Promo 2016 Reflection: Why We Put Video Ads In Everyone’s Hands

Over the past almost two years, we witnessed the exponential growth of video content on the internet–it’s simply took over. According to a study conducted by Millward Brown, average video consumers between ages 16 and 45 spend 45 minutes per day watching online videos on their smartphones, 37 minutes on desktop computers, and 20 minutes on tablets.

These numbers led to huge potential for marketers and SMBs to reach more and more people with their company and products. According to Adweek, by 2019, video will account for 80% of all consumer internet traffic. Those numbers indicate that this trend isn’t going anywhere soon and that video marketing with professional video ads is the new black.

Move Over Photos, Memes & Motivational Quotes

Those numbers also indicated, to us at Slidely, that it’s important to rely on video to promote your brand simply, beautifully, and successfully. The days of the stunning, show-stopping still images with an inspirational quote are long gone. As The Guardian famously stated, “if a picture paints 1,000 words, then one minute of video is worth 1.8 million.”

New studies show that 26 percent of internet users look for more information after viewing a video ad and, furthermore, a video on your homepage can increase conversion rates by 20 percent. Basically, right now, if you want to see better success in achieving your objectives and increasing your ROI, you need a good video marketing plan with video ads leading your advertising campaigns as well as inbound and outbound marketing efforts.

Evolving Into Video Ads

When we started Slidely, we created a way to help connect people through creativity. We worked to fuse memories with great music in a shareable, fun way. As we grew in usership (over 140 million users, over 50 million videos, slideshows, and collages created, and well over 300 million views on Slidely to date), we also grew our presence and brand awareness on social media outlets.

We watched as viral videos broke the internet over and over again. We watched as more and more people chose to create and consume social video.

When we switched to sharing more types of videos on our socials, both native and re-shared, we experienced much higher engagement and organic reach overall. One of our native Facebook videos, a little pig eating icecream, generated over 11.5 million views, 95,000 reactions, over 165,000 shares, and almost 40,000 comments.

At that point, we knew that video was the best tool for improving all marketing objectives–not just on social media–and a perfect way to encourage and inspire creativity for brands and small businesses.

Giving You The High Quality Video Content & Tools You Need

So, we created Promo.

It’s a product with a base in our first love (combining creative, stunning visuals and great music) that helps anyone with anything to promote create a beautiful video ad in minutes. Before Promo, making a video came with a heavy price tag and a potentially long creation process: a project that required video editing software, long scripts, actors, cameramen, and producers. A process that ruled out video content for small and medium businesses as well as content and digital marketers.

With Promo, we worked to solve what we call the “content deficit problem” in this new video ad age. Most marketers, freelancers, agencies, and SMBs don’t have the high quality footage needed to make video with impact. Promo gives users access to a catalog of over 2 million premium video clips as well as professionally-curated music to pair with the footage.

We made the creation process as easy as possible. Promo requires no editing skills. Users simply choose the footage and music and the service automatically edits and renders the video. Promo also makes customizing and adding captions and logos much easier than most video editing software.

This ease of creation, coupled with the access to premium dynamic content, helps our users make a series of videos quickly and easily. Through our own experience and research, we understood that one video won’t give you all the results you crave to meet your objectives. One video represents a starting point where you grab attention. Several videos creates a foundation for continued conversations, high brand awareness, better KPIs and higher ROI, and, eventually, brand loyalty.

We created a service that allows anyone to enjoy the benefits and successes of video marketing. Something simple that put great video ads within everyone’s reach regardless of brand or budget size.

Top 5 Promo Videos of 2016

A good video ad should have the right balance of emotional connection, show-stopping video footage, memorable music, and the ability to spread like wildfire: all the good stuff to elicit action. We launched Promo in June 2016 and, since day one, we’ve been lucky enough to view literally thousands of videos created by our users with just those attributes.

These six months taught us so much thanks to some amazing creations and the creativity of our users. So, we wanted to take some time to share them here. In no particular order, here are some our top five Promo video ads of the year.

True Loyalty Entertainment

Talk about eye catching. It makes us want to get up and dance with them. This video literally packs and delivers an awesome punch with the great choice of footage and the amazing music. It clearly communicates their event by letting the images tell the story.

True Loyalty Entertainment from Slidely on Vimeo.

Innovative Agency

This video successfully fuses two very popular viral video stars: kids and animals. It’s simple, cute, and truly tells an effective story in 15 seconds. Also, the captions are clear, concise, and play so very well off the humor in the clip which definitely evokes an emotional reaction and connection.

Innovate Agency from Slidely on Vimeo.

Cravy

This food order and delivery service created not just one video. They created several videos using Promo. All of them successfully connect their messaging (captions) very well with the video. They succeed in telling an anecdotal, completely relatable story throughout their entire series of impressive videos.To see all the video, visit their Facebook page.

Cravy 1 from Slidely on Vimeo.

Pegasus Personal Growth

Not only did they choose very stunning footage and music to evoke an emotional connection, their series of videos saw some serious traction on Facebook. This video alone garnered over 20,000 views and even more great engagement. Also, because of this campaign, “horse” was our most searched term in our video library for the month of October.

Eye Doctors of Washington

This video serves as a great example of using a seasonal theme to connect well with an already holiday engaged audience. In its simplicity, it communicates who they are and how they want to help their patients.

To 2017 & Beyond

The first six months of Promo really humbled us and taught us so much. In 2017, we will continue to work hard and evolve to create more options and functions to help brands and businesses of all sizes succeed with video marketing. Happy New Year and thank you for joining us on this amazing journey so far.