Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Kaitlyn Rossi, and I'm the creative director here at Storyblocks. Storyblocks is a subscription media service that helps creators and businesses make better video content faster than ever. We do this by offering unlimited access to an award winning library of stock footage, audio images, templates and more. And we offer the most comprehensive license coverage in the industry. I'm joined today by Kristen von Royen and Kyle Weaver of Superside. Superside is also a subscription based service that extends the creative skills, perspectives, and capacity of in house creative teams. They're trusted by more than four hundred fifty brands across the globe, including storyblocks. Kirsten is an experienced strategist specializing in digital marketing, video production, motion, and immersive design, In her role as a head of video strategy at Superside, she leaves a team who works on projects for large scale customers. She also creates a weekly round up of news and trends in video and immersive sign on LinkedIn. Kyle is an experienced marketer and creative specializing in video ad production and strategy. In his role as the associate creative director at Superside, he manages a team that leads in house production, ad creative, motion design, and video content work. He also speaks fluent metaphor and outside of his nine to five is an author and a painter. Today, we're gonna be talking about how to produce and test B2B videos that actually perform. Kyle and Kirsten are gonna explain the core tactics that superside uses to make sure the videos that they create are effective and how they measure ROI. They have lots of specific stats and examples to share, so we're really excited to get into that. Before we dive in a quick PSA, you should see a Q and A tab to the right of your screen. You can submit questions there at any point during the event, and we're gonna answer them at the end. So we're not gonna touch on them as we go, but please keep them coming, and we'll get to as many as possible during Q and A at the end. We'll also be sending out a recording of today's webinar afterwards, so you can watch it on demand, share it with your colleagues, or revisit anything that we cover today. So with that, I'm going to hand it off to Kyle, who is gonna get us started today. Thank you. And, welcome, everybody. So, I wanna start out with a stat that really highlights the main challenge that, you'll face in video marketing, and that's the fight for attention. The average person is exposed to between four thousand and ten thousand ads per day. And before you start retracing your steps, and trying to figure out, how that's actually possible, let me stop you because there's a catch. Your brain is wired to subconsciously tune out distractions so you can focus on whatever it is that you're doing. It's that filtering, that kinda keeps your eyes on the road instead of locking on to every billboard you drive past. And every store front sign you see. And without that filtering, we'd be distracted by every sight and sound that's happening around us. So because of that, only a small percentage of the ads that you're exposed to through the day will actually make its way through to your conscious brain. And today, we'll play through a bunch of ads that we've made at Superside that haven't just won that battle for attention, but they've left a mark and led to results. I'll break down the keys to their success, and hopefully you'll be able to take these approaches and apply them to your own marketing. So your brand can get the same sort of feedback that we've received. But it's not just social comments, the ads that I'll show you today have generated over twenty three hundred book calls over eight and a half thousand form fills, for events and downloads, along with over ten thousand social shares. And these numbers are the product of about just five ads. Now over the last year at Superside, my team has put together about three to four video ads per month And it's through this kind of ridiculous volume of work that we've learned a lot and, a lot more than we could fit into a single webinar. But the four tactics that'll go through today, are considering ad placement connecting with the person over the employee, following the numbers, and lastly, how to hold and, grab attention. And with that, we can dive in starting with ad placement. So something that I assume most of us know by now is that no one is going on social media to see the video ads that we as brands are making. And essentially, like, by being there, we are crashing a party that we haven't been invited to. So sticking with this party metaphor, when I'm coming up with a video ad, one of the first things that I think about is What are people doing at the party that I'm crashing? Because my ad should align with that. So if it's a dance party, I need to bring music. And if it's a real rager, I need to bring drinks. My ad needs to play into what people are looking for, on the platform or at the party because If I show up to a party and immediately start forcing my own agenda, it's not gonna go well for me, and no one's gonna want me there. My ads, they're definitely gonna fail. So again, signal with that metaphor, I can't bring, like, a a karaoke machine to a quiet dinner party and expect results. So I'll show you this, first ad, and then, I will talk about what made it so successful in regards to this strategy. How do you professionally say I won't be able to design your ads by tomorrow because it's seven pm and guess what? I'm still at the office. Is the deadline flexible? I'll need more time to deliver top quality work. Is the deadline flexible? I'll need more time to deliver top quality work. Okay. How do you professionally say it's like a rectangle with some text, not the frigging mona lisa? For these designs, we need to prioritize speed over quality. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. Don't need to reinvent the wheel. Do you have a death wish? Okay. Well then how do you professionally say if you had any If you need quality creative done fast, try superside. Yeah. It's probably better. So here we built on top of a concept that we originally found on TikTok, and we infused it with themes that were central to our audience. The whole ad was shot on an iPhone, and we deliberately went for this sort of low fi aesthetic to make our video ad look more a post that your friend might share instead of looking like an ad. And as a result, this one generated, six hundred and fifty booked calls and eleven thousand social shares to go along with a lot of really positive comments. And it's safe to say that a lot of people are on forms like Instagram and TikTok to be entertained or to find content to share with their friends because they can relate to it in some sort of way. So That's what we've tried to deliver here while still connecting back to our brand. And because our ad is aligning with what our audience is looking for, It's not getting turned or it's because it's aligning with what our audience is looking for, it's not getting tuned out. As a distraction by that subconscious wiring that I was talking about. And, next, if my own slides, what Vance's? I wanna circle back to, something that I just mentioned, which is creating video ads that your audience can relate to. And by this, I think most people Probably, I would hope at this point, understand that b to b is still really business to person. But when it comes to ads, I think a lot of brands are still sort of defaulting to treating their audience or those people like its list of job titles with responsibilities without really factoring in that human element. And with this in mind, when I'm coming up with an ad, I've, of course, wanna think about who my audience is at work, but I'm more concerned with imagining who they are after work when they're venting to their partner about their day or meeting up with their trusted circle of coworkers for dinner. As a marketer, that's what I need to tap into you because that's when my audience is going to show how they authentically feel, which means that's what I need to channel, in my advertising to show that we at Superside actually get what our audience is going through. And so with that, I'll play through this next ad which was for a guide that we published, and it generated over five thousand form fills. Good morning design team. Hoping up, Trudy. Of course not. What do you mean? I don't think we're getting bounced. Well, I'm launching a new campaign. Not really so. Four weeks, I mean, we buy that I sent you a brief with all the sizes and platforms. I invited you to a kickoff meeting on Friday, and I included some references for little inspo now that Eugenis has made it. I'll get out of your hair. Let me know if you need anything. Thanks. Oh, no. He didn't forget anything. It's all so reasonable. What is oh my god? Yeah. I just sent them super sized design assumptions to you. It reveals how brands like Shopify are bridging the gaps between marketing and design and aligning their teams to do their best work. It's packed with success stories, dots, surveys and strategies that you can implement right now. Okay. So here, our audience, was designers. And, a group of designers, they're not gonna go out after work and talk about reducing the friction in a design they're gonna go out and they're gonna talk shit about the jerk from marketing who absolutely sucks at briefing projects. So that's what we try to hit on here because that's what's real to our audience. And that's how I'll make my audience essentially feel something when they see an ad that's coming from superside. We'll be the brand that, actually gets it unlike the other brands that are pretending to relate by just, I guess, tugging on superficial threads. And I don't know about all of you here, but to me, I personally can't stand when a brand tries to connect with me through a bunch of corporate platitudes. It's like the ad version of a LinkedIn cold call. That's a clear cut and paste job. When you go the other way and consider your audience as people who actually feel things. These are the sorts of comments that you can get. And to me, this one specifically was an absolute home run. I've never felt so seen. That's exactly what we're going for. Especially at the top of the funnel because this is where we value things like awareness and recognition and affinity. And so next, I'm going to talk about following the numbers. And by that, I mean, using add performance data to guide your creative explorations, but first, I will now pass it off to Kirsten to really dig in on performance metrics for video. Perfect. Thanks, Kyle. So the world of video measurement can be a little bit scary. We live in a world where we have lots and the data available to us, the platforms inundate us with information about how our audience is behaving, and to try and help us understand how the content is unfolding in the eyes of the audience. But to really master video measurements, I've tried to make it as simple as possible to look at three key pillars and really understand what you're measuring in each, section of it. So Kyle touched a little bit on targeting and assets, and I'm gonna spend a bit of time today chatting about behavior. So what do we want our audience to feel, think, act after seeing our video ads? And more importantly, how do we tie that her tangible number in marketing and in business to understand this. Alright. Classic marketing final. Understanding where your video content connects with your audiences, at what stage of the marketing panel is really important to understand the blueprint. On how you're going to measure your video success. So each phase of the funnel should have a key, a primary metric and then some complementary metrics that can help you tell a deeper story, on how the video is really connecting with the audience. The challenge is, as I've mentioned, we have lots and lots and lots of data to have a look at. So how do we know what we need to be measuring and how do we narrow it down? To just a handful to help us paint a bigger picture and then allow us to take the big swings in our video marketing. Before I dive into picking KPIs and mastering the art of, measurement, I also want to, let you know that it's really important that, you're not only measuring the marketing KPIs, but you're looking at the business KPIs to and seeing how the two interplay together for better overall success because when they work together, then you can really see the needle moving on both fronts. And just an example of how you can lay it out in a really easy way to understand, you know, if your audience is being reached, by your type of funnel ad that your engagements and watch time rates are really looking great that the business metrics new subscription should be moving in the right direction for you. So then you're really set up for success. Okay. So I love this quote, because everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it'll live its whole life believing that it's stupid. And I love it because it really translates beautifully into understanding video and where it plays in the marketing funnel. And being able to understand what you wanna measure, about, the fish in this case, your videos. And their primary goal, it really makes those conversations easier because your one minute TV commercial designed to tell a beautiful story might not be driving the sales that you're looking for on the bottom line, but that's not what it was designed to do. It was really designed to be able to build strong connections with your audience, and build the pipeline of future customers. So being really consistent and focused on the process of capturing the right data, can help you optimize, not only the numbers, but the resource that you have available, really should be spending your energy and optimizing content. And Kyle will spend a bit of time on that on how we do that at Superside. And it also will then open up the doors for you to find actionable insights that helps you make, informed decision to optimize the video content moving forward. Cool. So the arts of measurement, start with your objectives. What is the business one to achieve, and what do you want to achieve in marketing. And then consider where in the funnel your video is going to play, and different types of video, will drive different objectives, and you'll have different KPIs for that. Then you'll also be looking at, how your audience is going to engage, how you expect them to engage, and what you'll be looking for from that perspective to create some secondary KPIs maybe tapping into some technical performance. So where are we seeing a drop off and how, our audience is watching the video? And understand what kind of links are gonna work for you on that channel and then benchmark and iterate. So benchmark, against the industry, but most of all bench talk against the own kind of content that you're creating. How is it performing against past campaigns, even if you've just played in the static realm? How is it stacking up against what you were seeing And really, the power of video analytics doesn't lie in the quantity of the data, but the selection of an application of the KPIs, that align with your marketing goals to be able to give you actionable insights. So actionable insights What are they? What do they do? And as a strategist, it's my favorite place to play because it's like piecing together a puzzle and make a map of where we should be going with our content. And I've just popped some tips here that will help you identify, easy ways to find an actionable insight, and tap into the date so that really matters. So you're looking for patterns and anomalies. So For example, pinpointing the segments with your video where you see a spike in engagement or an unexpected drop off in viewership, and that can lead you to see some interesting future creative decisions and optimization of the content at hand. If you're looking at viewer behavior, so under down in your audience. So knowing who watches your content and how they interact it will really provide you with the blueprint to how to continue to optimize that content. Then in terms of content features, this can really reveal what resonates, with your audience and why certain videos outperform others, and then benchmarking. I've said it once. I'll say it again. I'll probably bring it up a bit later, but it allows you to contextualize your data and help this help keep you on track and help you distinguish with what's really working well and what isn't. But the problem is you have all this information and how do we turn all of these insights into action. So a couple of easy ways to look at it, it's about seeing the opportunities in the data. And transforming those observations into strategies where they're going to make an impact. So if you're crafting how to videos and you're seeing a really high engagement on it, as I've put in the example here, the action could be, okay, let's create more of that kind of content based on, content that is tailored to, audience interest or perhaps exploring a new audience. So start by playing in these areas, finding what is working, and then optimizing full success and being brave in taking the next step and turning those insights into actions. Cool. I mean, in insights implementation tying right up to the top where we were talking about the three areas that we're measuring, that we're not just optimizing, we're innovating the content. So you need to fine tune the narratives and the assets, tailor, who you're talking to in the target audience, maybe in your paid ads, you need to adapt your targeting, and making those adjustments so that you're seeing the behavior needle move. Not only again with video, but also within the business metrics. Cool. And to wrap up this section of data, so you can look at more Kyle's great at, the journey that we take from data to action, we're not just analyzing your storytelling with the data. So it's about embedding the insights into the, every facet that you're creating in your video content and creating a feedback loop within your team within the audience you're connecting with, that continuously allows you to refine and, evaluate your content. So you're not only reaching and resonating audience, but it's moving the needle within your business. Now the question comes up, how do we test an iterate video successfully? Well, Jackly Kyle is back on screen, and he can take you through how we've approached this at Superside and how we're leveraging assets in that regard. So where I left off was on this idea of following the data and using it, using performance to guide your decision making and creative exploration. And what I'm gonna show you here in a second is a clear cut example of a time that we put this into action. So this ad on the left was made to promote an online event that we have late last year about how brands were using AI. Once we play it through, you'll see how it uses a hook that focuses in on the fear as many people were having at the time about AI. So again, we're focused in on feelings. So if we just play that Yeah. I can already do all these amazing things in marketing and design. And I feel like I'm so far behind as it is. Can't eat. I can't sleep. I don't have to do You don't need to worry about AI, but you do need to know how to use it. To get started, you should attend SuperSide's virtual summit. Promise. Join us December fifth to hear how marketing and creative leaders are using AI to drive growth and performance. They'll share So in two months, this ad generated a thirty five hundred leads at a cost per lead that was sixty five percent cheaper than what our target was. So it performed really well. So instead of coming up with a new idea from scratch for our next ad, we thought, how can we squeeze more juice out of concept that's clearly hitting on something. So, we kept the intro. We kept the creative concept, but we wrote a new ending and paired it with a new closing animation to make the ad not about our own event, but about Superside's own use of AI. And so from there, so far this ad is still running right now. It's, resulted in three fifty book calls. AI can already do all these amazing things in marketing and design. And I feel like I'm so far behind as it is. Can't eat. I can't sleep. What to do. While AI can do some things on its own, you get the best results when you combine it with human creativity. And that's what you get with Superside. The world's best designers, using AI as a tool to aerial production, explore idea. Thank you. And to just go a little bit deeper on our own personal testing process, each new ad that we launch is put through a test campaign with a small audience, where all of the videos are giving the same budget they all have equal opportunity to succeed. And from there, they go up against each other along with the best ad from our latest batch of ads. Which essentially, in this case, acts as the bar. And so whatever ads are able to clear that bar or at least, put up a fight against that proven ad. Those ones then go through to our main tofu and bofu campaigns that contain our full audience. And so by using this test campaign, we can try out new things without too much risk, or investment And then at the same time, by putting our new ads up against our top performers from past ad batches, we maintain a standard where adding to hit a certain level of production to get circulated with our full audience. And when an ad performs well, we think about the ways that it can be adapted and recycled to fit in with another camping, like I just showed. Now the next ad that I'm going to show, you, is a good example of what my final point is today, and that's about grabbing and holding attention. It's a brand new ad that we, just put it recently. So I don't really have any stats on it. But I wanted to show it anyways because, it's very different from the ads that I've shown so far. Over the last year, we've had a lot of success with those sort of low fi TikTok ads that I, described earlier. But we, as a creative company, we don't wanna limit ourselves to one style or strategy. We have to keep exploring so that we don't get stale in our approach, and so that we don't blend in with trends that start to develop in advertising. I know that these sorts of, like, low fi TikTok ads, they're pretty popular now. I don't wanna say that we were the first people doing it, but now that we're seeing more and more of our competitors do these sorts of things, we're trying to go the other way. Really raise our production value. So earlier, I talked about a few ways to bypass the subconscious wiring that we all have, in order to grab attention. But with this ad, I'm more concerned about keeping the attention of your audience. Long enough to actually do something with that attention, whether that be building brand awareness or pitching a service. And, while I don't have conversions for this ad to kinda prove its value, I can say that in our test campaign, it registered a forty nine percent thumb stop rate, some thumb stop ratio, which means that half the people who have been served this ad have at least watched three seconds of it, which that might not seem like, a lot, but when you're on platforms where you can just immediately skip ads and scroll on by, the fact that people are sticking around to kind of see where this goes proves that it's, a testament to holding attention and actually doing something with it. So with that, we can play this ad and I'll walk through it a little bit more afterwards. Hey. Let's make this great. Hey. Tell me what you need. You'll be out of here in two minutes. I need to send a message. Something that will really grab attention. Came to the right place. Wow. Yes. You can get real creative with this one, but If you want more of a widespread, I recommend this. Digital ads and social media graphics. SuperSide can design a campaign for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. Just fill out the brief in there. That's it. You're sure that SuperPsychica done time. I need it by Friday. Okay. Look. Superside only hires the designers in the game, they're fast and they use AI. You're not gonna get creative that performs like this anywhere else. If you have any questions, You've quoted this address. Tell them I sent you. Alright. So there's a lot happening with the structure of this ad, and it's all based around idea of keeping attention. So first, we take no time to set things up. The viewer is immediately put into the action. And from there, the narrative builds intrigue by working its way towards a reveal, which is contextualized by our pitch four superside. So, basically, we're making a bet that the setting, the lighting, the music, and the opening lines hey, let's make this quick. We'll grab attention. Building towards the reveal will then generate interest, and hopefully it's enough interest that people will listen to the pitch to get that sense of resolution. So it's kinda like, what is this about? What is this about? Oh, it's about super side. What is superside because now I'm invested? And it's all these little things that add up to make an ad that's worth watching. And that might seem like a ridiculous statement until you go on TikTok or Instagram and scroll social media, and you see that millions of people are watching long cutting time lapse videos. And me personally, like, I'm a big sucker for a good DIY video because I wanna see what that finished product looks like the second that I start watching. And, that's really just a great tactic for holding attention. Now on that note of boring lawn cutting videos, I wanna make it clear that holding attention doesn't always hinge on a creative concept. And, this final ad that will show, is an example of that. And this one's generated almost seven hundred calls. It's actually, I believe, the most successful ad we've had, at least that's in this presentation. And, the first line of this ad is literally this is an ad. This is an ad for Superside, but, Dorry, I'll make it fast. We're not an agency. We're a creative subscription that's basically The great extension of our team. We deliver all this to brands like these. The quality is top tier. The speed is unmatched in the platform where you request projects and communicate with your dedicated project manager and creative lead is as straightforward as it gets. Kinda like this ad, so click to learn more. So this ad works because we're straight up with our audience. We know that they really don't wanna see another ad, so we make it quick we make it as direct as possible. There's no fluff. There's no jargon. We don't trick anybody. We don't manufacture any hype. And as a result, It sort of endears us the viewer because we're on their side. We're opposing all of the ads. They're wasting their time trying to trick them into buying something. And if you pay close attention, you might have caught the fact that that the, the second line of this ad was actually I'll make it quick and That's not all that different from the opening line of the last ad that we watch, which was, hey, let's make this quick. And that's not a coincidence. With this ad performing as well as it did, we thought about what elements are working here that we can carry forward to a more creative concept. Which we did with our parking garage at. So again, that's just another example of analyzing your wins finding what's worked and finding ways to carry that forward and build off of that success in the work that follows. So, with that, here's a high level summary of what I've talked about, broken down into actions and considerations that can inform your own approach to video ads. So first, no one is looking for your ad. No one has to watch your ad. You need to make something that's worth watching. Your audience is made up of people who feel things. They're not just a collection of job titles who exist only in the confines of their office. And lastly, none of this is random. You're going to have to try some things and learn from your wins as well as your losses. And so these are just four of the many things that me and my team are thinking about when we're producing our ads. And As a sort of strategic compass, these considerations have generated a ton of calls and a ton of positive comments, but I do wanna make it clear that your video strategy has to be more than these four principles, as Kristen sort of described rarely are you going to have a video that hits on all fronts? I'd like to think of video as, tools in a toolbox, essentially. Each style or format, has its own specific intended purpose. And when you bring all of these tools together, that's when you have a complete video strategy. If you want widespread awareness, fire up your iPhone and record those TikTok ads. And if you want something to convert more down funnel, consider renting some high end equipment so your production quality speaks to the standard of your business and the standard that your customers can expect. And if you want all of that, And here's the final, superside plug. We offer end to end video services. So we cover everything. And, with that, that's the end of our presentation, and we can jump into the Q and A. Cool. So we're gonna answer some questions now. Before we jump in really quick, quickly, I wanna plug our next webinar, which is going to be on April twenty fourth. The topic is what businesses can learn from creator led brands it's going to feature a panel of creators turned entrepreneurs and creator economy experts. Lauren Zoltick will be back hosting again next month. Be on the lookout for more details about that event and how to sign up. Also, if you're interested in other content from us, you can head over to storyblocks dot com slash resources. We have a ton of great blog articles, more webinars, white papers, and courses to learn about video marketing, editing, social media, We even have a guide on, how to test video creative, kind of like we touched on today. This webinar will be available again their tomorrow, and we'll be sending that out to everyone via email as well. Finally, check out our guest Superside on Instagram LinkedIn, Tik talk in YouTube to see more of those great ad examples that you got today, and you can visit their website to learn more about what they offer. And with that, we're gonna jump right into our Q and A. Yeah, so the first question I'm gonna kick off with is, I think for maybe Kirsten, but what tools do you use to measure engagements? I'm a videographer who provides my clients with videos to post on their social platforms so I don't get to see the metrics behind the curtain on their social media besides what's on their social media pages. Yeah. That's a great question. If you had access, you would be able to obviously lift a curtain and see a deep level of engagement. There are a couple of free tools out there that allow you to look at a very high level, do some competitor analysis, but to be honest, just looking at the videos you've created, looking at the likes, how many people have liked it, what the comments are like, you'll get a good idea of how, of how it's performing. So a little bit of a manual process, but looking at the front end can give you enough information to be able to optimize. And I don't think there's anything wrong with asking your your clients to see some of the data from the performance so you can create better content for them. Anything you wanna add to that? Yeah. Sorry. I was just typing a response in the chat here. Something something else to think about too. And this is just like a personal anecdote that that might apply to a person asking. I'd say if you're creating video content for brands and you wanna know how they perform, post them to your own, social platforms as well. Every ad that my team produces, I'll put it out on my organic LinkedIn, and it's been really interesting to see the difference in reception when it's coming from my personal channel versus the super side brand channel. And it's also a way to kinda like breathe new life into your work. As well. And who knows? If you're doing this, work on behalf of brands, maybe, like, they they would get something out of that as well. Like, you would assess actually be acting as an influencer promoting, their product through your own videos. That's a great point. I love that. Another question here, how do you collect viewer behavior engagement spikes in drop off, and other metrics and insights. So I guess what are some of the tools that you all are using to look at these metrics? Oh, again, these are deep make and they live within the platforms themselves. So, I think it's the same person who's a bit of the previous question. So I'm I'm answering to that. It's not something you'd be able to see on the front, but if you have business accounts like, Kyle was saying you're able to post it yourself and be able to track it, or again, you'll be able to get that information from the brands that you're working for, and it's in all of the ad centers and in all of the, like, content engagement centers for all of the platforms. So you'll be able to get that information really easily. And I can just jump in there as well. I believe, on Facebook, for Facebook ads and Instagram ads, that's where a stat like the thumb stop ratio comes in. It lets you know, as I said, about the one ad, many people are watching after the three second mark, and I believe it carries over to, like, ten seconds, fifteen seconds as well. And you can see where that audience drop off starts happening. Yeah. I'll also add outside of ads. You know, we host some of our videos at at storyblocks on, platforms like YouTube and Wistia, and both of those have, pretty deep engagement metrics where you can actually see where your audience is, watching more of your video where they drop off, who's rewatching. So a lot of platforms have some form of, those engagement you can look into. The next question here, this has to do with, kind of video testing. How long of a time period approximately are you running a test campaign over? So I don't know, like, if if this is unique to Superside, but the way that we run our ads, we essentially, like, squeeze the fruit till it's not given any more juice so we take all of the ads that do well in our test campaigns. We put them in our top funnel and bottom funnel campaigns. And from there, it's like only the strong survive. After I believe probably every month, whatever ad is sort of in the last plays out of that batch will get bumped for the ads that do well in our test audience. So we're constantly cycling in new ads, but We've had certain ads that have stayed in our campaign for seven or eight months, just because they continue to outperform some of the new stuff that we're, putting out. And something else that we actually have as an internal metric for my team is, I believe the acronym is NASA, and I'm not gonna be able to remember what it stands for, but essentially what it is is every month we look at our advertising, and we see how much, money the algorithms are giving to old ads versus new ads. And Facebook will give money based on what ads are performing best with your audience. And so every month, we wanna see, like, a NAS of I believe seventy percent. So that lets us know that, any ad, we we measure a new ad by being one that's, three months old or less. Every month when we measure our NASS, we wanna see that seventy percent of the budget is going to new ads versus old ads. That's just a way to keep us outperforming ourselves. But it's also a way to make sure that our ads aren't getting stagnant, and we're also, or we're always getting kind of new messages, out in front of people. Yeah. I guess if, like, a brand can't take that approach, I normally recommend a six week testing window to just ascertain what is working and what is not working, within the metrics that you're tracking, and also something to consider, particularly if you're looking to draw, to drive long form video content. Views, testing your thumbnails, or maybe snippets of those video on other channels. So if you're putting the videos on YouTube as an example for people to go and watch there, testing short forms of those to see, like, which five seconds is going to capture someone tension when it's in a YouTube fee to be able to see, how you should optimize the long form content. So there's ways you can test it across platforms. There's testing, just AB testing, but, yeah, if it's ads AB testing, so you can test, learn which one works in scale, across maybe multiple ad sets. I would say a minimum of six weeks, just to allow the algorithms to do what they do best. One more question on testing. How much does early testing, audience selection, and targeting, influence the performance of your ads in addition, what's a typical testing budget that you're working with? Those are details that I, I don't have, unfortunately. I'm more on the the creative end more so than the, the measuring side. So, yeah, getting into numbers is not something, or at least like budgets isn't really something I can speak to. But again, like the indicators of success, we kind of let the algorithm decide that's how, like, ads are circulated, how the budget is decided for one ad versus another. As I mentioned in the test audience, every ad gets the same budget. So everyone has the equal every ad I should say. They're not people. Each ad has equal opportunity to succeed. But when they're put into the main audience on the main campaigns, that's where we let the algorithm kind of decide what one is performing best. Yeah. If I can chime in, Strata just loves the framework, I would recommend look at your total budget. Spend seventy percent of your budget on what you know works for your brand. Spend twenty percent of it really testing to, like, find nuances and then ten percent, like, just playing, like, testing new audiences, like, out of the fields of things that you would normally play in. But it's not much help, in terms of an actual number, but knowing your marketing budget, you should be able to have a look at it, from that perspective. And then the same applies to create a rollout, seventy percent, and what works, twenty percent, on testing and ten percent what I call the effort budget. Like, let's just put random things out there and see what works best. I love that. I'm gonna shift a little bit to some questions about creative. So what happens if you've done everything in your power to make what you believe are engaging ads. You've looked over the analytics and the targeting your apps are not performing to your expectations. Does this mean that it's a bust or how do you take that information? It's it's a constant adventure, I think. Like, first off, you have to look at everything. So, like, look at the thumbs up ratio. So are you losing people right at the beginning? That'll let you, kinda look in at maybe the intro has to change if you're getting good comments, but not great results, maybe that means that you're casting too wide of a net, or it could mean that, like, your and and we've run into this before where, like, our ads are like entertaining, but maybe they're not doing enough to speak to the value that we're providing as a business. So that CTA or, like, action isn't really there. So I I'd like to think that, like, every ad win or lose comes with something that you can learn. And at, like, while we've run into for, where we do an ad that we think is going to do really well, and and it it doesn't. We've had ads as well where we almost, like, that last ad that I showed with me talking on the mic. We almost didn't run that ad because none of us were really excited about it, but that's where, like, experimentation really comes in you have to, like, with all creative work, to an extent, it's throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks, and then figure out why it's sticking or why it didn't stick using all of the sort of metrics that Kirsten went into. Hopefully that answered the question. If it didn't feel free to follow-up in the chat or message me on LinkedIn. I I'll throw this out there as well. Anyone who's, like, still here I'm super active on LinkedIn. I'm always open to talking about video strategies and video ads and stuff. Last webinar I had, I had a couple people follow-up and I did kinda consult calls with them. No charge or anything like that. I just I'm I'm a nerd for this stuff. So I'd love to hear what you have going on. One more question kind of based on that last ad example. You just mentioned, why did you choose to hold the lav mic instead of dress it? Yeah. Because that, at that time, was a weird TikTok thing that everyone was doing. So that plays back into that idea of you want your ads to look like native content. To bypass that filtering system. You don't want some to see your ad and immediately go. This is an ad. Go away. You want them for a split second to think, is this just some random guy who's gonna tell me something that might be funny because he's on TikTok? I don't know where that trend came from, but we've done the exact same one as well. So, yeah, hold your lav mics for the next I don't know, month or so. Yeah. Alright. Let's see one more on I created, what's the optimum length for your ads? The shorter, the better. Definitely. But you wanna still, like, it's it's a balancing act. Like, my my kinda like a hard and fast rule is, like, definitely nothing over, like, fifty seconds. That five zero, not fifteen. I typically, like, would try to cap out at, like, forty five seconds, but you wanna make sure that you're, like, telling the full story, you don't want to just make something short for the sake of being short. But on the flip side, you wanna make sure that, like, you're getting into the action fast, as I said, with with one of the ads, you wanna cut all the fluff. You want to be running with, like, the bare when it comes to your messaging. Also, I'm a, like, firm believer in this. Your website has to do something as well. Like, it's not your ads responsibility to make the sale. It's your ad's job to get the person in line or in the door or on a sales call drum up the interest, and I think a lot of the time ads get extended in length because people are trying to trying to do too much with them. Kristen, did you have any thoughts on that as well? I know like you're not as involved on, like, the ad side, but Yeah. I was looking desperately for clap emoji because I was like, yeah. Getting her ad length right, not getting it too long. Left site has to work. Yeah, it again depends. Like, what is the purpose of the content? What do you want it to do? Your your apps absolutely should be short. You need to grab attention. You're a big intrusive in somebody's feed, but you can make your content a little bit longer if it's there to do a tutorial or how to and people are organically just stumbling upon that, as a brand, as a thought leader. So again, play test, see what works in what spaces. But, yeah, shorter the better and website has to work hard. And I I think maybe tie back into one of the previous questions. When like an ad fails, if you're going off of say, like, conversions or form fills or something like that, Your ad might not be failing. Your ad might be fantastic. It might be the landing page that sucks. It could be that there is no connection between the landing page and the note that you left that user on with your advertising. So this is something that I I see a lot in the kind of user flows is you'll see an ad that will be about a certain thing use certain language, and then you'll land on a landing page And the headline will have nothing to do with what you just listened to or what you just saw. The branding might even look different. And that is such a disjointed experience that it can leave your audience feeling like, am I in the right place? Like, is this actually what I wanna be doing based on what I just saw? So, like, when you're evaluating your ads, it doesn't just stop at looking at the video metrics. It also includes, like, what's following that ad in that user flow. Yeah. We've gotta one more minute. So I'm gonna try to get to two more questions here. So how does attention span or actually lack of attention span play into the work that you're creating? It's huge. That's that's why, like, we do ads that open with this is an ad, but I'm gonna be really quick. We know that people don't have, a lot of attention, especially for advertising. So that's also where like the creative concepts come in. Like, you want to give something to your audience that will give them some sort of value outside of just being an ad. So that's where that whole like house party metaphor comes in. Like, wanna figure out, like, what is my audience doing on this platform? Yeah. People are like goldfish, in the chat I wanna look at a platform and say, like, what are people doing here? My ad needs to give them a little bit of that. So it's it's more of an exchange. It's not me crashing this party forcing my message onto them. They're still getting that funny post that they can share with their friends, their friends, a graphic designer, and they might identify with it. Alright. I sorry. Just to jump in. I also I also think with TikTok and, Instagram playing with longer video format, we're going to start to see longer engagements on ads if your story is compelling enough. Just the nature of how people are starting to behave in these platforms. I think it's indicative of a change in which and a change in the way we develop the stories we sell on the platforms. We might have fifteen minute ads coming soon. And, actually, on that note, I would love to see people in the chat respond what I'm just gonna say, but I was scrolling social media yesterday, and it's trend that I'm seeing right now are these ads of people walking and talking, And they, like, they're not going anywhere. It's just a million cuts of someone walking down a hall talking on their phone, but they'll tell this story that keeps on, like, teasing the end, like, twelve different times. Like, we're gonna tell you how to do blank, but first, we have to start at the beginning. We did this, this, and this, but then this happened. But before we tell you about that, we have to tell you about this. And it never gets to the ending. And again, I'm seeing more and more of this. I don't know if anyone else in the chat are seeing these ads, me, personally, I hate them. I can't stand them. They don't work on me, but it's probably something that we'll try at some point because all these people are doing them, it's clearly working on somebody. So I don't know. Maybe maybe I'm the exception that I I hate them, but I'd love to know what other people think. Too many endings. The ending plot. People don't like them. Yeah. I would have to agree there. I wonder if this is I I don't know if anyone's familiar with the recent explosion of Reeseissa on TikTok, who is a woman who basically tells, like, a forty four part story which, like, turns out to be hours and hours long of content. But that is actually one continuous story from start to finish just hold over forty four parts, and it's really engaging if you watched a lot of it. But I wonder if some of this, like, kind of shift and those ads is, like, to mimic that style of long form content, which is having a little bit of a resurgence on some of these social platforms. It could be. So I I do think a lot of what influences ad style comes from organic social. Probably for all the same reasons that I've talked about. Yeah. Alright, I'm gonna get to one more question, before we wrap up. So how does your team set your performance, expectations in KPIs for new campaigns, particularly if you don't have any testing data. And are there certain CTRs or watch times that apply broadly to, a given campaign or market? I'm not gonna have a great answer for this. If if you don't have any testing data, And you don't, I guess, ultimately, like, you're all just, like, you you're you're in competition with yourself, I guess. Like, I I'm just thinking about if we started from scratch with with nothing we would put out an ad and our goal would be do better than that one with our next ad. And then after that, do better than that one. And over time, you would generate your average because and and I dealt with this a lot on, like, the the agency I used to work with was all of my customers would always ask, like, what is a good click through rate? Like, you're all in different industries. I've I've no idea, like, how this industry's click through rate relates to yours because it's gonna be different for everybody. So I think the best way to kinda evaluate your success and your performance is by creating a baseline for yourself based on what you're doing now, and then just trying to get better from there. Well, thank you both so much. I think we're gonna wrap right there. Again, Kyle and Kirsten, thanks so much for sharing your insights today. And thank you everyone for joining and participating participating in the chat and submitting all of those questions. We hope to see you again soon on our next event and hope you have a great rest of your day. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.
