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What do Wix.com and Monday.com have in common? Yes, they’re both SaaS companies, but more importantly, they’re both dominating Youtube ads.

In fact, according to Adbit, Monday.com alone spend’s more than $150k a month on Youtube Advertising, and Wix.com is way ahead with an annual budget of $100M for all marketing channels, we could just estimate the chunk of it that goes to Youtube.

But what’s common about these companies, their strategy and most of all, their video ads? Let’s break it all down.

Saas Video ad Structure

The huge amount of advertising spend allows these companies to test and re-test different video components, slowly coming up with a common video ad structure that works for them.

Check out Wix.com’s video ads and notice they’re all composed in the same manner, based on countless Video AB tests they’ve probably performed. And we can all learn from their hard work.

1. The “Typing in the Browser” frame –

Let’s start with the most obvious common aspect of all leading SaaS video advertisers: They’re showing their video viewers how to get into their sites.

They’re featuring a web browser search bar and having their brand name typed inside.

Check out this Monday.com video ad (Seconds 4-5):

Same with Wix.com’s Video ad (seconds 6-7):

The reason these two brands and many others do so is that it increases their post-view website visits, whether measured by clicks (Youtube’s CTR) or by direct uplift measurements.

Additionally, there’s a strong significance to the placement of that video piece inside the video flow: did you notice that in both cases it appears in the first 10 seconds?

That’s because these Brands are using Truview Youtube ads, in which they’re being charged only when a viewer watches at least 30 seconds of their ad. Placing that video frame early ensures even the “free” views get exposed to it.

That brings us to the next important aspects of Saas Video ads, keep on reading.

2. Taking Advantage of Youtube TrueView “Terms”

If you’re running Youtube ads chances are you’re using the Youtube TrueView ad format. If you do, you better take advantage of it.

First, what does running TrueView ads mean?

The ad viewer will get a chance to skip your ad after 5 seconds of watch time, and the advertisers will be charged whenever the viewer watches 30 seconds of their ad, or in cases the ad is shorter than 30 seconds, watches it until the end.

How does this affect the video ad’s structure?

• Make your video ads longer than 30 seconds. You’ll pay the same CPV for a 30-second view and a 60-second view, so you better take advantage of the potentially “free” view time.
• Show your product’s value proposition in the first 5 seconds. The first 5 seconds are a mandatory watch for a youtube user, they’ll get the skip button only on the fifth second of the video. Take advantage of it, and showcase your product’s most valuable proposition, and most importantly your brand’s logo.
• The “Typing Browser” frame should come after the first 5 seconds and before 30 seconds. The typing browser bit, the one we’ve talked about earlier, is meant for users with higher intent. Keep the first precious 5 seconds for users that are not ready to convert and likely to skip, and showcase the “Typing Browser” frame just after it.

3. Product-oriented videos

Don’t get confused, you are building a brand, but most importantly you’re selling a product.

It’s tempting to invest your production budget in making unique, funny and witty video ads, hoping they’ll go viral.

But the truth is – it’s way smarter to first dominate the performance marketing side of things, before heading into branding efforts.

Performance marketing is only achievable by having a product-oriented video. From featuring your value proposition to actually showing usage of your product, it’s extremely important for the user to understand what you’re selling rather than have a laugh of a good commercial.

Check out Wix & Monday’s ads we’ve embedded earlier, we did the hard work for you and counted their product show time, here are the results –

• Monday.com‘s video ad showcases its product across 22 seconds of their 55 second’s video ad
• Wix.com video ad showcases its product across 53 seconds of their 1:18 long video ad, of which 25 seconds were featuring their product’s pages across the whole video screen

4. Testimonials

This article will probably not be read by newbies, so we won’t tell you what testimonials are and their importance, but please take this as a friendly reminder to incorporate testimonials in your video ads.

One of the best feelings that video ads can spark in their viewers is empathy. That feeling of familiarization.

This can only be achieved by featuring a person. Voice over or text is not enough.

Obviously, this person doesn’t have to be an actual customer, in the two cases above they’re models acting as actual clients.

View-through Conversions

Youtube ads have one significant difference over Facebook ads that many advertisers fail to recognize – Watching a Youtube ad is always a condition before watching a youtube video.

Opposite to Facebook, where users choose to watch an ad while scrolling Facebook’s feed. This impacts significantly the action that users perform after watching the ad.

On Facebook, users are more likely to click the ad, while on Youtube they’re more likely to continue to watch the Youtube video they intended to watch, and than later go straight to the advertizer’s website.

Youtube performance marketing will often seem not as profitable as it actually is when measuring click-based conversions only.

When a user watches a Youtube ad, doesn’t click, and then converts in the following 24 hours window, the credit should be given to Youtube.

How to identify post-view conversions? by doing an uplift test on a specific region or country: Buying a significant amount of traffic in a specific region, and identifying the uplift generated in your internal BI over that region’s rolling average.

The uplift tests should be done and re-done in a few regions until reaching certainty, and then the results could be implied as a “multiplier” over the normal click-based conversions.

Lifetime user value and target CPAs

As Saas marketers, you know of the business model’s advantages better than anyone.

Saas products often have an extremely high user value thanks to its subscription-based payment model. Take advantage of that, and invest time in finding out what could be your highest target CPA for performance user acquisition.

Things you have to bear in mind are LTV, cashflow, and marginals in user acquisition platforms.

This subject is really an issue of its own, that deserves a dedicated article, that will be written so stay tuned, meanwhile, we’ll try our best to give you a quick of the questions you need to ask yourself:

• LTV – What’s the lifetime value of your users?
• Cashflow – How long can you last before returning a certain cohort’s acquisition investment?
• Platform’s marginal – will you get the same respective results (CPA) when investing $80k on a certain budget vs spending $100k on that target?

Answering these questions is the key to really rocking Saas user acquisition. Stay tuned (subscribe!) for more articles on that subject.

Storytelling, Frequency, and Retargeting

Running one strong video ad is not enough. Potential users need to be exposed to your brand multiple times and gain confidence before they’ll be ready to convert.

Thing’s you have to bear in mind are:

• Storytelling – running multiple video ads simultaneously
• Frequency – gain control of your frequency, a user that gets exposed to one ad 8 times is considered waste of money compared to a user that gets exposed to 8 different ads one time each
• Retargeting – Build audiences based on intent (by watch time, engagement, etc) and retarget them both on Youtube and GDN

If you’ll check out one of the ad spy tools out there, you’ll find out that Wix.com is running 2011 different ads on a 30 days time period.

Yes, you’re probably not able yet to run in Wix’s scale, but you sure do need to aim to the width, ads wise.

Conclusion

Let’s quickly go over the subjects covered in this article:

Saas Video ads are composed in a specific manner that takes advantage of Youtube’s Truview ad format: The “typing browser,” ad length and messaging-order are critical for the video ads’ success.

View-through conversions, Lifetime value, and target CPAs are, as well, a mandatory condition for video user acquisition.

What kind of Saas products are you running?

Do you think there’s anything we missed in this article?

Tell us in the comments 🙂 or contact us directly.