The Recipe for Your Brand’s Next Successful Ad

4 Min Read

It’s the age-old question for advertisers: what makes the perfect ad? Some swear it’s the talent. Others, the length. Some might even argue about things like the color scheme or the number of actors shown. Thankfully, you no longer have to debate or guess. We’ve figured out the recipe for the perfect ad – and we’re sneaking brands into the kitchen to learn it.

Using QuickFrame’s Video Vitals AI technology, we analyzed over 1,800 TV commercials that ran through our Performance TV platform to figure out the key ingredients in creating a high-performing commercial. Join MNTN VP of Marketing Ali Haeri, and QuickFrame CMO Lucas Piazza, as they share their findings in a Tech-Talk Webinar presentation with eMarketer. RSVP here to secure your spot.

How AI Makes Better Ads

While Connected TV has forever changed advertising by making TV into a performance marketing channel, artificial intelligence can take the platform one step further. With technology like QuickFrame’s Video Vitals AI you can feed in a single video and have the software identify thousands of individual components that make up the ad. When you pair these granular and specific details with the corresponding performance data, you reveal truths about what creative decisions do – and do not – impact performance. The result is a comprehensive report that gives you the knowledge you need to optimize your creative, saving you time, money, and energy.  

Now, imagine taking that level of comprehensive reporting for a single ad and doing it 1,800 times to identify the common elements behind today’s most successful ads. That’s exactly what we did, and our analysis intelligently tied these elements back to performance – giving us hard, tangible results that serve as a recipe for the perfect CTV ad.

The Perfect Ad Length

Figuring out the perfect ad length sounds reasonable enough on paper. After all, there are already some limitations in place – no one’s out there pitching a 2-hour diet soda commercial. But with Connected TV, its 15 and 30-second ads produce strong results. So, which one of those should your brand pick? Like everything else in advertising, it comes down to your campaign goals. If you’re looking to just drive visit rates, our experience with Video Vitals AI revealed that shorter is better – 15-second ads perform 19% better than 30-second ones. But if you’re looking to drive hard conversions, we learned that audiences are swayed by the time spent on the pitch – 30-second ads perform 24% better.

But it’s not just campaign goals that can determine the ideal length. After reviewing the 1,800 ads, the AI found that brand vertical also matters. Smaller-ticket items like beauty products, wellness, food, and beverage tend to favor shorter 15-second ads. Bigger and more complex verticals, like finance or travel, favor 30-second ads that can explain the product in more detail.

Think Positive

We previously discussed how our AI results told us that the use of “fear” for a theme drives visits rates and opening hooks, but “joy” is the emotion that converts. But our AI analysis didn’t stop there. Video Vitals was able to identify “clusters” of themes, derived from a combination of keywords and objects in the video. The results might be surprising.

For example, in the beauty vertical the “self-confidence” cluster resulted in a drop of 186% visit rate average; “company founders” resulted in a positive gain of 148%. Similarly, “interest rates” and “greed” clusters faired poorly for the finance vertical. But “kindness/compassion” showed a positive uptick. The data speaks for itself: viewers are more interested in knowing the people behind the brands, the brand story, and learning how these organizations give back to the community or practice compassion. In today’s ads, positivity is king.

There’s Even More to Learn

Our test using QuickFrame’s Video Vitals AI technology and MNTN’s Performance TV produced far more findings than we can cover here. That’s why we’re sharing our results in an in-depth webinar. Join us and eMarketer to learn more on how to build the perfect TV ad – and how you can use the technology to get ahead of the competition. Don’t miss out – RSVP now to secure your spot.