When you’re new to digital marketing, you might hear terms like “PPC” (short for pay-per-click) or “SEM” (short for search engine marketing) get passed around often. And as you ease yourself in the industry, you’ll find that pay-per-click advertising is one of the popular methods in marketing one’s brand digitally. This method allows brands to reach out to their target audience in a more strategic way: paying only for clicks that drive traffic to one’s landing page.
Within the PPC advertising bubble, there is a longstanding debate about which video ad length is more effective in attracting engagement from its prospects. Longer or shorter? In this blog, we will crack the growing body of evidence for which length of video you should consider for your upcoming PPC campaign.
More time for Storytelling
Popular wisdom says a short video ad is always preferable. In this age when many brands compete for our attention, keeping it short and sweet reaps rewards.
But one of the benefits of creating a longer video ad is that it allows you time to build up a narrative and tell your story in a deeper way. First, it’s extra challenging to hook an audience with a 10-15 seconds video. Second, a longer video enables you to provide more details about your brand, as well as show your unique value propositions and other differentiators.
Improved Brand Awareness
Especially if you’re an emerging brand, you need all the time and exposure you can get to showcase your brand identity. It’s the first step to raising consciousness about your product and service to expand your customer base. The more they see your ad, and the longer your video ad is, the more opportunity for your target demographics to know about you, and appreciate your story.
Studies show that longer video ads in various pay-per-click platforms lead to higher brand recall rates. The longer the ad is exposed to them, the better they’ll remember you!
Increased Engagements
By the same token, longer video ads tend to improve your campaign’s engagement rates. The longer the ad, the more opportunities for the viewers to engage with it. Especially if you use innovative and creative storytelling techniques, they’re more likely to follow your call-to-actions. To further boost your engagement and conversion rate, use storytelling devices like humor, suspense, and other emotional appeals.
Better Results for SEO
PPC advertising and search engine optimisation (SEO) sometimes come hand in hand. While the efforts of either are not directly linked to the other, using a longer video ad for your PPC campaigns can indirectly impact your SEO efforts. Even if it’s not organic, the traffic driven by your ad can help increase your website’s visibility and conversion rate.
Additionally, longer video ads can help reduce bounce rates, which is a factor for SEO. To search engines, lower bounce rates mean you have been making steps in providing valuable information to your visitors. This leads to better search engine rankings.
More Cost-Effective than Short Video Ads
It may seem counter-intuitive, but longer video ads are cheaper than having multiple shorter ones. With a longer ad, you can truncate and reformat it to run on various platforms. This puts more value for every advertising dollar you spend on the campaign. You can even use the reformatted videos as content to boost your non-paid marketing efforts like SEO, content marketing, social media, email, etc. Longer video ads are the better choice to maximise your return on investment.
As you now know, longer video ads offer a ton of benefits for your paid search marketing campaigns. While there are still justifications for short video ads, you have seen that longer video ads can likewise yield you favourable results, now and in the long run. But regardless of your choice, it must start from understanding your target market and tailor-fitting your approach to earn their attention and engagement.
Need help crafting your PPC strategy? Let the professionals handle it! Longer or shorter video ad, you’re guaranteed to get the best ROI for any PPC advertising campaign we’ll embark on.
