Brady Snow examines a case study about attention in Super Bowl ads and breaks down a YouTube version of one of the ads to show you what YouTube advertisers need to be doing in their own ads.
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Video Transcript

How to Retain Audience Retention?

Brady Snow: What can YouTube advertisers learn about audience retention from Super Bowl ads? We’re going to look at a formula today that these Super Bowl ads are using in order to retain audience attention and deliver their brand message in a short amount of time. We all know Super Bowl ads are some of the most anticipated ads of the year. Some people tune just to watch the ads. Today, we’re going to look at a case study from the company Realeyes which measures audience retention on ads. And they studied some Super Bowl ads that were released early, and they discovered which ads might perform well based on how those ads structure their content to retain audience attention. We all know attention’s important. We have to capture the same attention on YouTube in a short amount of time with a lot of competition. And so we’re going to study this formula that Realeyes uses, and we’re going to show you how you can put that to work in your own YouTube ads.

Brady Snow: So, here is the study from Realeyes. And we’re going to link to that below so you can check it out. But they reviewed some ads that were released early, and they have a formula that they follow here about capturing attention, retaining attention, and encoding the brand message. So, they scored a few ads here based on how these ads related to people. They have a test audience. You can see some of the brands that they reviewed here. I’m going to show you a clip from Sam’s Club ad that’s going to be similar to this ad. They used Kevin Hart in it, but here it is. Here, let me… Yeah, this is it. Sam’s Club VIP Super Bowl Teaser.

Brady Snow: So, this ad scored an eight out of 10 on capturing attention. And as we know on YouTube, you got five seconds or less nowadays to capture someone’s attention. So how are you going to get them to continue watching the ad? So, we’re going to take a look at this clip from the same shoot that the Sam’s Club did with Kevin Hart, but then we’re going to look at how the ad retains attention throughout the ad. What do they do? What tricks do they use? What messaging do they use in order to keep the audience listening?

Brady Snow: And then encoding is delivering your brand message or your call to action, or how does the ad do this in the end? So, I wanted to find this exact ad, but I think they did a longer form ad, as you can see, they did a 24 second ad, but I wanted to see if there was something similar on YouTube. So Sam’s Club did release a couple versions of these. It looks like they’re very short clips that they’re going to run on YouTube or already are running. But I just did a quick search for Sam’s Club. I see that all the ads that Sam’s Club are running and here is Kevin Hart. So I’m going to watch this 15 second add. Let’s take a look at it.

Super Bowl ads have a lot of tips that YouTube Advertisers can set in their campaigns. Image by Muyuan Ma, Unsplash License
Super Bowl ads have a lot of tips that YouTube Advertisers can set in their campaigns. Image by Muyuan Ma, Unsplash License

Capture, Retain, and Encode

Kevin Hart: Kevin here with the VIP announcement. All during the Big Game, Sam’s Club is giving out some crazy prizes. The first time a team scores each quarter, you score. That simple, like VIP. I’m talking memberships, a whole car. There’s lots going on.

Brady Snow: So, that was a very quick ad, but let’s go break it down and see how it had those elements of capture, retain, and encode. So the very beginning of the ad.

Kevin Hart: Kevin here with the VIP announcement. All during…

Brady Snow: “Kevin here with a VIP announcement.” Clearly it’s a celebrity. And sometimes a lot, if you’re running a smaller company, you might not have the budget to hire a celebrity. But you can say something that he said here is like, “So, Kevin here with the VIP announcement.” Okay? VIP announcement, what’s that? That it sounds interesting. That might keep your attention. And then as you see, that was the hook. And then they clearly changed the camera angle and they cut in, they zoom in. This is a great little camera trick, even if you’re just running with a single camera. If you’re shooting 4K, you can zoom in without losing video quality. And it changes the perspective and you’ve zoomed in closer. So, I have a VIP announcement. Boom! Zoom in, and then, okay, now we’re here to hear what that announcement is. Let’s get a little closer, find out more. Let’s watch that again so that you can see that cut.

Kevin Hart: Kevin here with the VIP announcement. All during the Big Game, Sam’s Club is giving out some…

Brady Snow: Right there. “All during the Big Game, Sam’s Club is giving out some big-

Kevin Hart: Crazy prizes…

Brady Snow:… prices” is what he says. So, that’s something that might appeal to someone it’s like, “Oh, what are these prizes?” And then it quickly cuts to just the text that reiterates that same thing. Win huge prizes, Plus memberships. It shows the viewer what they can get. We have a face, a personality that’s telling us this message, but then people only care about what’s in it for them. So even though it’s Kevin Hart talking to them, that’s cool. But if we don’t have a celebrity, you can have that face, that personality. Maybe it’s the CEO of your company. Maybe it’s another spokesperson. Maybe you do have a celebrity in there. I don’t know. But you have that face, that personality to resonate with the audience, make it personal. And then we cut to the benefit here and we see it in text.

Get the attention of your audience with your call to action. Image by Pixabay,  License under Pexels
Get the attention of your audience with your call to action. Image by Pixabay,  License under Pexels

Encode your brand message

Brady Snow: And the music kicks in too here, which is some uplifting positive music. Which might make things more exciting for the viewer as well. So, at this point, the speaker has captured the audience’s attention, and then he told them exactly what they want. And they used a zoom in camera cut, closer angle. And then we cut to the text with the music pumping up to help retain the message. So let’s continue retain the audience’s attention. So let’s continue to watch and see how we transition from retaining to encoding the message of the ad.

Kevin Hart: … prizes. The first time a team scores each quarter, you score. That simple, like VIP. I’m talking memberships, a whole car. There’s lots going on.

Brady Snow: So, it retained the viewer’s attention by showing them how they can score big when someone in the game by following the Sam’s Club Sweepstakes here. And at the end, they have that message pop up again. And I think they just want to encode the message. Follow us @SamsClub during the Big Game. And you can be a part of this. Win prizes, get involved in the Sweepstakes. And so that clearly shows what is in it for the viewers, so that is encoding the message on them. Follow Sam’s Club. You’re going to get some big prizes.

Brady Snow: So, you can see how whatever company you run. If you’re running YouTube ads, you can follow the same formula, capture attention, retain attention, and then encode your message, which is where you might want to insert your call to action. So, if you’re running YouTube ads, you can see how following this formula is going to structure your ad in a way that’s going to retain your audience’s attention throughout and allow you to encode your message or give them your call to action at the end of your ad.

Get a free trial of video ad vault to search the largest searchable database of youtube ads to discover what is working on youtube right now.
Get a free trial of video ad vault to search the largest searchable database of youtube ads to discover what is working on youtube right now.

Use Video Ad Vault for your Competitive Intelligence

Brady Snow: So, it’s just a simple formula. You can follow. We’re going to link to this case study from Realeyes below. Also just pay attention to the Super Bowl ads you see when you watch the Big Game this year. Find out how people are capturing attention. I mean, these ads tend to have bigger budgets sometimes, but if you follow the formula that’s working, you can start to put this to use in your own ads.

Brady Snow: Another great way you can do this outside of the Super Bowl ads is you can use Video Ad Vault, like I did here to find the Sam’s Club ad. You can search for any brands ads. You can search for types of ads in our searchable database here. It browses all of YouTube and pulls all the ads that are running. You can quickly launch an ad, play it, see what messaging they’re using. You can all also go ahead and see the landing page that the ads are pushing to. So you can see what messages are being used there. And this works for all ads on YouTube, not just big brands like Sam’s Club.

Brady Snow: So, if you want, you can check out a free trial. It’s linked below in this video. You can sign up completely free and try this out. We have bonus training to show you how to best use this software. It’s over here on the side, Training & Tutorials. So yeah, go ahead and check that out. And wishing you well in capturing, retaining, and encoding your message in your YouTube ads. That’s it for me. And we will talk to you next time.

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