Using Data to Generate Ad Creative? Here’s Where to Begin.

Alex Villa, QuickFrame’s Manager of Customer Success, recently sat down with eMarketer to explore a few different ways digital marketers, with a treasure trove of data at their disposal, can generate the necessary spark to guide the creative direction of their video ads.

But a question was proposed during the audience Q&A that really caught our attention.

“Do you have any suggestions or strategies for brands who are just getting started with video marketing but might not have a lot of data to build off?”

It’s a salient problem that deserves a quick double-click.

What Do I Analyze When I Have Nothing to Analyze?

First, let’s stop and dispel a myth. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never produced a video ad before–or even started your own business–there’s still plenty of data out there for you to leverage. We’ll break down the two most common types: audience and platform demographics.

Audience Demographics

Knowing your audience is the first step to understanding what kind of ad creative you’ll need to make to produce results. What may play well with younger audience demographics may not be quite as effective with older audiences, and vice versa. 

Here are a few high level statistics to illustrate the kinds of information you can glean from audience data:

Gen Z

• 68% of Gen Z wants every brand to contribute to society.
• If Gen Z is an important audience, look for ways to underline what your brand stands for if you want to stand out.
  

Millennial

• A report shows 70% of millennial men were more likely to buy a product after experiencing an emotional response in an ad.
• Emotional connection is part of why nostalgia marketing works so well with this demographic; because it’s leveraging an already built-in emotional connection to the audience.

Gen X 

• 54% of Generation X consumers feel overlooked by brands and marketers. 
• If Gen X is part of your audience, consider how your creative can directly correlate with their experience in a significant way.

Platform Demographics

You’re creating video ads, so let’s focus on video-first platforms like TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram.

What may stop brands from leveraging video-first platforms for marketing is a notion that channels like TikTok or Snapchat aren’t conducive to your campaign goals or target demographics. But as video-first apps grow more popular, that argument holds less and less weight. 

• TikTok has grown to over 1 billion daily active users, and the platform is on track to see 1.5 billion users by the end of 2022. 
• Snapchat sees a lion’s share of Gen Z users with 43.7 million, followed by Millennials at 30.8 million. The gap widens with Gen X users at only 9.1 million.
• Instagram is still dominated by Millennial users at 50.8 million, compared to Gen Z’s 39.5 million and Gen X’s 24.2 million.

Video-first platforms have their own unique native experiences that users can’t find on other channels. This gives you the opportunity to connect with core audiences through the visual language they prefer. That’s partly why TikTok users overwhelmingly find ads on the platform to be fun and engaging, especially when compared to social channels that weren’t natively created for video, like Facebook. 

Static Data is Still Data

So you’ve made an ad before, but never a video ad. Doesn’t matter: the data you have on that static image display ad is incredibly valuable at the onset of your first video marketing campaign. By this point you’ll already have a baseline understanding of what CTA style  or visual cues resonate with your audience. 

Take note of the data from your previous campaigns—including key metrics and creative variables as these can be used as a starting point to build your future campaigns off. The fact is, static data is still data. And it’s telling you something important about your audience–so listen to it.

Scope Out The Competition

Pablo Picasso was rumored to have said “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” So while we’re not encouraging plagiarism, we are urging you to take a closer look at your direct competition. What kinds of ads are they creating? Who do they seem to be targeting? Why do their ads work–if they work at all?

By reviewing and analyzing the ad campaigns of your direct competition, you can co-opt insights into the kind of market you want to attract–and what kinds of content will move the needle to get you there. Folding those insights into the campaign strategies you’re building will give you a lever for finding similarities–and key differentiators–between the brands you’re racing to beat.

Related: Social Media Video Ad Specs & Placements Guide

Getting (Ad) Creative With Data

Advertising is an artistically-driven medium, but that doesn’t mean you need to be artistically-minded to deliver a compelling ad. There are a number of hyper specific video elements that data can help you choose–from how many actors you’ll need to hire to the overall length of your story. Tune into the replay above and Alex will show you how and where to get started.