What do you usually do when you see a YouTube ad? Do you wait for the “skip ad” button to pop up so you can get to your desired video as fast as possible? Frankly I don’t blame you. Alot of ads these days have gotten rather predictable and extremely boring. Well what if the ad you were watching required your actual interaction? What if it actually made an effort to entertain you and make you a part of something? What if it craved your engagement? Wouldn’t you be more intrigued and more interested in the ad your watching?
That’s where marketing is going now as companies start to embrace 360-degree video technology and use it to create interactive ads. These new ads let you really experience what you’re watching. Twirl around at a concert, and dance away at a party. Check out the following videos on Google Chrome, or on your mobile device and image watching them in-place of a usual boring video advertisement:
- An #UpForWhatever Parade in 360°
- A 360° Trip Back to the 1920’s
- 360 Celebrate with us on the “Tour of the Coca-Cola bottle”
Is it not a welcome change? Marketing 101 teaches us to capture the attention of our audience as quickly as we can, and 360-degree video advertisements seem like a perfect way to do it. You can capture your audiences attention and interest within seconds – sometimes well before the Skip This Ad button appears, and by the time it has appeared they’re way too interested in exploring the environment you’ve created for them.
Now if you think that these types of advertisements are going to mean a significantly increased production budget – you’re wrong. Sure you CAN spend a ton on producing these types of videos – but you can also get things going for under $250 and some creativity.
Grab a camera, record you’re video to fit the YouTube specs (YouTube currently supports 360 degree videos with 24, 25 or 30 frames per second), run a Metadata app, and upload you’re file. Rather easy actually. Do you plan to make some 360-degree advertisements? Share them in the comments below!