Comments
What does it take to become a popular ad on the digital medium? One look at the YouTube Leaderboard 2016, a list of the most viewed ads on the platform, could shed some light. Some of these ads that made it to the top only reaffirm what we have been hearing for so long. Marketers choose to create long-format advertising for the digital medium and go way beyond the 30-second format that is the norm in television commercials. From an advertising perspective, it is quite evident from the YouTube Leaderboard 2016 that several brands chose to create long-format ads for a primarily digital-first audience. In fact, seven out of top 10 most watched ads in 2016 were over 90 seconds long.
“Audiences too were willing to invest their time and attention in ads that are narrative-driven and take a storytelling approach,” say YouTube executives. Dettol sheron ke panje was the most viewed ad on YouTube for 2016 with close to 13 million views and Ranveer ‘Ching’ returns for Ching’s Secret and Amazon’s Apni Dukaan took the next two spots.
But delve deeper into what makes the audience engage with a video ad in the digital medium and the top ten could throw up some interesting patterns. Be warned, some of them apply the same formulae that television commercials have been following for years.
Rule number one is to populate your ads with cute children. Dettol does it to promote the habit of hand-washing, Amazon practises it urging a mother to be a girl again and Ola Micro Stories (below) repeats it with an ad asking, “How much does it cost to take your child home?” The second trade secret does not belong exclusively to Ching. It’s about making an ad with a trending celebrity. Ranveer Singh stars in not just one, but two, of this year’s most viewed ads on YouTube.
While the Ching Returns commercial which reportedly had the budgets of a Bollywood movie is one of the top draws, the other is a commercial starring Singh and Alia Bhatt for travel portal MakeMyTrip.
The third rule is to spend heavily on digital marketing to attract the digital eyeballs. How else would one justify plain-vanilla product ads that have no sprinkling of creativity whatsoever having made it to the top of the viewership charts? The only other way of looking at this is that creativity in Indian video advertising has hit an all time low.
Could the ad industry not even churn out 10 highly entertaining ads in the video format throughout the year?
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.