Data is a critical part of online video today. From optimizing ad delivery to understanding viewer engagement, data drives nearly every decision made for your online video marketing strategy.
But data isn’t just for video ads. Increasingly, data is playing a role in the creative process as well, helping content creators and production companies to better understand what works and what doesn’t with the audiences brands are wanting to reach.
This data-driven approach to video creation is often referred to as “creative analytics.”
Keep reading to learn more about how creative analytics can be used to build and grow your business.
What is Creative Analytics?
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In its simplest form, creative analytics is the use of data to inform and improve the creative process. This can take many different forms, but some common examples include using data to:
- understand which topics or genres are most popular with your audience
- determine which videos are most likely to garner attention (and maybe even go viral.)
- track how viewers engage with your videos (e.g., average watch time, drop-off rates, etc.)
- identify which elements of your videos are most important to viewers (e.g., messaging, cinematography, animation, etc.)
Why is Creative Analytics Important?
There are two main reasons why creative analytics is so important for today’s content creators.
First, with the proliferation of online video, there is more competition than ever for viewers’ attention. This means that it’s no longer enough to simply create “good” content; you need to create content that resonates with your audience and meets their needs.
Second, thanks to advances in data collection and analysis, we now have the ability to track and understand viewer engagement at an unprecedented level. This provides brands, content creators, and production teams with valuable insights that can be used to improve future video ads.
How Can I Use Creative Analytics?
If you’re interested in using creative analytics to improve your own videos, there are a few things you can do to get started.
1. Define Your Goals
Before you start collecting data, you need to define what you want to achieve with your video.
Do you want to increase brand awareness? Drive website traffic? Generate leads?
Once you know what your goal is, you can start looking for the data that will help you achieve it. Keep in mind that different types of data will be more useful for different goals. For example, if you want to increase brand awareness, social media engagement data will be more useful than website traffic data.
2. Collect the Right Data
First, make sure you’re collecting data on your videos (e.g., view counts, watch times, engagement rates, etc.). If you’re not already doing this, there are a number of tools that can help, including Google Analytics and YouTube Analytics.
Once you know what goal you’re trying to achieve, you can start collecting the right data. After all, data isn’t useful unless it is data you can use to inform your business decisions.
There are a number of ways besides “tech tools” to collect data from your target audience, including surveys, social media listening, focus groups, and more. Once you have this data, it’s important to organize it in a way that makes it easy to analyze.
3. Analyze the Data
After you’ve collected and organized your data, it’s time to start analyzing it. Look for patterns and trends in the data that can help inform your video marketing strategy. For example, if you notice that a certain type of content gets a lot of engagement on social media, consider creating a video around that topic.
Take some time to analyze this data and look for trends or patterns. What do your most popular videos have in common? What do your least popular videos have in common? What genres or topics seem to perform well with your audience? Answering these questions can help you to better understand what type of content resonates with your viewers.
4. Create an Outline
Finally, use these insights to inform your future video projects. If you know that certain topics or genres tend to perform well with your audience, consider creating more videos on those topics/genres. Similarly, if you find that certain elements of your videos are particularly important to viewers (e.g., storyline), make sure those elements are given priority in future projects.
Once you have a good understanding of the data, you can start creating an outline for your next video. Keep your goal in mind as you create the outline and make sure each scene serves a specific purpose that supports that goal. Remember that less is more when it comes to utilizing data in your video—you don’t want to overload viewers with too much information.
Final Thoughts
Creative analytics is a critical part of today’s online video landscape.
By using data to inform and improve the creative process, content creators can ensure that their videos resonate with viewers and meet their needs.
If you’re interested in using creative analytics for your own videos, start by collecting data on your past projects and looking for trends or patterns. You can then use these insights to inform your future video projects and ensure that they are successful.