New way to monetize incentive videos: How to conquer tool apps?

Native video is attracting more and more attention from advertisers and has become one of the market trends of programmatic advertising based on big data and technological upgrades. In this multi-billion dollar market, incentive scenarios still hold a large amount of untapped potential.

According to data from iResearch Consulting , in 2017, native video advertising accounted for more than 23% of China's online video advertising revenue.

Incentive video advertising refers to an advertising format that combines 15-30 second video ads with APP usage scenarios and user rights. Simply put, users get corresponding rewards or user rights by watching video ads.

There are two main advantages of this form of advertising:

• First, it does not harm the user experience of the product, and even satisfies the user's psychological need to obtain rewards;
• Second, it has better advertising effects and can create higher monetization returns for traffic owners.

The practice of incentive videos in gaming applications has proven beyond a doubt: whether it is the death and resurrection of a character or the doubling of rewards, they are all excellent scene entry points for incentive video ads. In addition, the monetization value, user experience, flexibility and scalability of incentive videos in the gaming field have made a qualitative leap compared to traditional advertising.

Therefore, we began to think about a question: If we put aside the gaming field, on which apps can the monetization method of incentive videos be replicated? Which ones are the most suitable first?

The answer I give is tool products.

Beyond games, why will tool products be the next opportunity?

When information flow , focus pictures and other advertising styles are still popular in tool apps, what is the point of convergence between incentive video ads and tool apps?

1. Strong user stickiness drives advertising monetization

Many people believe that users of tool products “use it and leave”, but in fact, their average usage cycle for tool apps is longer than that for mobile games . With the characteristics of being proactive and purposeful, users' strong stickiness to tool apps provides a broader soil for the monetization of incentive videos. As long as we can find the point of integration of interests with incentive videos in functional scenarios that users use frequently, the final scale of traffic monetization will be considerable.

For example: Below is the incentive video entrance of Youdao Cloud Note’s daily sign-in success page. The sign-in function is obviously a scenario that users use frequently. Comparing the monetization efficiency of the rewarded video in this position with the homepage information flow and focus pictures, there is a clear difference in the monetization value created by the ad click rate and daily active users!

2. Benefits and benefits guarantee user experience

Apple once refused to list some apps containing incentive video ads on the grounds that the apps contained paid promotions , but later lifted the relevant ban. Because Apple later discovered that incentive video ads do not directly affect the user experience, nor do they disrupt the authenticity of the rankings. On the contrary, users are happy to accept this form of advertising.

In essence, incentive measures actually provide users with real and available benefits and rights, and the choice of whether to obtain benefits by watching incentive videos is always in the hands of the users.

3. Feature trials promote IAP growth

This may be a unique fit point for tool-type applications. Research results from Facebook Audience Network show that incentivized videos that actually provide "feature trial benefits" can not only increase ad click-through rates, but also make users more likely to spend money to purchase value-added features and services that they have experienced for free .

Through experiments, the author found that in incentive video ads, by providing users with a three-day trial experience of value-added functions, after the three-day trial, the user's purchase conversion rate increased by 30% compared to usual.

Three important issues for tool apps to monetize incentive videos

A good form of advertising monetization must ensure both user experience and advertising effectiveness. Now that we have learned about the unique value of incentive video ads to tool apps, what issues should we pay attention to in advertising design?

1. User rights: What incentives are given to users?

"What benefits can be brought to users who watch the rewarded video?" This is the core factor of rewarded video advertising.

In tool applications, common and effective user rights are divided into the following categories: in-app permissions (membership, lottery opportunities, functional experience), in-app points (points mall), virtual currency (gold coin mall), virtual achievements (medals, trophies), etc. There is no good or bad among these rights, but the decisive factor in choosing what benefits to distribute is whether the benefits are related to the core functions of the product and are the part that users frequently demand. For example: For tools like online disks, providing additional storage space is the most desired benefit for users.

2. Integration into the scene: Where does the user see it?

There is no need to think too complicatedly about the issue. The best case scenario is that when users use a certain function, they can get the benefits and rights related to that function.

In other words, the placement scenario of incentive video ads should be perfectly consistent with the user's product usage scenario . At the same time, try to avoid interfering with users' normal use of functions.

Based on these insights, the author divides suitable incentive video scenarios into 6 categories: successful check-in scenarios, treasure chest reward scenarios, mall lottery scenarios, value-added function scenarios, obsessive-compulsive disorder treatment scenarios, and shopping desire stimulation scenarios.

3. Material production: How to ensure the quality of advertising videos?

Unlike other styles such as opening screen, information flow, focus picture, etc., users stay longer in incentive video ads, and the quality of the video directly affects the user experience.

The production of a good video requires a lot of time and manpower costs. Whether it is the script conception of the content or the shooting and editing process of the video, it is a big challenge for general advertisers. Therefore, advertising platforms should have the ability to produce high-quality video materials and serve as a bridge between tool applications and advertisers.

By equipping a professional team of designers, which must include professional video content creators and shooting editors. In this way, it can not only meet the video quality requirements of tool-type media for user experience, but also meet the customized design plans of advertisers, and realize efficient large-scale material production.

summary

If you are still struggling to figure out how to monetize your tool apps, I think you can focus on incentive videos. Nowadays, incentive videos are gradually becoming a good solution for mobile application developers to solve the monetization dilemma. What the market is currently discussing is the issue of its industry universality. Tools, consulting, social , entertainment, and more types of mobile applications are trying to find effective integration points with incentive video ads.

Through years of operating incentivized video ads within gaming apps, the author has developed a mature solution that takes into account both user experience and advertising revenue, and ultimately discovered the potential for the expansion of incentivized video ads into other industry fields. Tool applications have a natural fit with incentive videos. As long as they find a suitable integration scenario for the product itself, incentive videos will become the most powerful monetization channel for tool application developers.

It can be foreseen that tool apps will become the next territory for incentive videos to expand their territory.

Source: Youdao Smart Selection