Mastering OLV advertising: Your definitive guide to maximizing online video campaign ROI

Online video (OLV) advertising is no longer a “nice to have” digital advertising tactic—it’s a powerful channel that drives real impact for your brand. In fact, 92% say video gives them a good return on their investment. And with over 244.4 million digital video viewers in the U.S. alone, marketers can’t afford to overlook OLV as part of their strategy.

In this guide, we’ll cover what OLV advertising is, why it matters and how to build and optimize a strategy that maximizes ROI.

Setting the stage for OLV success

The way people consume content has clearly transformed over the past decade. With streaming, mobile and on-demand formats reshaping viewing behavior, OLV has emerged as a key channel for both brand awareness and performance marketing.

Consumers now spend an average of 2 hours and 36 minutes per day watching digital video—and that number continues to climb. By 2026, 79% of the U.S. population will watch digital video and video ad spending will reach $125 billion. This means for brands, OLV is not just a popular way to reach people—it’s essential.

But success with OLV isn't just about creating video content and capturing attention. It’s about converting those viewers into customers through sophisticated targeting, compelling creative and data-driven ad placements and optimizations.

The landscape of online video (OLV) advertising

So, what exactly is OLV advertising? At its core, OLV advertising refers to short- or long-form video ads (6, 15, 30, or 60 seconds) placed before, during or after video content on websites and apps. Ads can also run in-feed, in-article or as standalone outstream placements.

OLV works best when aligned to clear marketing goals, like:

• Brand awareness: Build broad visibility with engaging, memorable video ads
• Performance campaigns: Drive measurable actions by targeting high-value audiences across devices

OLV marketing strategies are effective because they allow marketers to continue a brand's awareness story while simultaneously pushing customers down the funnel toward conversion. Online video advertising campaigns help marketers by:

• Connecting large format video, like CTV, to display campaigns
• Achieving unique reach and frequency goals across digital channels by targeting a large audience wherever they are watching video across the open web
• Measuring the full path to purchase and understanding each how many touches lead to a purchase

Clearly, OLV media isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, and savvy marketers would do well to develop their own OLV strategy to avoid falling behind their competitors.

Fundamental pillars of effective OLV campaigns

Building an impactful OLV strategy requires attention to three core pillars:

1. Precision audience targeting

Reaching real people, not just devices is critical. Utilizing deterministic data, like physical address, emails and purchases, makes your OLV strategy scalable across all channels and creates persistent, non cookie-dependent connections for a long-term and continually refreshed view of consumers.

2. Crafting compelling creative

Creative is the heartbeat of every OLV campaign. As consumers are bombarded with more and more content on a daily basis, your ads need to capture attention and maintain meaningful interest throughout the experience. Here are a few things to consider when it comes to crafting impactful OLV ads:

• Format optimization: Ensure your creative works across different video lengths (6-, 15-, 30-, and 60-second formats) and aspect ratios.
• Mobile-first design: With mobile video consumption projected to reach 68% by 2026, your creative must be optimized for mobile viewing.
• Clear value proposition: Communicate your key message quickly and memorably.
• Strong call-to-action: Drive viewers to take the next step.
• Brand consistency: Maintain visual and messaging alignment across all touchpoints.

3. Strategic placement and distribution

Optimizing media delivery to in-stream (in-feed, in-article, and interstitial) and outstream inventory in real-time achieves campaign goals by reaching the right audience across the open web when and where they are most receptive.

Optimizing your OLV for maximum ROI with Epsilon

Maximizing OLV performance comes down to a few key best practices. With Epsilon as your partner, your brand can stretch ad dollars further and drive stronger results.

Data-driven decisions

Epsilon's programatic advertising solution gives you limitless opportunities to reach your customers. Our privacy-protected data gives you access to over 1,500 granular audiences that account for demographics, interests and life stages and behaviors and transactions, in addition to vertical-specific information. The result? Accurate and reliable data that is invaluable to your brand.

Leveraging identity solutions

Epsilon’s COREid—the only identity solution that uses all available online and offline identifiers—helps brands reach the right person across any device and channel. That means you’re not just reaching a household, but also each device and the people using them.

Measuring success and proving ROI

Having strong identity resolution helps marketers understand their customers better—and the activities that drive repeat conversions. With Epsilon, you can measure the true impact of your OLV advertising investment, allowing you to optimize and measure KPIs like:

• Impression delivery and viewability
• Video completion rate and engagement metrics
• Unique reach and frequency (best for managing campaigns across all digital channels)
• Household reach and frequency (best for comparing household penetration from OLV against your brand's CTV or linear buy)
• Exclusive reach and overlap (best for comparing channel-specific impact in reaching unique customers)

Advanced strategies and future-proofing your OLV

As OLV continues to evolve, forward-thinking marketers are already testing advanced strategies, like:

Generative engine optimization (GEO)

As search shifts toward AI-driven engines, GEO, or generative engine optimization, is becoming a new frontier. Optimizing video metadata and creative for AI-powered discovery tools ensures your OLV content surfaces when and where audiences are actively exploring.

AI and machine learning in OLV

AI enhances targeting, creative optimization and measurement. From Dynamic creative optimization (DCO), whichautomatically tests and optimizes creative elements in real-time based on performance data, to predictive audience modeling and fraud protection and prevention, machine learning is shaping the next wave of OLV efficiency.

Emerging trends

Other emerging trends to keep on your brand's radar include:

• Shoppable video ads that shorten the path from discovery to purchase
• Connected TV (CTV) integration thatbridges the gap between traditional TV advertising and digital video through advanced targeting and measurement
• Interactive formats that engage audiences with polls, quizzes, or clickable CTAs

Multimedia

The future of OLV will integrate seamlessly with other formats—CTV, display, social and audio, to name a few—creating a multimedia ecosystem and cross-format storytelling where video isn’t siloed, but part of a holistic customer journey.

Conclusion: The Epsilon advantage in OLV

Effective OLV advertising starts with knowing your customer—and having the right partner to connect the dots. Epsilon’s privacy-protected data, identity solutions and managed services help brands reach real people, optimize campaigns and prove ROI.

With OLV only set to grow, now is the time to refine your strategy and invest in future-proof solutions. Partner with Epsilon to drive your OLV advertising efforts forward—and unlock measurable growth from video.

As OLV continues to shape the digital landscape, it's important to have the right strategy and connect with the right partner. Known as experts in data-driven strategy, our OLV solutions leverage advanced data and identity resolution to help brands reach, engage and convert high-value audiences.

This article was originally published on September 22, 2023, and has since been updated.