Promoting Your Products with Video

Update: JW7 is now released! Check it out here.

Many of our customers use video as a means of showcasing their products.  Whether a website’s purpose is to sell t-shirts or network routers, video creates an interactive and engaging experience for users to learn about the benefits of the product.   Combine video with the reach of the world wide web, and you have an effective viral marketing campaign.  But beyond describing the virtues of what you’re selling, you’ll actually want to sell it.

That’s where Adtonomy Text can be of assistance.  Designed to run overlay text ads during video playback, Adtonomy Text is ideally suited to display a call-to-action while a user is engaged in learning about your product.  Here is an example using a video that promotes our Bits on the Run product and text overlay ads encouraging the user to sign-up.

While video allows for audio and visual demonstration of products and services – overlay text ads act as a parallel promotional tactic that provide quick, easy links to a product page.

Configure the Adtonomy Text Plugin

Adtonomy is a commercial plugin, so you’ll need to purchase a license and configure your player to use it.  Part of the configuration process is to create an XML file with the ads you intend to serve.

Start by determining which product video you want to promote.  Once selected, prepare the following: a thumbnail image and the titles & descriptions for your promotional links.  Be selective with your titles and descriptions – descriptions should be concise and action-oriented with phrases like “Buy Now”, or “Receive 50% off Today”.   For best results, we recommended linking your Adtonomy Text Ads directly to an order form, or the product’s promotional page.

You can create an XML file as shown below.

  
    
            description="Try out Bits on the Run with a free, 30 day trial." length="0:08" link="http://www.longtailvideo.com/bits-on-the-run/sign-up"
      image_url="adimage1.gif"/>
      
        
        
      
    
    
            link="http://www.longtailvideo.com/bits-on-the-run/sign-up"/>
      
        
        
      
    
  
      overlay_reopen_color= "0x333333"
    overlay_background_color= "0x333333"
    overlay_title_color= "0x669900"
    overlay_description_color= "0xffffff"
    overlay_link_color= "0x669900"
    overlay_linkover_color= "0x99CC66"
    overlay_mouseover_color= "0x99CC66"
  />
  
    
      
    
    
      
    
  

Customize the Experience…

You can customize your text overlay ads by changing some of the the following features:  ad position, ad color (background, title, description, etc.), and ad dimensions.  You also choose how many ads to display throughout the video, and where they should appear.  See in the example above where we’ve timed one ad to appear 3 seconds into the video and display for 8 seconds, then the second ad appears at 20 seconds and displays for 10 seconds.

You might also notice the impression and clicktrack tags in the XML, those allow you to report back to your own server when an ad is displayed to or clicked by the user.  It is important to leverage analytics as best you can to measure the effectiveness of your promotional campaign.  You should consider A/B testing different variations of your ads to determine which one resonates most effectively with your user base.

We hope you find this a helpful tip when using video to promote your products.  If you need assistance with Adtonomy, please visit our Adtonomy Video and Text Forums or contact support.