing on making an impact at the beginning of the river where consumers are just starting to travel down their path to purchase. Because of that, your expectations should also include top-of-funnel metrics like:
Incremental traffic
Brand awareness
Increasing performance of your prospecting efforts
Without the right expectations for video, you could pull the plug on it before you even see the first round of impact.
How Do I Build Video into My Amazon Advertising Strategy?
Like any investment, video can feel expensive when it’s not working with your goals. To address that, you need to do a level-set of your strategic use of video to make sure it is in line with what video was ultimately designed to do. In the end, you might find that video feels expensive because you’ve been measuring its performance against the wrong expectations.
Our Global Overview team is always excited to work with brands who want to re-evaluate their approach to video, understand how it works and determine its right and best fit. If you need some help in that process, click the “Contact Us” button below and let’s get a conversation started.