Why brands are repurposing longer video ads into bumper ads

Kristen Shipley September 2019 Emerging Technology, Video



Creating a marketing campaign is no small feat. From ideation to execution, a well-planned campaign takes time and money. So once you have all of your assets, how can you make the most of them? By adapting existing assets for different contexts and campaigns, you can maximize your impact, reaching more people with minimal creative lift.

That’s exactly what some brands are doing with video ads: taking footage from longer spots and condensing them to six-second bumper ads — an ideal format for driving brand reach and frequency. We spoke with four such brands to understand what the benefits are.

To give existing assets new life
“We used to manually create bumpers based on a longer-form ad, to ensure continuity across a campaign. But by using Bumper Machine — a tool powered by machine learning that creates six-second bumper ads from one longer ad — we’ve been able to save time and money. That’s freed us up to focus on telling our story in a more complete way.

For example, in a recent campaign, we used a longer ad to set some context and tell the full story. Then we used Bumper Machine to create a six-second version that prominently featured our brand and product, which made it easy for viewers to make the connection with the broader story.”

Metin Cherasi, Head of Digital Strategy and Marketing at Arçelik, Beko

To stay connected to customers
“We have over 20 million active rewards club members, so six-second bumper ads are great for reminding people of our upcoming deals. We wanted to do that for a recent campaign, however our traditional creative process only called for building 15-secondand 30-second creative assets. Instead, we used Bumper Machine to cut these existing longer ads into six-second ones.

That helped make our campaign more versatile and meant we could get even more reach and frequency without annoying our customers. The approach paid off: We found that we were able to drive a cost-per-store-visit of only $0.53 using bumpers. It allowed us to deliver a more succinct offer message and drive potential sales in just six seconds. Now that we know how effective this format can be at helping us achieve our marketing goals, we’re even creating custom bumpers for our campaigns.”

Steve Haffer, Senior Vice President, Chief Customer Officer, Big Lots

To reinforce your message
“For the launch of Mercado Point, an electronic payment management and processing service, we wanted an ‘always on’ video campaign. Traditionally, we’ve only used longer ads and tutorial videos in our marketing campaigns. But we realized that by using bumpers, we could remind people of what we had to offer.

So we used Bumper Machine to create a variety of strong, shorter messages from our existing long-form creative, and then we retargeted those six-second ads at people who had already watched the longer ones. The bumpers reached 60% of people who had watched our longer ads, at a higher frequency and lower CPM. When combined with the longer formats we use, bumper ads really helped us amplify our message.”

Julieta Bessi, Senior Marketing Analyst, Mercado Pago Point
To break through the noise
“In Hong Kong, people have busy lives. Even during their leisure time, many people are doing several things at once. When you’re trying to capture the attention of someone who is multitasking in this way, keeping it short can be effective, so bumper ads are a good way to enhance brand awareness in just six seconds.

Of course, squeezing everything you want to say into six seconds is a challenge. We found that a simple message and interesting, eye-catching animation was key to our success with this format. Short, easily digestible video content is now a staple of successful digital advertising.”