Chapter 9

Broadcasting Your Message

In This Chapter

arrow Designing radio ads and audio podcasts

arrow Figuring out cheaper, alternative ways to use video

arrow Creating emotional TV ads, YouTube channels, and vlogs that show more than they tell

Many marketers are intimidated by video and audio and don’t use these powerful communication channels enough. National television advertising is expensive, of course, and only one out of a hundred marketers has the budget for it. For everyone else, there’s spot television and radio advertising (including in-store radio), Internet video advertising (including ads on YouTube and podcasts), demonstration videos on your website, video brochures whose links are sent to e-mail and digital cellphone addresses, large-screen TV displays at trade shows and conventions … the list goes on and on.

I want to encourage you to be open-minded about radio, video, and TV, because new and easier ways to produce in these media are emerging all the time, along with a growing number of low-cost ways to broadcast your ads. And even if you don’t use these commercial media, you can quite possibly create your own ways to share audiovisual information with prospects. In fact, more and more marketers use websites that communicate in digital video or with PowerPoint-type slides and radio-style voice-overs. Modern technology is making these media more flexible and affordable for all marketers.

Producing Ads for Radio

Conventional wisdom says you have only three elements to work with when you design advertising for the radio: words, sound effects, and music. That’s true in a literal sense, but you can’t create a great radio ad unless you remember that you want to use those elements to generate mental images for the listener. And that means you can often perform the same basic plot on radio as on TV. Really. Radio isn’t as limited as people think — it’s just rarely used to full advantage anymore now that society’s love affair with radio has been eclipsed by its love of TV and movies.

For example, I own a collection of old radio shows featuring that amateur sleuth known as The Shadow. My children and I used to listen to these classic radio dramas repeatedly. Why were these old radio dramas so engaging? Because you could see the action so clearly as it unfolded. The script and sound effects (SF or SFX in radio lingo) create a string of powerful visual images in your mind as the story unfolds (note that the script tells you what supposedly makes the sound effects to make sure you can picture what’s going on).

“Oh no, the giant black cat is coming toward us! My God, its eyes are glowing!” (SF: Meeeowww. Snarl, snarl.) “Help, it’s backing me toward the edge of the roof of this ten-story building!” (SF: Snarl, spit, snarl.) “Look out, Margo. You’ll fall off!” (SF: Sound of falling, with a woman’s scream fading into the distance.)

You can see what’s happening, can’t you? A dangerous situation creates suspense with dialogue, sound effects, and narration just as well as if you could literally see the situation unfolding.

tip.eps If you decide to create a radio ad, consider creating a story complete with sound effects, dialogue, and narration because these elements make your ad engaging and entertaining — which means people will listen to it and remember it. However, don’t try to finalize a script or record an ad yourself. These are specialized skills requiring a sound studio technician. Instead, bring your concept to the staff of a local radio station for production (for local advertising) or to a production company or ad agency that does a lot of radio ads (for national radio network advertising).

The following sections provide you with helpful information and options you should think about if you’re considering radio advertising for your business or product.

Recognizing the cost value of radio time

Radio offers a broader reach for less cash than other media in the United States (and many other nations as well), and I often find myself urging marketers to buy radio due to this incredible reach/value combination.

If you’re targeting adults, your audience is probably served fairly well by radio ads. However, younger listeners are tending to tune out radio in favor of their own playlists, which they download from the web and play on MP3 players, cellphones, tablets, and computers. Consequently, traditional radio no longer reaches the under-30 crowd as well as it used to, but web radio can be used effectively instead.

remember.eps You can target radio advertising quite narrowly — both by type of audience and by geographic area. This fact helps make radio a very good buy. The general lack of appreciation for this medium also helps by keeping ad prices artificially low. Radio ads are cheaper than television and newspaper ads in the United States. Radio programmers don’t charge more for advertising slots, partly because of the problem that people may not be paying any attention to the radio they have on in the background. But a well-designed ad can often capture folks’ attention for a few seconds.

Going the direct route with your goals

When creating your radio ad, you have the choice of being direct or indirect. Direct-action advertising aims to stimulate an immediate shopping response; on the flip side, indirect-action advertising informs listeners about a brand, store, or business. The most effective radio ads call for direct action (such as attending an event or picking up the phone), so you generally want to favor direct over indirect action goals for your radio ads.

The best way to go the direct route is to give out a web address (if the listener can remember that address easily) or a toll-free number in the ad. If you want to push people toward an event or blowout sale, use your radio ad to announce the event and drive attendance. Run announcements of events in the week leading up to them, not earlier. Early announcements are better made through print or web advertising (see Chapters 7 and 10, respectively), which allow people to clip or bookmark the ad. Radio ads tend to be forgotten after a few days, so keep them timely.

tip.eps Put your brand name into your radio ad early and often, regardless of the story line. If you fail to generate the desired direct action, at least you build awareness and interest for the brand, which supports other points of contact in your marketing program. Radio is a great support medium, and not enough marketers use it that way.

Targeting your radio advertising

I like the fact that radio stations make a real effort to target specific audiences — after all, most advertisers try to do the same thing. With a little research, you can get good data, both demographic and lifestyle- or attitude-oriented, on radio audiences. And you can often find radio stations (or specific programs on those stations) that reach a well-defined audience that’s rich in those people you want to target.

remember.eps Arbitron, Inc., is the leading source of audited information about audience size and composition for television and radio stations in the United States. It now also provides information and assistance for those who want to purchase radio and video ad time on webcasts. Visit Arbitron on the web at www.arbitronresearch.com, or go to its parent’s website, www.nielsen.com, for lots of market research options.

Prefer data straight from the source? Simply call any local station and ask for its audited report on its listeners, a document the station gives a potential advertiser free of charge.

tip.eps One way you can target radio advertising is by running ads over the internal broadcasting systems used in many stores. This opportunity gives you another great way to target a particular audience, like advertising your brand of tires at an automotive store. Marketers call this kind of ad in-store audio advertising. It’s an entirely different medium from a buying perspective because the store or a specialized service provider develops and controls the programming. As a result, most marketers don’t know how to use in-store audio programming. An ad agency may be able to help you gain access, or you can turn to a specialized media-buying firm that handles this kind of advertising.

Looking into audio podcasts

An audio podcast is a radio program that people may download and listen to at their convenience (however, many are subscribed to and broadcast on specific schedules). Podcasts play on a variety of portable media players, such as iPods or other MP3 players. You can also listen to a podcast on your computer and store it in iTunes or a similar music management program. For marketers, podcasts are a way to make informational or educational radio-style broadcasts available for anyone interested in them. You can advertise on other people’s podcasts (visit Podtrac’s site, www.podtrac.com, and click on Advertisers at the top to find out how) or you can try your hand at creating your own podcast.

remember.eps Podcasts are a good alternative to editorial publicity in traditional media because you get to create the content and produce the “show” without having to convince some journalist that your content is newsworthy. But, of course, your content should still be newsworthy! Keep your podcast informational and avoid hard selling, or else no one will choose to download and listen to it.

Here are some tools you can use to produce your very own podcast:

  • Final Cut Pro X: Many professional web designers and audio and video producers favor this cool desktop production software by Apple. It’ll set you back around $500 and require you to have plenty of memory (I suggest a big external hard drive). But even if you have to upgrade your hardware to use the program, you’ll be able to produce audio and video for the web for less than $1,000 in editing equipment, making this option a must-have for the contemporary marketer.
  • ePodcast Series: Industrial Audio Software (www.industrialaudiosoftware.com) offers this podcast producing software for less than $200.
  • Hipcast: This audio and video podcasting service is perhaps the simplest way I’ve ever heard of to produce an audio recording. If you don’t want to have to learn new software and make and edit your own recording, just contact the folks at Hipcast (www.audioblog.com) and let them record your podcast message.

remember.eps Don’t forget the obvious: Make your podcasts available on your website so regular visitors (who include your core customers) will notice them. Also consider linking to the latest podcast or video blog from a QR code.

tip.eps You can also post your podcasts at a site like Podcast Alley (www.podcastalley.com), one of a new breed of sites on which you can post your podcast and make it available for members to rate and listen to. (You have to register on the site to post podcasts, but at the time of this writing, registration is free.) I recommend posting on such a site if you want to broaden your audience beyond your own list.

You can also create video podcasts, terminology sometimes used to refer to on-demand video clips and web television series. Check out the later section “Identifying Less Expensive Ways to Use the Power of Video” for more info on video podcasts.

Considering web radio

Web radio is audio programming delivered over the web on a regular daily schedule. It’s very much like traditional radio except that traditional radio is delivered over the airwaves. Listeners like web radio because it gives them more control and selection than traditional radio. This is good for advertisers because it means that audiences sort themselves out according to tastes and interests, allowing advertisers to target very well-defined groups of listeners — which makes reaching these groups quite economical. Also, web radio is inexpensive to produce (no costly radio transmitters here); low production costs translate into low ad rates.

Web radio is an increasingly good advertising option, reaching hundreds of millions of people each week. Visit web radio leaders such as Slacker (www.slacker.com), Live365 (www.live365.com), iTunes (www.apple.com/itunes), Spotify (www.spotify.com), or Pandora (www.pandora.com) to identify web radio stations that may match your customer base. These sites catalog thousands of web radio programs from the United States and elsewhere. Other companies act as brokers for radio ad buyers. TargetSpot (www.targetspot.com) makes it easy to place your own ads on appropriate web radio stations. Web radio ads can take the form of streaming audio or can be in the form of web page ads and banners, giving you multiple options. For instance, Spotify currently has seven different ad formats to choose from.

tip.eps To get the most for your money, try combining traditional and web radio advertising. You can easily reach a larger audience this way than through print or TV advertising.

Identifying Less Expensive Ways to Use the Power of Video

If you’re thinking of skipping this section because it’s about video, consider this: Video can cost $2,000 per minute to produce — or even $20,000 if you’re making a sophisticated national TV ad. But it can also cost $100 a minute or less. Most videos on YouTube are made for free by someone with a basic digital video camera. And although many YouTube videos look homemade, a surprising number of them are quite good.

tip.eps If you’ve never shot and edited a video, you may not be the right person to do it for your marketing program, so consider hiring someone with experience and a portfolio you like. However, if you have some experience yourself, you may want to forge ahead on your own. If you’re thinking of making your own video podcast, spot ad, how-to video, or video brochure, take the YouTube tutorial: Review a few dozen of the most popular YouTube videos to see why people are choosing to watch them. In doing so, you’ll see a wide range of ways to win the interest of your audience. Sure, some of those YouTube videos feature people making fools of themselves, but others are good, solid pieces of video theater that may give you an idea for a good ad campaign.

Basically, if you think video is out of your ballpark, think again. You can (and probably should) make how-to instructional videos as well as video ads. The next two sections give you some helpful hints in preparing for your video shoot and making sure the actual shoot goes well — without you having to spend big bucks.

Planning your video shoot

Shooting good video takes more than competent lighting, sound, and camerawork. You need to do some advance planning to optimize the shoot. Here are some tips to keep in mind if you decide to shoot video yourself:

  • Write a simple, clear script and time it before you bother to shoot any video. Keep your script brief because the typical spot ad’s length is measured in seconds, not minutes (when you purchase ad time, you’ll see the options, which usually range from 15 or 20 seconds to a minute). See the later “Designing Ads for TV” section for advice on how to write an effective video script.
  • Make sure you have the right supplies. A fairly new hand-held digital video camera and a high-quality microphone are capable of producing effective video for your marketing, especially for use on the web where low-resolution video files are usually used, making camera quality less important. Additionally, plenty of software programs are available for editing video, although I recommend hiring an eager young videographer who already has the needed software and camera and can take direction from you but can do most of the technical work herself.
  • If you want actors, consider recruiting them locally and even asking people to volunteer. I hate to promote this idea, but if you can avoid paying union rates for your actors, you’re better off. Paying union rates and residuals is appropriate for major national campaigns but can be prohibitive for small marketers.

For information on video editing and production, check out the many For Dummies books that help you better understand what’s involved. Or hire a media production firm (I’ve used MediaPro in San Francisco, California) that can do high-quality work at moderate rates. With plenty of smaller production firms around, try interviewing some in your area and getting samples of their work and price quotes — you may find that by the time you master the writing, shooting, and editing of a video, you’d rather have saved the time for other business activities and let an expert do it for a few thousand dollars or less.

tip.eps If you want an easy way to produce a video suitable for podcast or website use, go to Hipcast’s site, www.audioblog.com, and click on the Create Video link. You can record video footage of you delivering a message into any digital video camera, send it to this website, and simply follow the instructions to turn your footage into a video podcast. The result may not be stunningly high quality, but it’ll be done in a short while and cost almost nothing to make. Most marketers prefer something with higher production quality, but it’s nice to know you can do video production for cheap (or even free!) if you’re willing to use your computer to do it yourself.

Shooting your own high-quality video

Poor video quality due to lack of light. Inferior sound quality. Shaky camerawork. These are just some of the common problems plaguing amateur video. Avoid these pitfalls and create good-quality video (even if you’re using a camera that costs just a few hundred dollars) by doing the following:

  • Clean up the background. Most amateur efforts to shoot video podcasts or ads are plagued by stuff that shows up in the background. Eliminate trash cans, competitors’ signs, and anything else that’s unsightly.
  • Light the subject brightly and well. Cameras need more light than your eyes do, and any camera will give you good results if a lot of light is available. Bright, hazy sunlight (through a light cloud cover) is optimal if you’re shooting outdoors. Indoors, the low-budget producer can use high-powered but low-cost halogen work lights (careful, they get too hot to touch). Put two lights at about 45 degrees from your subject’s face, preferably on her right (the viewer’s left). This is your main source of light. Then fill with a lower-powered light on the subject’s other side at about the same distance and angle. If you have a backdrop (such as a cloth or a set of some kind), you can light that with smaller lights from the side, top, or bottom, which helps reduce the impact of shadows from the main lights.
  • Use a dedicated microphone close to anyone who’s speaking. Don’t use the video camera’s built-in microphone. You need to be much closer to pick up good-quality sound than you do to take a good still or video picture.
  • Set the camera on a solid surface. Ideally, this means a heavy, nonwiggly tripod. If you don’t own one, use a heavy table instead.
  • Do multiple takes. Capture enough footage so you can edit out the bad and use the best.

remember.eps If you’re making a simple, low-cost or free video podcast, you may be tempted to simply sit down in front of your computer’s built-in camera and start recording. However, the rules of good video production still apply. Check the lighting! Make sure you look good! After all, you’re representing your brand.

warning.eps Don’t shoot faces from a low angle. Many video podcasts show way too much chin, distorting the speaker’s face oddly. The camera should be at or slightly below your eye level if you don’t want to look like an alien.

Designing Ads for TV and YouTube

Video ads must use great drama (whether funny or serious), condensed to a few seconds of memorable action. Think of a really powerful, moving, and memorable scene from a movie. How about (if you’re a Bogart fan) the scene from To Have and to Have Not, in which Lauren Bacall tells Humphrey Bogart, as she slinks out of his hotel room, that all he has to do is whistle if he wants her back. It’s one of the most well-known sequences in the movies.

These few seconds of drama etch themselves into the memory of anyone who watches that film because they feature a good script with just the right touch of just the right emotion, great acting, good camerawork, and a good set, plus the most important element of all — the suspense of a developing relationship between two interesting characters. You don’t need to achieve this level of artistry to make a good video ad, but you certainly need to achieve a higher-than-average level to stand out. The following sections cover important points to help you create compelling video ads.

Proceeding with TV ads

Video ads look simple when you see them, but don’t be fooled — they aren’t simple at all. If you want to advertise with video, you need to make sure you know what you’re doing. Consider the following tips to help you as you begin the process:

  • Hire an experienced producer or production company to help you do the ad or hire a big ad agency (at big ad agency dollars) to design and supervise the production of your ad. Hiring experts does add to your costs, but it ensures quality work. Just remember that you ultimately decide whether the script has that star potential or is just another forgettable ad. Don’t let the production company or ad agency shoot until you have something memorable to make the investment worthwhile.

    tip.eps Strapped for cash but still want some assistance? Film students at the nearest college with a film or media department are usually eager to help produce ads. To them, it’s an opportunity to show that they can do professional work. For you, it may be an opportunity to get near-professional work at very low prices. Just make sure the students and their professors agree upfront (in writing) that you own the finished product and can use it in your marketing.

  • Aim for an ad that looks high quality and professional. Sure, you can go to a local cable station and shoot your own talking-head ads in its studio at little cost, or even sit down and talk at your computer’s digital camera to make a podcast-style ad. But boy do those ads look cheap when shown on the local network affiliate right next to expensive ads from national advertisers. Without high-quality production, even the best design doesn’t work. Why? Because people watch so much TV that they know the difference between good and bad ads — and they don’t bother to watch anything but the best. This is true of ads on podcasts, too, because podcast viewers are often downloading high-quality movies or TV shows.
  • Create a spoof ad if you’re on a shoestring budget. A spoof ad makes fun of one of the silly video ad genres, like the one where an overenthusiastic salesman does a frantic 30-second sell. Because the whole point is to make a campy spoof, you don’t need (or want) high production value, but you do still need help from someone with experience in setting up shots and handling camera and lights, plus a good enough actor to make the ad entertaining.

Getting emotional

As you may already be aware, emotion makes for highly effective advertising. Videos can do emotion better than any other medium because they can showcase the expressiveness of actors’ faces. So when you plan to use TV as your marketing tool, always think about what emotion you want your audience to feel.

Select an emotional state that fits best with your appeal and the creative concept behind your ad. Then use the power of imagery to evoke that emotion. (This strategy works whether your appeal is emotional or rational.) Always use the emotional power of video to prepare your audience to receive that appeal. Surprise. Excitement. Empathy. Anxiety. Skepticism. Thirst. Hunger. The protective instincts of the parent. You can create all these emotional states and more in your audience with a few seconds of good TV. A good ad generates the right emotion to prime viewers for your appeal. For instance, the classic Prudential commercial (“Own a piece of the rock”) is a strictly emotional appeal, designed to give viewers a feeling of permanence and dependability about the investment products the company pitches.

Some marketers measure their video ads based on warmth. Research firms generally define warmth as the good feelings generated from thinking about love, family, or friendship. Emotions, especially warm, positive ones, make TV ad messages far more memorable. Many marketers don’t realize the strength of this emotional effect because it can’t be picked up in the standard measures of ad recall. That is, in day-after recall tests, viewers recall emotional-appeal video ads about as easily as rational-appeal ads. But in-depth studies of the effectiveness of each kind of ad tend to show that the more emotionally charged ads do a better job of etching the message and branding identity in viewers’ minds.

Being visual: Show, show, show

Be sure to take full advantage of video’s other great strength: its ability to show. In a video ad, you can demonstrate a product feature, show a product in use, and do about a thousand other things just with your visuals. I recently went to YouTube to view a series of tests of blenders and juicers and discovered that I didn’t need to buy a higher-priced model to get good performance. I was able to see, right there on the screen, that some of the cheaper models outperformed their fancy counterparts. Seeing really is believing.

remember.eps Some people in your audience think visually, whereas others favor a verbal message, so you have to cover both bases by using words and images in your advertising. In a video ad, you must show and tell (note the emphasis on showing). Compare this with radio, where you show by telling, or with print, where the two modes balance each other out, so the rule becomes simply to show and tell. The visual and verbal modes reinforce each other.

tip.eps To make sure you keep the “show” part of the formula top of mind, do what TV ad designers do: Rough out your ideas in a visually oriented script, using quick sketches to indicate how the ad will look. You — or preferably the competent agency or scriptwriter you hire — should prepare rough storyboards as you think through and discuss various ad concepts. A storyboard is an easy way to show the key visual images of film, using pictures in sequence. The sketches run down the center of a sheet of paper or poster board in most standard storyboard layouts. On the left, you write notes about how to shoot each image, how to use music and sound effects, and whether to superimpose text on the screen. On the right, you include a rough version of the script (the words actors in the scenes or in a voice-over say). See Figure 9-1 for a sample storyboard.

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© John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Figure 9-1: Roughing out a video ad on a storyboard.

Answering the question of style

You can use a great variety of styles in your video advertising. A celebrity can endorse the product. Claymation fruit can sing and dance about it. Animated animals can chase a user through the jungle in a fanciful exaggeration of a real-life situation. Imagination and videotape know no limits, especially with the growing availability of high-quality computerized animation and special effects at a reasonable cost. But some of the common styles work better — on average — than others in tests of ad effectiveness. Table 9-1 shows styles that are more and less effective.

Table 9-1 Comparing the Effectiveness of Common Ad Styles

More Effective Styles

Less Effective Styles

Humorous commercials

Candid-camera style testimonials

Celebrity spokespeople

Expert endorsements

Commercials with children

Song/dance and musical themes

Real-life scenarios

Product demonstrations

Brand comparisons

Most studies show that both the humor and celebrity endorsement styles work best. So try to find ways to use these styles to communicate your message. On the other hand, making ads that are the exception to the rule may give you an edge, so don’t give up hope on other styles. Just make sure your ad lands well above average if you don’t want the rule of averages to apply to it.

Purchasing ad time on TV

Although it’s possible you may do TV ad buying, most marketing managers never do. Instead, they use a media buyer or ad agency and provide only general guidance as to where the ads should be placed. To manage media buying or direct buying ad time on TV, you need to know the answers to questions such as these: Which television venues work best for your ad? Should you advertise on a network or cable station? Should the ad run in prime time, evening, or late nighttime slots? What programs provide the best audience for your ad?

Audience size and characteristics are tracked and reported by Nielsen Media Research (nielsen.com). Nielsen’s viewer studies provide the following statistics by geographic area:

  • How many TV sets are in the market in all (television households, or TVHHs)
  • How many TV sets are turned on at any given time (households using TV, or HUTs)
  • What percentage of the HUTs are tuned to a specific program (audience share)
  • What percentage of the TVHHs are tuned to a specific program (rating)

For example, say that a city has 800,000 TVHHs. If 200,000 (or 25 percent) of these TVHHs are tuned to a particular program, that program gets a rating of 25. If half of all televisions are on, then HUT equals 400,000 households (or 50 percent), and that program’s share of market is 200,000 ÷ 400,000, or 50 percent.

remember.eps In general, advertisers pay more attention to ratings than to share of market data, because ratings tell them how big the audience is, and they usually try to reach the largest audience possible with their ads.

A gross rating point (GRP) is the total rating points achieved by your media schedule (all the times you run an ad over a specific period). When media buyers purchase a series of time blocks on TV for your ad, they add up all the ratings from each of the times/places where your ad runs and give you the total — your campaign’s GRPs. The number is big, but it doesn’t tell you very much.

remember.eps The GRP number doesn’t distinguish between new exposures (reach) and repeat exposures (frequency). Maybe your ad reached 10 million television households, but did it reach the same 1 million households, ten times over — or did it reach 10 million households, one time each? The answer probably lies somewhere in between. You can find out the exact answer by getting reach and frequency estimates for any TV ad schedule. In some campaigns, you may want 50 or 100 repetitions. In others, 10 or 15 repetitions may be your goal. Let your agency or media buyer know what your goal is.

tip.eps I recommend adding one further refinement to audience data. Rating points emphasize the size of the program’s audience, not the match between the audience and your target market. So be sure to convert — or ask your ad agency to convert — ratings into figures that represent reach into your target market and exclude those households outside of your target market that you don’t need to advertise to. When you look at the TV-buying decision in this way, you often end up advertising on a wider variety of channels and programs than if you relied on straight rating points.

Buying spot television and web video ads on a shoestring budget

Spot advertising runs in local markets instead of nationwide. You can buy spot ad time for your commercial from a local TV station or you can ask for localized broadcast from a cable TV company. Web video ads aren’t spot advertising because, in theory, they can be seen by anyone on the Internet anywhere in the world, but in practice you can target them fairly specifically by viewer interests and geography. Consequently, they offer much the same benefits of traditional spot advertising: narrow targeting to specific audiences, often at modest prices.

Here are some options you can try if you want to consider spot television and web video ads:

  • Spot Runner: This media planning engine (found at www.spotrunner.com) creates custom media plans, targeting customers by demographics, networks, and neighborhoods. Use it to purchase 15-, 30-, and 60-second spots on prime time, local broadcast, and cable channels. Many spots cost less than $100. For a local campaign in a modest-sized market, a budget of $10,000 is sufficient to run a spot ad more than 100 times. Major cities cost more, but they offer more customers, so they’re worth the added expense.
  • Apple TV: This service connects any high-definition television to the Internet and provides access to a wide range of video programs and broadcasts, both live and on demand. The user base is growing rapidly, making this a great new advertising medium. To place your ad on Apple TV alongside movies, YouTube videos, TV shows, podcasts, and other Internet video content, as well as to tap into iPod-using podcast viewers, look into advertising options offered by Blip.tv (www.blip.tv/advertise).
  • YouTube ads: Users of YouTube may post their videos for free, but you’ll have to pay a modest fee to show your ads on the site. Fortunately, it’s easy to place ads (either embedded text or video) on YouTube, which has millions of viewers each day. Access YouTube video ads easily (as one of many options) through Google AdWords (www.adwords.google.com).
  • Hulu: Viewers watch their favorite shows and movies on demand, on the platform of their choice, and you, the advertiser, can target your ad based on Nielson market areas (the industry term being designated marketing areas, or DMAs, which are just ways of defining geographic markets) and also by state or zip code. At the moment, a Hulu ad stands out better than a TV ad because Hulu has half as many ads per show (the so-called ad load is lower).
  • InVideo advertising: Google offers this option, which allows you to embed an ad message in any web video based on its content, thereby allowing you to target your ad more effectively to people with a specific interest in it. The ad pops up as an overlay in the bottom fifth of the video viewing area if there’s a content match — hence the name InVideo.

Another way to cut costs (on any kind of ad but especially on high-cost ads and TV spots) is to look for last-minute opportunities to buy remnant TV — ad time that hasn’t been sold. Just like hotels deeply discount rooms at the last minute, advertisers may also slash prices to sell excess inventory, but often it’s the big advertisers’ media buyers who swoop in on these opportunities. Either get in touch with your local television stations to let them know you have funding and an ad ready to go or work with a media buyer who understands the needs of smaller and mid-sized advertisers and ask them to look out for deals. For example, Converze Media Group, which works with small-budget advertisers, is a remnant broker and can facilitate your search (www.converzemedia.com or 800-880-6722).

Using vlogs in place of TV ads

A vlog is editorial content in short video format, designed to run on free web channels or YouTube. Vlogs take their name from blogs, being the video equivalent. If your content is interesting and useful, consider making videos and offering them basically as free programming for those with an interest in your topic. The strategy may be used for a business-to-business marketer to good advantage, for example, by offering a tutorial on how to design leadership trainings for the workplace. The goal is to inform viewers and, by so doing, get them to know you and your brand.