One billion hours of videos are watched on YouTube every day.  Of those views, about 87.7% are on mobile phones. Additionally, most of those views are from the prime age group for advertisers: 18-34 year-olds. This age group is very coveted as they are starting to earn more income, but haven't developed brand loyalty yet.  In the United States, YouTube reaches more of this target age group than any TV network, and the same can be said for most countries. Here is what you need to know about mobile video advertising.

The value of video advertising

Technology has evolved quite a bit in the past decade, and so has advertising. According to The Guardian, the average person spends about 3 hours on their mobile phone, making it prime real estate for advertisers. Additionally, a quarter of all online purchases are made on smartphones. The average buyer spends about 5 minutes shopping before making a purchase, making high sales velocity a real possibility.

Mobile video advertising is very friendly to businesses of all sizes. Both multinational companies and single shop organizations can easily advertise online. The old form of advertising was expensive, as it could only be blasted to a large audience. With mobile advertising, you can directly target an audience based on their location, age, gender, parental status, and many other variables. 

Video advertising on mobile is just as powerful, and a successful campaign can be done in just a few steps.

How to make videos for mobile advertising

  • Know your customer. This is important for any type of advertising, especially mobile videos. A good exercise is to create a "buyer's persona." Go ahead and write a fictional character that fits your typical customer. What age are they? Do they have kids? What gender are they? Do they have a lot of free time, or are they workaholics? Write out a page or two for your buyer's persona. There are many prompts available online to get you going in the right direction.
  • Draft an ad for your buyer's persona. Now that you know who your customer is, make an ad just for them. If you want your mobile ad to go viral, throw in some humor. Laughs tend to perform well if you are marketing directly to a consumer as opposed to a business. 
  • Make sure your ad will work with no audio. This is especially true if your ad will be viewed on social media sites off of YouTube, like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. According to uscreen, 85% of Facebook videos are watched on mute.  If your video advertisement won't work on mute, then it won't work at all. Make sure some form of captioning is used, and you can get quite creative with text animation as well.
  • Properly target your audience.  Use the buyer's persona you created to properly target your audience. Nearly all social media platforms allow you to do this, as well as using appropriate keywords related to your product. If you are new to keyword planning or mobile video advertising in general, HubSpot Academy offers some great training for free. 
  • Track your results. This step is often skipped by beginners in advertising. Tracking data is probably the most important step. On a macro level, you must know what your Customer Acquisition Cost is (sometimes abbreviated as CAC). Any lender or investor will want to know what your company's CAC is. At the micro-level, isolate different variables in your target demographics. Know which ones perform better, and target those areas.

That is a quick introduction to mobile video advertising. There will be a lot of trial and error with mobile phone advertising, so be patient and be adaptive. Always be creative and innovative with your advertising strategy. 

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