How to Win Over Video-First Advertisers

These days, marketers consider video one of the most powerful ad formats out there. In just a few seconds, it delivers the message, the mood, and the CTA all at once — and compared to a static banner, it holds an incomparable edge in dwell time and brand recall. Maybe that’s why AdNote advertisers have increasingly been seeking out “placements where they can run video creative.”

The problem is that, from a publisher’s perspective, building your own video ad inventory is anything but easy. To build the video delivery infrastructure, the measurement system, and a console where advertisers can book directly — all in-house — your dev timeline stretches out in quarters, and on the sales side, you end up unable to capture the video campaigns advertisers want in time.

AdControl’s video ad feature was built to solve exactly this. It’s a structure where a publisher can start running video ads the moment they flip a single toggle on top of their existing ad units — with no separate development. There’s actually a publisher that used this feature to launch a brand-new ad product: APTNER, who we’re introducing today. And their very first advertiser was Hyundai Department Store!

Let’s take a look, in order, at the core of AdControl’s video ad feature, and the APTNER × Hyundai Department Store case where they pulled off their first video campaign together through it.

Why are advertisers looking for video ads?

If you see video ads merely as a “high-priced ad product,” you stay stuck in the publisher’s point of view. Step back and look from the advertiser’s side, and the reasons for seeking out video are far more concrete. The campaign problems advertisers want to solve with video boil down to three.

• When they want to express a message through video that’s hard to convey with an image. The atmosphere and spatial feel of a store, the usage context and motion of a new product, the texture and color payoff of a beauty product, the brand mood a model creates — there are messages that static images can’t fully express. Video can deliver these compactly, in just a few seconds.
• When they want to reach a sharper audience that large media like TV or YouTube can’t. Branding ads centered on large media alone make it hard to precisely reach the core target of a specific commercial district, region, or lifestyle. This is when advertisers seek out video ads on vertical media where the audience their message resonates with most is gathered.
• When they want to create awareness and buzz with impact in a short time. For campaigns where fast awareness is key — seasonal or limited-time promotions, new store or new product openings — the impact video creates, rather than a static image, often determines the outcome.

So for a publisher, having video ad inventory isn’t simply about adding one more ad product. It’s about stepping up to become a medium that can help solve advertisers’ real campaign problems.

Here’s how AdControl’s video ad feature works

AdControl is an ad monetization platform built so that publishers can run their own ad business directly. Within it, the key to the video ad feature is this: “Just turn on the video option on top of your existing unit, and you can run video ads right away.”

1. No separate Add-on — start with an option toggle

There’s no need to create a dedicated video unit separately. Across all sizes of banner, popup, and native, just flip the “accept video creative” toggle in the unit settings, and advertisers can register video creative. The publisher can set everything themselves — video controller on/off, sound toggle, skip delay — so the user experience can be tuned to the publisher’s tone, too.

2. Advertiser self-booking and real-time viewing metrics reporting

Advertisers book campaigns directly within the console, register creative, and check live performance in real time. In particular, video ads come with not just impressions and clicks, but viewing-quality metrics like valid views, valid view rate, completed views, and completion rate — so publishers can show advertisers “the viewing value of video inventory, quantitatively.” From the advertiser’s side, they can check those same metrics right in their own console, making efficiency judgments fast and clear.

3. Combine the publisher’s targeting directly into video ads

Targeting based on the publisher’s first-party (1P) data — region, age, behavior, and so on — can be combined directly into video ads. It becomes an ad that isn’t simply “playing a video,” but “playing a video to exactly the right person” — run by the publisher themselves.

Use Case: APTNER × Hyundai Department Store

APTNER, an apartment lifestyle platform built on verified-residency, recently launched a new video ad product through AdControl. And its very first advertiser was Hyundai Department Store — a case where Hyundai Department Store joined as the first campaign partner for APTNER’s newly launched video ad product.

Media characteristics: precise regional targeting based on verified residency

APTNER is a platform run on the basis of users who’ve completed residency verification — not just casual visitors. It has two strengths that are hard for other media to imitate.

• Regional targeting that drills down to the individual complex — ads can be delivered based on the actual residential complex, not just the city or district level.
• A user base centered on ages 35–54 with stable purchasing power — an age group that advertisers across many sectors (department stores, home appliances, telecom, finance, insurance, education, vertical commerce, and more) find attractive.

Background: there was no placement to receive advertisers’ video messages

Among the advertiser inquiries coming into APTNER’s ad team, there had been a steady stream of requests hoping to register video creative. Advertisers had campaign messages they wanted to deliver through video, but with no in-house video ad product, some had to be declined or offered a banner as a substitute. A situation kept continuing where they couldn’t fully capture advertisers’ campaigns.

After adoption: a new ad product with precise targeting layered right on

Through AdControl’s video ad feature, APTNER was able to launch a video ad product immediately, without being tied to a dev timeline. The ad team built the product directly in the console, creating a lineup they could propose to advertisers right away. One of the biggest advantages was that they could layer APTNER’s precise regional targeting — powered by AdControl — directly onto that same video product. As proposals like “deliver video ads only to residents aged 35–54 in a specific region” became possible, it turned into an attractive product for both region-based advertisers (department stores, furniture, interior, etc.) and lifestyle advertisers (home appliances, telecom, finance, insurance, etc.).

The first advertiser was Hyundai Department Store, with a The Hyundai Hi opening campaign video

The first advertiser for APTNER’s newly launched video ad product was Hyundai Department Store. They ran The Hyundai Hi’s brand campaign as video creative, delivered in combination with APTNER’s verified-residency-based regional targeting. The campaign’s goal was clear.

Q. What was the goal of this The Hyundai Hi campaign?

“Securing early brand awareness for The Hyundai Hi’s opening!”

Q. Why did you choose APTNER as the medium for this campaign?

“To reach the main target living in the key commercial districts around the department store.”

Q. Why did you choose a video format rather than an image?

“It was an opening viral video — a main video featuring models like Hong Tae-jun and Lee I-dam — to clearly deliver the message and brand and create buzz.”

— Hyundai Department Store marketing lead

The campaign problem the advertiser wanted to solve and APTNER’s media characteristics lined up exactly. They needed to deliver the brand message with impact in a short time through an opening viral video featuring models, and the buzz that’s hard to create with an image was the key. At the same time, the people that message needed to reach were a specific target “living in the key commercial districts around the department store,” so APTNER — with its verified-residency-based, complex-level targeting — was exactly the right media choice.

During the campaign, alongside impressions and clicks, video quality metrics like valid views and completion rate were tallied in real time, and the advertiser could check those same metrics directly in their own console.

The performance figures themselves can’t be disclosed due to advertiser and publisher policy, but one thing is clear: when the advertiser’s campaign problem, the publisher’s strengths, and the operating and measurement environment the ad platform provides all mesh well, it can naturally lead to collaboration. The APTNER and Hyundai Department Store case shows the most ideal version of that flow.

How to easily start video ads — For Publishers

Now that the campaign problems advertisers want to solve through video are getting clearer, there are a few common reasons many publishers still don’t have their own video ad product.

• A lack of resources to develop video delivery and measurement infrastructure in-house
• The absence of a console and reporting system where advertisers can book and manage directly
• The absence of a measurement system that can quantitatively show video-specific viewing metrics

But with AdControl, you can solve all of these problems at once and run a video ad product right away. With no separate Add-on, a single option toggle in your unit settings is all it takes.

Just like APTNER, you can build the picture now — solving advertisers’ real campaign problems and naturally leading into a campaign with your first advertiser.

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