How People Respond to Your Video Ads

Amazon has introduced a relatively new concept in the world of digital marketing called "Viewable Impressions," or in other words, how many people exposed to your ad video actually engage with and watch it.

The time frame that Amazon has set for this metric is 2 seconds. In other words, if you manage to capture the viewer's attention within the first 2 seconds of the video, Amazon considers it a successful view, and the viewability rate increases.

Based on this data, Amazon defines the relevance of the video to the target audience. Along with other data we won't get into now, this helps them decide how much exposure to give to your video ad.

So, if you've been running video ad campaigns over and over and haven't been getting the exposure or clicks you expected, this is likely the primary reason.

Now, Amazon is setting a new standard for video ads: a 50% success rate in the View-Through Rate (VTR) metric (views/impressions).

What to do?

Download a report from your Amazon advertising system under "Sponsored Brand Video - Campaign."

There, you will find a lot of interesting data about your video campaigns. You can see how many people watched for 2 seconds, how many watched for 5 seconds, how many reached the middle of the video, how many completed it, and even how many people unmuted the video to listen.

Pay attention to the VTR metric under column R.

For any campaign where you have less than 50%, think about how you can edit the video in a way that will captivate the viewer in the first 2 seconds. If you need inspiration, start watching video ads on YouTube, where advertisers have 5 seconds to convince you not to skip.

Have a great weekend!