Video Advertising Platform: Buy Instream and Outstream Traffic

Instream ads and outstream video: the two placements

Instream ads play inside the publisher's player, before the content the visitor chose. Attention is high because the visitor is waiting for something, and tolerance is low for the same reason.

Outstream video plays inside a page rather than inside a player, usually muted until someone interacts with it. Volume is larger and attention is lower, which makes outstream ads the cheaper of the two per impression.

Most accounts here run both. Outstream video advertising finds the audience at a price that lets a test finish, and instream carries the message to the people who already chose to watch something.

What video traffic costs

Video is billed per thousand impressions. The recommended bid depends on country and demand, and the table is fed from the platform rather than maintained by hand.

Compare video against other formats on cost per conversion, not on CPM. It costs more per impression than banner and buys attention that banner cannot, so the two are only comparable at the end of the funnel.

What it costs to start

Video is the one format here where making the creative costs more than finding out whether it works. A file takes days; the market answers in hours. So the order that saves money is the reverse of the obvious one: prove the offer somewhere cheap, then bring video to what already converts.

Opening the account itself is not the expensive part. There is no contract and no monthly minimum, the balance is topped up when you choose to, and $50 gets you in, with bank transfer, crypto and e-wallets all accepted.

How to launch a video campaign

Create a campaign, choose video, and supply the creative in a standard resolution and codec so the player does not have to transcode it. Point it at a single country and a single device type, and start from the recommended CPM shown above.

Start with connection-type targeting rather than adding it later. Video on a slow mobile connection produces started-but-unfinished impressions that cost money and deliver nothing.

What to measure

Completion rate tells you whether the creative and the targeting fit the inventory; cost per conversion tells you whether the campaign works. Track both, and split by connection type and device.

A campaign with high completion and no conversions has a landing page or an offer problem. A campaign with low completion and reasonable conversions is usually paying for impressions on connections that cannot deliver them: a targeting fix, not a creative one.

Where video does not fit

Video is the wrong first choice for testing a market. Production takes time, volume is smaller than popunder or banner, and a negative result tells you as much about the creative as about the market.

It is also the wrong format when the offer's value is a number rather than a picture: a rate, a bonus, a discount. Those live better in a headline than in thirty seconds of footage.