What is Video Retargeting and How Can I Use it in My Marketing?

If you are here and reading this blog post, it's highly likely that you haven't done a lot with remarketing in the past. Did you know that retargeted visitors are 3X more likely to click on your ad than people who haven't interacted with your business before? And while retargeting (or remarketing) isn't really new to PPC campaigns, there are still many companies that have yet to take advantage of it for their business. However, Facebook recently expanded their remarketing to include video.  So in this post, we will walk through the basics of strategically using video remarketing as a way to boost engagement and reconnect with website visitors.

What is Video Retargeting?

Retargeting is a form of  PPC advertising that utilizes a tracking pixel to collect contacts who have previously visited your website, watched a video or engaged with your content online. Video retargeting is specifically serving video ads to that list of contacts.

There are two types of video retargeting:

1. VWAs (Video Watcher Ads): Ads that are served only to people who have watched your video. You can create ads that target only visitors who finish the video or target based on the percentage watched (i.e. 25%, 50%, and so on). These ads are dependent on a platform that can measure specific actions and play rates (Facebook, AdRoll).

2. VCAs (Video Content Ads): Ads that are served based on user actions on your site that feature videos as the ad content. These ads require a platform that supports video ads (Facebook, YouTube).

What are the Most Common Use Cases for Each of These Types of Ads?

1. VWAs (Video Watcher Ads): VWAs are useful when video is a prominent part of the sales process. For example, if you know that one of your leading indicators for a product trial is that someone watches 100% of your video, you can use video remarketing as a way to reengage with visitors who completed 50% or less of your video. These types of ads are going to be the most effective later in the buying journey when targeted towards specific buyer-readiness actions from your visitors. Both Facebook and AdRoll require a certain audience size before remarketing ads will work, so this might not be a useful tactic if you only get a handful of video views each month.

2. VCAs (Video Content Ads): VCAs are going to be the more versatile of the two types of video retargeting ads. VCAs allow you to serve video content as an ad to anyone who has completed a certain action on your page. Here are a few ideas of these types of ads that might be successful:

• A short video inviting users who have visited your blog to subscribe
• An introduction to a helpful ebook or download that matches their level of interest in your company
• Helpful content such as a video blog that will further increase brand awareness
• A testimonial or product video
• A clever, catchy ad

How to Get Started with Video Retargeting

Since there are several different ways to use video retargeting, it's really important to create a plan of attack. Here are the basic steps you need to follow in order to set up a successful campaign.

1. Determine your goals and objectives
2. Decide which type of video retargeting will best serve your goals
3. Choose a PPC platform based on your target audience and type of video ad
4. Create or repurpose existing video content
5. Render the video for optimal playing on your website or PPC platform
6. Install tracking pixels for Facebook or Google
7. Create your ad creative using the pixel viewers to create your ad audience

When used strategically, video remarketing can be a really effective tool in your tool chest. Hopefully these tips and tricks will help you save time when you are ready to launch your first campaign. If you are planning to create a brand new video, don't miss out on our upcoming webinar "Effective Company Video: Avoiding the Mistakes Every Company Makes"!