You can design video ads to take full advantage of brand lift by displaying the advertiser’s brand early and often and giving viewers the opportunity to interact with the brand through compelling calls to action.

In addition, in the Mixpo platform, you’ve always had the ability to customize the Player to reinforce brand. For example, you can set Player control colors and size, and you can customize the options available in the INFO menu.

Now, you can take customization one step further. You can choose the Player skin that best suits the advertiser’s brand and the content and tone of each particular Xspot. And, you can choose an INFO menu style to complement the skin.

The following thumbnail images for the same Xspot demonstrate some of the Player skin and INFO menu options.

Default skin

Minimalist skin

Sleek skin

INFO menu icons

More information

Mixpo account holders: Find instructions for how to customize the Player and INFO menu by visiting the Client Resources page, and then searching for skin or INFO menu.

That’s the conclusion from the June, 2009 DoubleClick research report, The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads, which presents the results of a comparison of brand metrics for more than 4,000 online campaigns across a variety of verticals.

If your advertising clients are running Flash banner ads and TV spots separately, you can now offer them an easy way to jump in to the rich-media-with-video space.

In the Mixpo platform, you can upload and customize the two ad formats so that, on click or mouseover, the Flash display ad expands to an Xspot.

The following examples of an expanding 160×600 skyscraper Flash display ad demonstrate the power and flexibility of the feature. (Note: Because these ads are for demonstration purposes only, clickthrough URLs and lead capture emails are directed to Mixpo rather than the actual advertiser.)

Example 1 On mouseover, a 160×600 skyscraper display ad expands to a 400×300 Xspot anchored in the bottom right corner.

Example 2 On mouseover, a 160×600 skyscraper display ad expands to a 400×300 Xspot anchored at the bottom left corner.

Example 3 On mouseover, a 160×600 skyscraper display ad expands to an 800×600 Xspot anchored at the center right.

You can access all of the performance data for the two associated ads in one easily accessible location.

But remember, even the most effective format can’t compensate for weak content.

In a MediaPost article, Judy Franks, principal of The Marketing Democracy and faculty member at Northwestern University, reminds agencies and advertisers that “People love good video content and they’ll take it wherever they can get their hands on it.”

The cautionary advice in a 2007 Beyond the Click article that all online video ads are not created equal is just as true in 2009. While data from 101 campaigns showed that all video ad campaigns positively moved at least some branding metrics, the most memorable campaigns performed dramatically better than the least memorable. In fact, least memorable campaigns had little or no effect on brand favorability or purchase intent.

More information

Mixpo subscribers can learn more about expanding display ads by visiting the Create page, and then clicking Can I run a display ad using the Mixpo platform?

“Everybody involved in television is aware that runaway costs would be just another reason to walk away from TV as an advertising medium,” he related. “So as a result, I think all of us who believe in television are trying hard to keep it viable on a cost basis. For some clients, cost determines which medium to go into and our industry has a stake in keeping television alive since it is a foundational medium for so many of the other ones.”

Note is last point: one way to ‘control’ costs is to get more out of what you created. Extending TV ads online makes perfect sense rather than creating a wholly separate campaign online.

Growth will be fueled by search and display. Within display, spending on rich media and video will double between those same years.

Further evidence that the display ad unit is not dead but being overhauled to richer and more interactive ads.