How to Scale Video Ad Production: 7 Unexplored Tips to Empower Your In-House Team

Let us guess. If you ‘casually’ stumbled upon this, there’s a high chance:

  • You lead an in-house creative or marketing team at a brand or agency
  • Your team produces hundreds of videos across multiple campaigns that need to run simultaneously
  • As a consequence of this, you and your team have way too much on your plate

It could also be that, when it comes to video ad production, you’re working with an external agency that is taking care of pretty much everything themselves – and yet, somehow, they can’t quite grasp it.

But what if we told you there’s a better way, a hybrid model that could make your life easier and the collaboration with your team smoother?

Video killed the radio star

According to a Gartner 2020 CMO spend survey, 32% of agency work shifted to in-house teams and, let’s admit it, it makes total sense. It’s an inevitable response to the prominence of video marketing. After all, 80% of people prefer video over text – something that keeps getting confirmed by the ever-changing digital landscape that sees how the rise of video consumption directly impacts social media trends and how we consume content.

Your content strategy is probably relying on video at scale, from performance marketing and localization to segmented marketing and retargeting. Not to consider all the different formats you need for TV, digital out-of-home, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, [include the next social media sensation here]. It’s a lot, we get it.

As briefly mentioned above, there are mainly two possible scenarios. Either:

A. Your in-house team is doing it all (manually)

Pros

  • You save money since there’s no need to outsource projects
  • Your communication is more timely and less async
  • You maintain brand consistency in everything you do

Cons

  • Your dedicated team wastes precious time handcrafting hundreds of variations instead of working on big, impactful ideas that move the needle
  • Manual errors make a cameo appearance, leading to frustration and slowing down the whole process even more (and we all know that time is money too)
  • Your production can quickly become too cumbersome, leaving no room for scalability (missed opportunities, anyone?)

B. You’re relying on a creative agency or vendor

Pros

  • They take care of it all so you can focus on other areas of work that need your attention
  • They troubleshoot any issues that might arise during the creation process and ensure that your video content adheres to best practices
  • Their skilled professionals know how to make your videos creatively compelling (something your brand might find challenging to have as an in-house resource)

Cons

  • While you’re completely dependent on an external party to generate your video content, you might still need to ensure that all assets undergo a rigorous quality assurance process before they’re published (unless you 101% trust them)
  • There might be some friction, mainly due to different ways of working and a lack of direction or internal guidelines
  • The cost of services from creative agencies or vendors can be expensive – a challenge if you’re also trying to scale your content creation at the same time

But, are you doing everything you can to scale video ad production effortlessly?

Perhaps you already have a few ideas in mind. Whether some of the ones listed below might not be applicable to you, you could still implement one or two and see where they take you.

Buckle up and get inspired.

7 unexplored tips to empower your in-house team

1. Use a DIY template creation tool

With DIY template creation tools, you have control over the design process and can make changes along the way. They usually have a user-friendly interface – which allows you to set something up quickly. All in all, this translates to more flexibility and agile work. Yet, you might be limiting yourself to default presets and animation possibilities. There’s so much untapped potential you could still unlock if you really want to stand out from the clutter. Why not take advantage of it?

2. Leverage stock footage

You can collect, store and use stock footage to quickly and easily add visuals to video ads. You can also use it to enhance video content with extra visuals. This way you don’t have to hire a videographer or shoot it yourself. At the same time, this can limit your creativity big time. Are we right to assume you don’t want to look like everyone else?

3. Repurpose existing content

Why not turn your written assets (e.g. blog articles) into video content? There are multiple tools out there that give you the possibility to create animated videos from your static content. Alternatively, you could hire a production company to create a professional video, although that would mean spending money on a one-off asset.

4. Adopt a modular approach

Plan and reiterate. That could mean thinking of recurring patterns ahead of time. Think of videos, for instance – they usually have an intro card, a set number of title cards and an end card. Ask yourself: how can I determine and set the primary structure now so that I’ll only have to swap things out then?

5. Leverage user-generated content

Use your owned media (blog, newsletter, social media) to run contests and encourage your audience to submit video ad content. Using UGC as part of your video content strategy will help create a sense of togetherness while reducing the workload. Goes without saying, this won’t be for everyone – e.g. it works better for B2C than B2B.

6. Use an outsourcing platform

By doing this, you can outsource all different aspects of video production to freelancers – whether it be directing, editing or animation. Or you could decide to supply the design to a studio that does all the heavy work for you. The downside? They’re mainly there to push the pixels, so you may have to instruct them on an ongoing basis. Plus, you might not be able to ensure their reliability, experience or high-quality standards. And we know that balancing quality with quantity is your best-case scenario.

builds up anticipation

This takes us to tip number 7… the best one of all, although we might be a little biased.

Together with a few of the aforementioned tips, you could also consider having:

7. A hybrid model that screams ‘best of both worlds’

Now, imagine an A-team composed of internal employees and an external party you collaborate closely with – the latter acting as an extension of your in-house brand, performance marketing, social media, you-name-it department.

Together, they form one flexible, agile team that has efficient collaboration at its core while being up to speed (e.g. knows who does what, ways of working and internal guidelines). After all, isn’t flexibility one of the most precious learnings we’ve acknowledged in the past couple of years?

If we had to picture it, we’d be in it and it’d look something like this:

  1. Your in-house team sets the foundations for the big (creative) idea
  2. We turn it into a high-quality custom-built scale-proof video template (concepts that require advanced motion graphics or 3D animation are more than welcome)
  3. You generate all the versions you need within minutes (through a data sheet or our UI)

The benefits?

  • Fewer manual errors, faster turnaround times, more flexibility to iterate and optimize
  • Content that is up to your standards and meets the needs of your target audience
  • New ideas, perspectives and formats to push your content to the next level
  • More time to work on strategies, impactful ideas and the things you can’t automate
  • Centralized control, more consistency and better performance

But, most importantly, a streamlined, tailored creative production process to create and deliver content at an unprecedented volume, speed and accuracy.

Which is exactly what we do at Cube. So here it is, an extra tip number 8: Schedule a demo with us and expand your creative output without losing quality and consistency.

Case study

Here's how Booking.com has created 10,000+ video ads with Cube

Using Cube’s creative automation templates, Booking.com can produce video campaigns for all markets and channels at scale, without losing consistency or creativity.

Read more

TL;DR

  • Use DIY template creation tools, leverage stock footage, turn written assets into video content, adopt a modular approach, leverage UGC and/or use an outsourcing platform.

  • Focus on efficiency, not effort. The world needs your big ideas. You’re way too talented to spend time on tasks you can easily automate.

  • Go for the in-between: a hybrid, inclusive model that sees your in-house team collaborate with an external creative automation team who cares about quality as much as scalability (so you can create more and better assets).