How to use Online Video Advertising to Drive Business Results

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Online Video Advertising Guide: How to Use Video to Drive Business Results

Learn five rules to follow to build the most effective online video advertising strategy and see ad creative examples.

Updated on December 1, 2025

Not too long ago, digital video was a nice-to-have and most of our video viewing happened via traditional, linear TV. Now, digital video is part of our daily lives. We’re watching video content for many hours a week on our phones, our laptops and tablets, and our smart TVs and streaming devices—and this has caught the attention of marketers across the world.

The average video consumption per week increased 85% from 2016 to 2020, according to Limelight’s State of Online Video 2020 report. Consumers watched nearly eight hours of online video per week in 2020.1

This upward trend has driven marketers to invest more in building video ad campaigns to reach consumers where they’re spending more of their time.

At Criteo, we surveyed more than 1,000 senior marketing executives around the world—and half confirmed that more than 20% of their digital marketing budget was spent on paid video in 2020. More than a third (34%) said their paid video budget is likely to increase in 2021.2

What is OLV advertising?

OLV, or online video, advertising is a broad term which refers to video advertising which appears on websites and apps. These video ads can appear before (pre-roll), during (mid-roll), or after (post-roll) online video content.

As consumers experience digital fatigue and their attention spans become even shorter, video ads can capture their attention across every channel and device they use and drive them through the path to purchase. From delivering captivating messaging to targeted audiences to retargeting previous shoppers with enticing call-to-action reminders, OLV advertising is a powerful creative tool to promote products, services, or brands.

In this guide, we have five rules to follow to build the most effective OLV advertising strategy as well as video ad examples for every stage of the customer journey.

How to make effective advertising video campaigns: 5 rules to consider

At a time when marketers are under more pressure to prove ROI and deliver business results like sales and revenue, building the most effective ad campaigns has never been more important. The same applies to online video advertising. It’s possible to drive these business outcomes if video campaigns are executed and measured correctly. Follow these five rules to build a powerful OLV advertising strategy that meets your business goals.

Rule #1: Create a Commerce Media Strategy

Commerce media is an approach to digital advertising that combines commerce data and intelligence to target consumers throughout their shopping journey and help marketers and media owners drive commerce outcomes (sales, revenue, leads).

To build a commerce media strategy for video, marketers and agencies must launch video ad campaigns that drive new customers from discovery to their first purchase…

  1. Awareness
  2. Consideration
  3. Conversion

…as well as campaigns that drive existing customers to discover more products or services and become repeat buyers and loyal customers…

  1. Consideration
  2. Conversion
  3. Loyalty

All of these campaigns should ideally be running at the same time through the same technology partner to drive audiences from one stage of the customer journey to the next. This also gives marketers the ability to track audiences from their initial video exposure to click and conversion.

Rule #2: Build Audiences First

Before thinking about channels, devices, or ad formats, the first step to building video campaigns is to pick the right audience for each objective.

Each campaign will engage a different audience and have its own set of KPIs depending on which part of the customer journey is being targeted. For example, for awareness campaigns, it’s all about reaching a large number of customers, but it’s still important to narrow down your audience to the people who are most likely to buy your products or services using the data available to you.

Click here to see our list of the right audiences, creative, and KPIs for each campaign objective, including awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty.

Rule #3: Be Channel, Device & Format Agnostic

Once you build a campaign audience, the channels, OLV platforms, devices, and ad formats for that campaign are all dependent on where that audience spends their time and where they’re most likely to view or engage with your ads.

Rule #4: Scale Video Creative

The cost of producing video creative is one reason why marketers hesitate to launch ad campaigns with OLV media. But with a commerce media strategy and the right advertising partner, marketers can use one video to build ads for the full customer journey.

Rule #5: Measure Online Video Campaigns Holistically

Though each campaign will have its own set of KPIs, it’s important to track how every campaign pushed customers down the purchase funnel and influenced business results like sales, revenue, and ROI.

Video Ad Examples Across the Customer Journey

Awareness

CTV and OTT ads ( find out the difference here) are typically full-screen, non-skippable, in-stream video ads that show your 30- or 15-second branding commercial.

Consideration

Conversion

OLV ads are one of the solutions that marketers must invest in this year to be ready for the future of advertising. Is your video advertising strategy ready?