5 Pro Tips For Creating Video Ads With Sound

If you’ve caught yourself singing a song for hours in the backlog of your brain only to discover it’s from a video ad, you’re not alone. The music inside ads can be some of the most addicting bits of content and last long after your viewing experience has ended. For those of us creating videos, and that should be everyone nowadays, music cannot be treated as an afterthought to your creative.

Choosing the right music for your Promo video is essential for capturing your audience’s attention and helping them connect emotionally to your message. You can choose the same piece of footage and, by adding different music on top of the clip, you will elicit entirely different reactions.

All that said, sometimes it can be tricky to choose which tracks will best serve your video. You may have had an image or even a bit of copy in mind before starting the creation process, but the music changes often once the whole thing is complete.

We decided to bring you advice and guidelines from an expert with over 20 years of experience in the television and advertisement industry, our award-winning Sound Engineer and Music Supervisor, Nimrod Mor.

Here are his top 5 guidelines to follow when you add music to video ads:

Enhance

A recent study found that when the music in an advertisement fits the message and imagery of the commercial, consumers were significantly more emotionally affected and remembered it longer. The first way to enhance your video with music is by identifying the central theme of your video. Is the emotional center love or action or humor? Next choose a track that directly enhances that feeling.

Fun fact: Go over the different music categories available in the music section by clicking the “filters” button. We named our filters in order to assist with this effort.

Contrast

Have you ever put epic promo music on a video of small kittens or a lonely piano song on an action-packed clip?! It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it’s like magic. This contrast will show off your creativity and unique brand tone.

Make them laugh

The best comedy is when we expect one thing and then something else happens. When our expectations and the script in our head is broken. There are no rules to nailing the joke except one: if it makes you laugh, it works. If you can make your audience laugh, you got their attention. If you got their attention, there’s a much better chance they’ll listen to what you have to say. A great exercise is trying to find the most obvious choice and then going the extreme opposite direction. If it makes you laugh then you’ve found the right music.

Funk it up

If you got them moving in their chair, heads bobbing up and down, you’ve got their attention. Sometimes it’s really that simple! Of course, a dance track can’t work for every ad, but you can use them more often than you’d imagine. Someone had to create the first catchy car commercial or cereal ad with the top hit from the radio, right?

Vocals, Vocals, Vocals!

It’s the vocals of a killer track that’ll go straight to the heart. Find a song and lyrics that support your message and let the rockstar musician make your advertisement shine.  It’s likely not surprising to know that a recent study showed a significant emotional-enhancing effect of vocals versus an instrumental track. While this surely is true for own daily playlist choices, it’s also the case when making a video ad.

Final thoughts

Check your video on mute. Sadly, a large portion of your audience will still watch your video on mute so make sure that your message comes across with and without sound.