Making an Impact with Video

We con­tin­ue our series of con­ver­sa­tions between respect­ed blog­gers from a range of fields and experts from Adobe. These unique encoun­ters will offer insight into how end con­sumers feel about dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, includ­ing how and when tar­get­ing is effec­tive, what makes for an appeal­ing cam­paign, and how mar­ket­ing affects whether these all-impor­tant influ­encers spread the word about spe­cif­ic prod­ucts and platforms.

Our fea­tured blog­ger for this quar­ter is Abi King (AK). In 2007, after five and a half years as a hos­pi­tal doc­tor, Abi decid­ed to fol­low her dream of becom­ing a writer, and Inside the Trav­el Lab was born. This lux­u­ry trav­el blog is described as one of the best trav­el blogs in the world by Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Trav­eller and Lone­ly Plan­et. She’s s an award-win­ning jour­nal­ist and pho­tog­ra­ph­er whose work has appeared in Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Trav­eller, Lone­ly Plan­et, the BBC, Red, CNN and more.

She spoke to Phil Duffield (PD), Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Ad Cloud EMEA. He over­sees the imple­men­ta­tion and growth of Ad Cloud across the EMEA markets.

AK: Hi I’m Abi King and I’m the founder of Inside the Trav­el Lab, one of the world’s lead­ing trav­el blogs. But today I am in Lon­don in the Adobe offices and I’m catch­ing up behind the scenes on dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing with some of Adobe’s experts.

Well thanks for agree­ing to talk to me today. What do you think hol­i­day com­pa­nies are doing well? Do you think they’re doing enough with video to pro­vide that spark?

PD: When­ev­er we make a deci­sion about where we go it’s all about emo­tion, and video is the best vehi­cle to real­ly bring that mes­sage to you to incite that emo­tion with­in a con­sumer, so vital. You know, adver­tis­ing for years has been about exposure—get your ads out there and peo­ple even­tu­al­ly give in.

AK: Now, of course, peo­ple can switch off your ads more eas­i­ly with a lot of video, can’t they?

PD: If we look at where we are as an indus­try today, it is a huge, huge issue that we need to address now, because young con­sumers will con­tin­ue to down­load ad block­ers if we do not cre­ate an enjoy­able expe­ri­ence with adver­tis­ing. So, we need to make sure that as a leader in the space, we are util­is­ing all the tools that we have around cre­ative data and automa­tion to make sure that we deliv­er you, as a con­sumer, an expe­ri­ence in advertising.

So that we’re giv­ing you the right mes­sage that makes sense to you, we’re doing it in the right envi­ron­ment that you want to see the ads in, and we’re doing it on the relevant—whether you’re watch­ing it on a phone or an iPad or your TV—we’re giv­ing you the right exe­cu­tion in that envi­ron­ment. And that’s some­thing real­ly impor­tant to us as a busi­ness, is mak­ing sure that we’re tak­ing our con­sumers on a jour­ney rather than just spray­ing ads every­where and hop­ing they click on them.

When we talk about Face­book and deliv­er­ing con­tent in that envi­ron­ment, in social media envi­ron­ments, is it some­thing you think is pow­er­ful for trav­el advertisers?

AK: I think it’s very pow­er­ful, with Face­book and to a less­er extent Insta­gram, peo­ple are on there to have a bit of fun.

PD: Yes.

AK: You know, to have a lit­tle bit of a break or to pro­cras­ti­nate or what­ev­er, and so there is room there to catch someone’s atten­tion in a very short way that I think works well there. I think a video ad on YouTube is annoy­ing because you’ve gone to that link to watch that spe­cif­ic video, and to have to get through some­thing else first is irri­tat­ing, where­as if you’re just scrolling through Face­book or Insta­gram you’re just look­ing for light enter­tain­ment, and some­thing inter­est­ing starts up, then I think that’s the place. I think that’s a bet­ter place.

PD: What do you think is the most pow­er­ful time of day that you actu­al­ly pay atten­tion to con­tent and ads when you’re engag­ing in online content?

AK: That’s a real­ly inter­est­ing ques­tion. I think for long form video, which I would include five min­utes but up to an hour, it would be an evening thing. I think end of the day sit and relax and I’ve got time to real­ly fol­low the sto­ry through and watch it. If it’s short, light things, you know, just a few sec­onds, then I would prob­a­bly say the best time might be dur­ing the morn­ing com­mute or a lunch break or some­thing like that.

I notice that Sat­ur­day not many peo­ple are online they’re out liv­ing their lives, they’re hav­ing fun. Sun­day they’re kind of, approach­ing the return to the work­ing week and so that’s when you see a lot more peo­ple online; Sun­day morn­ing they’re hav­ing either a lazy lie in or a brunch, and they might have time then to read an arti­cle or watch a video. And cer­tain­ly by Sun­day evening and Mon­day morn­ing, I see a lot more traf­fic and inter­ac­tion in almost everything.

From a trav­el point of view, I think that’s prob­a­bly because a lot of peo­ple don’t real­ly like their jobs and as Mon­day morn­ing approach­es… (overtalk). Yeah, exact­ly that, that’s what I’d say. So day of the week is almost more impor­tant than time of day I think.

PD: Yes, you see we’ve all got them. All right, well look thank you very much, appre­ci­ate the input and the time.

AK: Thank you for tun­ing in and remem­ber this is one of a six part inter­view with Adobe experts and do tune in and check out the oth­ers. It’s on blog.adobe.com/digital. Thanks for watching.