What is Mobile Video Advertising? A Comprehensive Guide for 2021

The mobile video ad train has been picking up steam over the past decade. Which is why now is the time to check our video maker to help grow your business.

Where mobile devices were once limited to phone calls and text, today our smartphones and tablets make up a massive amount of our daily time.

Some studies have found that the average American spends roughly 3 hours on their phones daily, while others have found that at least half that time is spent on social media and YouTube.

As we’ve shifted our attention from the silver screen to our phones, so have marketers’ efforts to reach consumers.

Alongside the mobile revolution, we have also upped the amount of video content we consume.

Today, Google estimates that 6 out of 10 people prefer to watch online video, and others have found that we’re upping our mobile video consumption by a whopping 100% every year.   

If you’re just getting started with your mobile and video advertising, read our latest video marketing guide to boost your efforts and give you the video engagement your brand needs:

What Exactly is Mobile Video Advertising?

Video advertising refers to any online ad that has a video component.

While in traditional media ads are usually played as intermissions, online video ads can be played pre-roll (before a video plays), post-roll (after a video is complete), or on any non-video page as embedded media.

Videos can also be displayed in-stream along with other videos, or out-of-stream, such as on blogs, websites, and other non-video content.

There is some debate about what exactly constitutes digital video advertising, with some claiming that any video that sells a product or service is an ad, while others argue that even traditional advertising inside of a stream could be considered a video ad, regardless of the type.

In mobile advertising, video tends to focus on the former more than the latter—ads that are videos rather than ads in videos.

4 Benefits of Mobile Video Advertising in 2021 & Beyond

When planning your marketing budget, it’s important to allocate the right amount of resources to your mobile strategy. Emphasizing mobile video ads gives you several key advantages, including:

  1. Mobile video drives better engagement. A study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau found that mobile video showed 2x better click-through rates than nave, and 3x better than both banner and interstitial ads. Moreover, with the number of people who watch video on mobile, the market keeps growing. Video is undeniably effective for marketing purposes.
  2. Mobile videos are likelier to been to the end. Mobile videos tend to be shorter (thanks to platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, and the now-defunct Vine), which means consumers are more likely to watch them to the end. Indeed, some studies have shown that roughly 88% of 30-second videos are watched in their entirety.
  3. Mobile encourages sharing. One of the best things about video ads—and particularly viral ones—is that they are easy to share on mobile. This provides your ads with an organic boost that improves your exposure and gives you better value for every dollar spent.
  4. Better target your video ads with geo-location. Mobile advertising tends to be more accurate thanks to the use of geo-location and users checking in at different locations. This lets you target your videos based on users’ current location and get better insights about who watches your videos.

Video Advertising Apps:

Boosted has an amazing promo video maker app that you can use for all of your video marketing needs, and is compatible with every social media platform, including: FacebookInstagramTikTokLinkedIn, & YouTube.

3 Awesome Mobile Video Ad Execution examples:

A good mobile video ad will get your consumers talking, interacting with you, and sharing your video to their friends. Here are some of our favorite mobile video ads, and why they’re so effective:

1. Albert’s conversations with a user highlight their value. Budgeting app Albert created a series of quickfire Instagram ads that show the platform in action in a variety of situations. In a memorable one, a user decides they want hamburgers, and Albert gently reminds them they’re down to the last of their monthly budget.

2. SquareSpace encourages users to dream with Idris Elba. Another Instagram campaign, this one sees a short version of an ad featuring celebrity Idris Elba in several “dream jobs”, encouraging users to work and follow their goals.

3. Spotify takes advantage of vertical. Music videos have traditionally been the purview of television and PC screens, but mobile is becoming popular. To promote new artists and its own platform, Spotify has encouraged superstars such as Selena Gomez to record “vertical music videos” to be released on Spotify.

3 Important Tips for Successful Mobile Video Advertising

Here are three great strategies to kickstart your mobile video advertising efforts:

  1. Choose the right platforms for your target audience. Social media and mobile video is great, but a scattershot approach does you more harm than good. Find out where your users and target demographics spend their time and prioritize your efforts there.
  2. Embrace vertical video. Though you may instinctively try to shoot videos in landscape mode, most mobile users still prefer portrait orientation. Keeping your videos vertical means less work for users to see your videos, and a higher chance they’ll watch all the way through.
  3. Tell stories with social media. A relatively new but highly popular feature of Facebook and Instagram is the story. These temporary posts let you add small segments to a larger collection and create in-depth stories and narratives from small, bite-sized clips.

Mobile Video Advertising Statistics and Trends in 2021 and Beyond:

As you prepare your mobile video ad strategy for 2019, here are some of the most important trends and statistics to keep in mind:

  • Advertisers are slated to spend roughly $15.93 billion in mobile video ads, with the number rising to $24.81 billion in the next three years.
  • Americans have shown a clear preference for watching retail ads on their mobile devices rather than their computers or televisions, with retail making up 33% of video ads consumed in 2017.
  • More people are viewing videos on mobile. Approximately 187.7 million will watch videos in 2019, with an expected 205 million mobile video viewers by 2022.
  • Consumers are likelier to interact with a brand when they see a video on social media. A Brightcove survey showed that 53% of responders engaged with brands based on social media videos.  

Moving Forward with Branded Video:

Mobile video advertising is quickly becoming the preferred marketing strategy for companies across verticals.

The increased preference by consumers for video content, and especially on mobile devices, means that brands must shift their focus toward the sectors where they can have the biggest impact.

Advertising with mobile videos gives you several advantages, including better engagement, a higher rate of organic brand awareness, and better ad targeting for improved results.

Jumping on this trend can help you kickstart your brand’s efforts and help you spread the word about your company much more easily.

4 More Mobile Video Advertising Tips For 2020 

1. Optimizing Videos Size And Length

Just like the way marketers need to optimize their blog content for search engines, mobile videos should also be optimized to ensure the best user experience possible. 

The fact is that most modern consumers only have an attention span of about 8 seconds. Therefore, whether they’re using a smartphone, tablet, or laptop, they usually expect their videos to load within just a few seconds, or else they’re likely to abandon all hopes of watching it. 

Therefore, video length, as well as quality, should always be kept in mind when optimizing videos for mobile use. This, combined with the fact that smart devices often have spotty reception, means that shorter video ads, of no more than 15 to 20 seconds, usually perform the best. 

Not only do shorter video ads ensure faster loads times, but they also make it more likely your viewers will watch the entire ad. TikTok is all the rage these days: be sure to check out our TikTok video length guide here.

2. Offer Value

While the goal of any mobile video advertising campaign is going to be to promote a brand’s products or services, it’s best to avoid being too “sales-y”, and instead, it’s better to focus on delivering value to your viewers. 

In fact, video ads that are too product-focused or brand-centric are usually seen as spammy and often go unnoticed by consumers. 

Therefore, in order to create powerful, effective video ads, you first need to have a clear idea of what you want your ads to achieve. Of course, the ultimate goal is going to be to sell whatever products or services you provide. 

But, it’s an even better idea to try to create video ads in terms of what type of value your products or services can provide to potential customers. For this, you’ll first need to have a firm understanding of your target audience and your ideal buyers. 

3. Mobile Video Ads Should Include Text And Sound

Although there’s no doubting the fact that sound can bring your ads up to the next level, it’s important to realize that a large number of consumers might not end up viewing your ads with their device volume turned on. 

In fact, many people are leery of leaving the volume turned on on their devices, especially when they’re in public because they don’t want to disturb anyone nearby. Furthermore, when video ads are viewed on platforms like Facebook or Instagram, your content won’t be played with audio unless the viewer happens to tap to enable the sound. 

Therefore, if you want your video ads to be as effective as possible, you need to make sure that they make sense with or without sound. Make sure to use a top notch promo video maker to ensure this.

4. Branding And Consistency

As mentioned, modern consumers already have an extremely short attention span. 

In turn, this means that mobile video ads tend to lose their effectiveness as soon as they begin to stray away from the main point, or when they fail to deliver the message in a prompt and efficient manner. 

Therefore, in order to create effective mobile advertisements, marketers need to ensure that their branding is clearly presented at the very beginning of their videos. 

This ensures that viewers will see the name or logo of the brand, even if they don’t watch the video all the way through to its end. 

Furthermore, you’re always going to want to maintain consistency amongst your branding. In other words, the same logos, fonts, colors, and voice should always be used consistently throughout your video ads and other types of promotional content.


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