World-renowned Impressionist painter Claude Monet said, "Techniques vary, art stays the same.” Let’s talk about that. Claude was clearly a smart guy because what he had to say applies to an art that wouldn’t exist until about 100 years after he said it: video advertising.

Make no mistake — video advertising is an art, and video advertising techniques do vary. But some techniques are better than others for publishers who are trying to turn their revenue numbers into a masterpiece. In this post, the Playwire team takes you through the video ad techniques every publisher should be using in 2021. Read on.

We can’t do much for you with a brush and canvas, but set the Playwire team loose on your video advertising strategy, and we’ll turn it into a work of art. Ready to reach higher revenue? Contact us today.

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A Video Player Optimized for Viewability

This is probably obvious to you by now, but you need a video player if you want to put video ads on your website. Some crafty publishers like to build their own, but that requires a lot of technical know-how. The good news is that there are plenty of pre-built video players you can use. 

However, you shouldn’t just pick a video player at random. Anyone can stick a video player in the middle of an article and call it a day. And any user on your site can scroll right by that video player without watching the ad. That’s a problem.

The solution is a video player that’s optimized for viewability. Viewability is a video advertising metric that assesses how long users are viewing video ads. It’s a baseline metric that advertisers pay close attention to. To achieve viewability status, at least half of the video player has to be viewed for at least two seconds. Users can scroll a lot faster than that, so how do you pick a player that is “optimized” for viewability?

By choosing one that can dock to a corner of the viewer’s screen after they scroll past it. Playwire’s Trendi video player seamlessly pops out and docks to a corner after a user initiates it.

Video Ad User Experience Testing

Among video advertising techniques, user experience (UX) testing offers some of the best long-term revenue potential. That’s because the whole idea is to find out the maximum number of ad units you can include per content experience without negatively affecting UX. More ads per visit to your site means more revenue for you.

Testing involves a lot of time, tweaking and trial and error. Change something like video ad length or the number of video ads per content video, and see what happens in Google Analytics or a similar tool. If metrics like time on site and bounce rate stay the same or improve, you’re on the right track. If they decline, you know you need to dial it back a little.

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Programmatic Video Ad Sales

Programmatic advertising is a highly automated version of the traditional process of buying and selling ads. It cuts out a lot of the difficult and time-consuming parts of traditional insertion order (IO) buys. Advertisers set up campaigns in demand-side platforms (DSPs), and DSPs connect those campaigns with publishers’ inventory in supply-side platforms (SSPs) or exchanges.

It’s a game-changing advertising technology, and it works with video advertising. In addition to allowing you to skip invoicing, IOs and direct selling, programmatic also connects you with broad demand for your video ad inventory. That means this video advertising technique helps you sell more ads and boost your revenue. 

To learn more, check out our complete guide to programmatic advertising.

Video Header Bidding

Header bidding is both a display and video advertising technique. It’s an extension of programmatic advertising that democratizes the programmatic auction process. Advertisers bid on your video inventory blind to other bids, and you get the best bid. That’s more revenue for you.

Header bidding is complicated. It involves a lot of code and servers and similar headache-inducing tech. But it’s a nearly perfect way to maximize the value of your video advertising efforts. To learn more about how Playwire makes header bidding easy for publishers, click here.

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Read the Complete Guide to Video Ads

Direct Sales

We’ve gone pretty deep into ad tech so far in this post, but let’s step back into the analog world for this last video ad technique. Direct sales are an essential component of any video advertising strategy. Why? Because direct sales can connect you with big-brand ad dollars — the ones that drive your video ad revenue through the roof. 

The Playwire team loves all the ad tech stuff, but we also maintain a global direct sales team because we know how important direct sales are to our publishers. In conjunction with programmatic video and video header bidding, direct video ad sales can be part of the ultimate video ad revenue strategy.

The Top Video Advertising Technique: Working with Playwire

The hard work of mastering video advertising techniques isn’t for everybody — especially publishers who are already crunched for time. Instead of taking on all of the above techniques, you can partner with Playwire and enjoy the revenue benefits all of these techniques bring without wasting your time trying to figure them out. 

Interested? We’re ready to hear from you. Simply contact us online to get started.New call-to-action