Interactive Ads & Premium Placements Helped These Rebels Grow Their Audience

This is how the Rebel Radio podcast generated awareness and grew their video base using found.ee’s Interactive Ad placements, and how every creator, band, artist, and brand can do the same.

Background

While podcasting is primarily an audio medium, many podcasters supplement their audio presence with a video version that lives on YouTube or Facebook. A podcaster may have a dedicated audio base, however can struggle to grow their video audience.

This was the case for Rebel Radio, a podcast that celebrates cultural pioneers. Though they get tens of thousands of listens across audio platforms per episode, they wanted to utilize video advertising to see if it could be used to expand their video audience in a meaningful way.

Challenge:

Imagine you’re watching your favorite cooking show or cat video on YouTube or Facebook. An ad comes on. How long do you typically watch the ad?

“The majority of video views… are only shown long enough for

the user to be able to skip the ad.”

Both YouTube and Facebook Video ads have an inherent problem: lack of engagement. They disrupt the viewer’s flow of content. Studies show that the majority of the video views acquired through YouTube and Facebook video advertising are only shown long enough for the user to be able to skip the ad. On top of that, a startling number of these views happen with no sound on. As a result, many YouTube and Facebook video ads fail to leave a lasting and meaningful impression on viewers.

"People watch more than three seconds of your video, then it results in a “video view.” If they watch 10 seconds or more of that same video, that’s a fairly high level of engagement" [MarketingLand.com reports]

So how can Rebel Radio use video advertising in a way to attract new audiences? And how can they get the end-user to actually watch their ad?

Solution:

We know that creating an effective video ad may be daunting. That’s why we created found.ee Interactive Ads. These HTML5 ads allow you to place your video content directly inside of an ad unit. We then place those ad units on the most premium websites in the world.

Rebel Radio ran a found.ee Interactive Ad where a video of their latest podcast was the main asset. We placed the HTML5 ad on premium websites such as Complex, GQ, Paste, to name a few.

The users on those websites weren’t forced to sit through the ad video. Rather, they were enticed by the banner and chose to click on the video. Additionally, the premium placement on websites they frequented and enjoyed visiting and engaging with created a strong brand association with the video ad.

Results:

The result? Rebel Radio’s Interactive Ad with Premium Placement had a 20x longer watch time than the average Facebook Video ad and YouTube Trueview, by comparison.

Not only does our interest-based HTML5 advertising beat YouTube and Facebook in head-to-head tests for both click throughs and lower costs, our premium placements also generate an added value: brand lift.

With found.ee, Rebel Radio was able to generate a real brand lift and expand their audience. And we think you can too, whether you’re a podcaster, a musical artist, a brand, or anyone in-between. Give it a try—everyone can create their own Interactive Ad and can place it on premium websites, with no minimums.