One of the important decisions we faced when deciding what features to build into CrankyAds was which media types (advertising formats) to support. Since we were planning a simple beta release to begin with, we only wanted to have the core media types that most people use.

At the time I was thinking the winners were obvious – I was selling banners and text links on my blog and had been for years, hence CrankyAds would launch with the ability to manage these two media types.

Then I had a brainwave.

I can’t recall the exact stimulation for the idea, but I do remember I was in the process of redesigning the look of my own blog, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com. One of the core motivations behind the redesign was to simplify the layout, but still retain prominent ad positions for sponsors to purchase. Since my future plans for the blog included increasing my return from advertising income, I wanted to experiment with different types of advertising.

In particular one new format was becoming more and more prominent – the video ad. Noticeably the increasing amount of of advertising appearing on YouTube videos was spurring on this format. It was clear that targeted video ads were becoming part of the standard advertising mix.

I already loved how easy it was to embed a YouTube video into a blog post and I thought why can’t we leverage this built in function to make video ads an option for CrankyAds users.

I floated the idea past our development team. We talked about how we could make video ads an option as a zone type within CrankyAds. After some discussion we decided to keep things simple, allowing users to include video ads in our initial release by making the zone function using the YouTube embed code.

How CrankyAds Video Ad Zones Work

The process is very simple. Once you have created a video ad zone using CrankyAds, which follows the same process for creating a text link or banner ad zone, and placed the widget or code into your website design, you are ready to take video ad sponsors.

Once a sponsor comes to your site and sees the video ad zone option they can click the buy button. To submit their video ad, they simply copy and paste the standard YouTube video embed code from whatever YouTube video they want to use for the ad. They can also stipulate a URL and some text to go with it, which functions as a text link placed just below the video ad.

The end result will look something like this –

The video appears on your site and can be clicked to play. The link below it can be clicked to take the visitor to whatever site the video sponsor wants to take them too.

The use of YouTube was a deliberate choice because most people are familiar with how to create and share YouTube videos, hence reducing the barriers to using YouTube as a video advertising tool.

The great thing about the simplicity of this process is how your sponsor enjoys the benefits that YouTube provides, for example -

1. YouTube does all the hosting, so there is no cost.
2. Each time a video is played on the sponsored website, the YouTube view count increases, which can help that video rank higher in search results within both Google and YouTube search, the two largest search engines.
3. Sponsors can use any type of video – educational, funny, entertainment, live action, cartoon, slides, picture album – whatever they want to upload to YouTube they can include as an advertisement.
4. The ease of use of YouTube and simplicity of the latest video editing tools such as iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, Camtasia, Screencast or more sophisticated tools like Final Cut, brings video advertising to the masses.
5. CrankyAds makes the process very simple to create video ad zones using YouTube, and includes the function to change your video any time. Sponsors can test different videos to see which convert best, just like they do with text link and banner ads.

There’s also the option to include your own internal campaigns using video ads. For example you might want to promote your own product or service or affiliate products using video campaigns, in which case you can use any YouTube video(s) and easily display them on your site, including a link to any page you like.

Video Ads Are The Latest Technology

I have to admit when we added video ads to CrankyAds I was pretty excited. For one thing, I was confident we were one of the first advertising management tools that allowed you to include video ads on your website. I was also excited to test video ads on my own blog (I sold my first video sponsored ad within a month).

Video is still what you would call cutting edge technology when it comes to advertising online. Video is not new to the Internet of course, but it’s not a standard format for advertising campaigns unless you are a large company with a large marketing budget.

The great thing about YouTube and combining it with CrankyAds, is that it makes the video ad format accessible to small businesses and even individuals.

Offer Video Today

CrankyAds makes video advertising so easy that you are crazy not to at least include a video zone in your website somewhere. You may even use video in your most prominent ad position at a premium price.

I suggest you give it a try today. Remember to apply my advice when it comes to pricing your campaign and also factor in how video advertising is new to many sponsors. You may need to test some entry level pricing to entice people to try it, perhaps offering a video ad to any current banner or text link sponsors you have at a discount price.

To begin, all you need to do is download CrankyAds if you have not done so already, then go and set up a video ad zone and add it to your website design.

If you have any questions about video ads, please leave them as comment replies below and I will do my best to answer.

Yaro Starak
CrankyAds Founder
www.crankyads.com