Six Principles for Engaging Video and CTV Audiences With Creative Campaigns

The planning and craftsmanship that go into producing video and CTV ads determine whether the campaign can generate genuine excitement—and advance your brand’s mindshare—or fade away as irrelevant background noise with increasingly distracted consumers.

Product awareness, increased sales and brand loyalty are all up for grabs at the launch of a video or connected TV (CTV) ad campaign. Unfortunately, so are the prospects of wasted budgets and missed opportunities. Running a successful video/CTV ad campaign right now requires the right strategy, the right (human) creativity and the power of AI to simplify and automate ad creative and delivery. Here are six boxes to check to deliver video/CTV ads that cut through the noise and connect with customers.

1) Use compelling, engaging copy.

Words matter—especially when your ad only has seconds to capture viewers’ attention. Take special care in crafting copy that includes hooks, surprises and fresh offers that potential customers find hard to ignore. An AI strategy can deliver a big assist here by suggesting concepts and copy that match your brand voice, storytelling style and campaign goals. AI can craft and adapt copy to align with the viewer’s environment in real-time, including the viewer’s location, time of day, the platform where they’re seeing the ad and more.

AI tools can also help deliver brand payloads at scale, such as localized special offers, timed offers (with countdowns in the ads) and the closest local store address for redeeming those offers. This personalization makes the viewer feel that an ad is speaking directly to them.

2) Leverage sonic branding.

The right sounds are crucial to the audiovisual experiences brand campaigns deliver. The opportunity to conjure a rich soundscape of voice, music, tones and other elements that become synonymous with your brand is a powerful one. Consider the iconic sound of a Coca-Cola bottle twisting open, the fizz noise of the soda pouring into a glass of ice and the signature “Ahh” that follows. A viewer feels refreshed and awash in positive memories just hearing those sounds. That’s the power of the sonic branding your campaign should deliver for you.

3) Include catchy hooks.

When it comes to utilizing compelling copy, don’t stop until you find a hook so attention-grabbing that it can’t help but latch onto viewers.

Finish this familiar phrase from GEICO: “15 minutes could…” If you’ve seen one of their ads, the rest is in your head. That’s the power of a great hook. For your brand, it might be a similarly effective phrase, a compelling signature visual or a simple unmistakable sound like a Coke bottle opening. Find that perfect hook, repeat it, and audiences will know your brand by it.

4) Personalize ads for each viewer.

Nothing captures a person’s attention like making it clear you’re speaking to them and them alone. Personalizing video/CTV ad content to the viewer’s specific behaviors and interests tells them that the brand knows them, understands them and is highly relevant to their needs. That connection earns brand loyalty and can build lifelong relationships. Mature AI tools can be particularly instrumental in facilitating this personalization, enabling seamless delivery of customized ads to hundreds of thousands of individual viewers.

5) Keep content fresh.

The right AI integration helps brands tap into big opportunities for eliminating the oversaturation (and, frankly, boredom) of watching the same ad over and over. To solve that issue, brands can feed approved video assets and copy to the AI, and have it produce unique ad concepts that feel like completely different ads. The same AI-powered versioning that drives personalization for each viewer also enables brands to shape ads for distinct audiences.

6) Use A/B testing to guide data-driven video/CTV campaign optimization.

In any modern video/CTV ad campaign, testing and reliance on hard data is essential to proving out what works. AI can now accelerate A/B testing by isolating ad elements—including content, visuals, voice, music, pace, tone and more, and by performing rapid analysis to find an ideal combination that maximizes ad engagement and conversion. There’s no arguing with what works, and AI’s quick cold analysis and iterations can now help find it for you.

Air Ads That Resonate

Video/CTV ads that align with the medium’s best practices demand viewers’ attention. A well-crafted ad can be a pleasure to view and leave customers excited to get their hands on a product, whereas a weak ad might not truly be seen at all. With modern AI ready to drive an all-new pace when it comes to tweaking and fine-tuning ads into the perfect brand experiences, brands have every opportunity to raise the bar on video/CTV ad campaign quality and results.

Simon Dunlop is CMO of Instreamatic.