An inside look into the making of Yieldmo’s two newest video formats

Great ideas don’t often begin with a sudden spark of genius. There are rarely ever any “light bulbs” or the sound of “EUREKA!” resonating from a lab somewhere.

Instead, great ideas start with a question, “What do you need?” Somewhere embedded within the answer is a crumb of an idea.

When my team at Yieldmo was tasked with designing breakthrough video formats, we were lucky to find two crumbs that have grown into two products we are truly proud of.

The questions that led to an innovative new format – Pinhole

Pinhole is one of Yieldmo’s most recently launched and unique video ad formats. The idea for Pinhole came about from asking two questions:

1. What do brands NEED to help consumers understand and find use in their video ads?
2. What do consumers NEED in order to understand video ads more?

Crumb #1: Making the most of six seconds

Enter our crumb, context. Since video ads are commonly 6-second spots, and brand messaging can often live three to four seconds in, the brand needs to convey information quickly in a short span of time. A person could scroll past a digital ad without ever seeing the message because they think it means nothing to them.

The failed ad for John’s dream truck Let’s say our target consumer, John, is in the market for a truck. The video above shows the first 3 seconds of the ad John sees. If John decided to give this video 3 seconds and then continued to scroll, he never got the chance to even see that the ad is about his dream truck.

This is why our new Pinhole format is so powerful.

Allowing John to see his dream truck sooner

Pinhole provides that context. It acts as a TLDR (too long; didn’t read) by adding an overlay with a transparent window for your video. The window can be the shape of your logo or even a truck so someone like John will know what your video is about.The device on the left shows the video John sees without Pinhole, and the device on the right shows the video John sees with Pinhole. As you can see, Pinhole adds an overlay with a transparent window in the shape of a truck, the same truck John is in the market for. By providing this immediate context, John is more likely to watch more of the video, which leads him to seeing the truck in the video.Pinhole utilizes user dynamics (an animation that is controlled by the user) to deliver a unique experience that arms any given video with a way to connect with a consumer immediately.

Other Benefits of Pinhole

• Creative control: Simple and low effort for the advertiser, and is versatile enough to add context not just about the brand, but about tentpole events, causes, and more
• Built for better completion rates and engagement
• Naturally captures more attention data – which powers our AEROS Attention Analytics’ AI models to drive KPI lift

The question that led to our shoppable video format – Megashopper

Megashopper is Yieldmo’s latest video ad that offers the consumer a video meets eCommerce experience. Its defining feature is a cube catalog that lets the viewer swipe around for products while watching the brand video at the same exact time – immersive and entertaining.The idea for this format came from the question: “What do brands NEED in order to provide the most useful and visually appealing shopping experience within a digital advertisement?”

1. Brands NEED to show consumers their sneakers.
2. The consumer NEEDS to see the brands products in the best way possible.

It’s easy for consumers to treat any given webpage like a digital shopping aisle — mostly just browsing, not really looking to buy.

Digital ads can be perceived as billboards or kiosks popping up along the way. At any given moment one of these “billboards” or “kiosks” will catch the eye of a consumer and they’ll stop to explore.

Let’s say Cool Shoe Brand sells really beautiful sneakers and they’ve put together an engaging lifestyle video showing people wearing them. They also have a series of images of their current line of sneakers that they want to promote.

Crumb #2: Get the wide angle

The crumb in this case: space.

Enter Megashopper. Instead of confining Cool Shoe Brand’s beautiful sneaker shots to the bounds of the digital ad, Megashopper brings the entire viewing experience full screen.Now the consumer can see the sneakers in detail and also continue to watch Cool Shoe Brand’s video while they shop. Maybe the shopper sees the guy in the video doing back flips while wearing the sneaker and swipes the cube catalog to get a better look at the sneaker soles. Maybe the video features a group of friends all wearing sneakers of different colors and the shopper identifies with the girl wearing the bright orange pair and swipes through the cube catalog to get a closer look at the orange pair.

This creates two dimensions for the consumer to see the shoes – as a product and how they’re portrayed in the video.

By giving both the brand and the consumer more “space,” we’re providing a private shopping experience that maximizes the impact the brand has on the consumer as well as the impact the consumer has on the brand.

Other benefits of Megashopper:

• Engaging: Combined sensory experience of watching a video while flipping through products connects the brand even more closely with their audience and makes the experience personal and fun
• Moves the consumer from passive to active
• Creative flexibility to showcase a video and offer multiple shoppable products at once – perfect for a themed collection of products or holiday
• Built for performance: the format captures more attention data that powers AEROS Attention Analytics’ AI models built for media optimization.

Our new products, and the thinking behind them, represent Yieldmo’s passion for digital advertising and how we can create powerful formats to make it useful and engaging for people. Stay tuned as we continue to ask questions in the hopes of finding new and interesting ways to provide needs to consumers as well as advertisers.

Please contact us if you want to learn more about either of these new video formats: marketing@yieldmo.com