Online Video Advertising: How Sound and Color Shape the Message

Your target audience watches about 4 billion videos on YouTube daily, so if you’re not already dabbling in online video advertising and marketing, you’re missing out on a lot. If you think yours is a business-to-business (B2B) company and your target is all over on email, then here’s a stat: about 92% of B2B shoppers check out videos before making buying decisions. 

It is by no means too late to turn to online video advertising in 2023. You can hire a video advertising agency and get started right away. But before you do, it’s important to understand the importance of colors, shades, and hues and how they can make or break your digital video advertising campaign. 

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Continue reading to understand why colors and sound are important and how to incorporate them into your digital video advertising strategy. 

The Role of Colors in Digital Video Advertising

“When dealing with people, remember you’re not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotions,” Dale Carnegie, the writer of the famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, once said. Imbibing this emotional nuance in your online video advertising strategy is very important. And colors can help you do just that! 

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Colors are a medium of expressing emotions, and for centuries humans have been leveraging this fact. We’ve been unwittingly using colors, compositions, shades, and hues to create experiences and influence people. Why should your online video advertising strategy not have that? 

Colors can make a video look cheap, expensive, natural, and exciting. Do you know why Zomato’s brand color is red? Red is known to stimulate appetite. Studies have shown that being surrounded by the color can change our breathing effect, stimulate us, and even increase our blood pressure. 

Being surrounded by the color white, for example, can lead to sleeplessness, nervousness, and anxiety. Too much green represents envy or greed – in healthy amounts. However, it can mean ambition and finance, nature and fertility. Being surrounded by too much green can make you moody and lazy. And not enough green can lead to boredom and apathy. Do you see where we’re going with this explanation? It is important to ensure your videos are balanced in colors and can express the emotion your brand stands for. 

• How to use colors in digital video advertising campaigns

You can use colors and hues to inspire a certain emotion in your target audience. You can use colors to add context to your storytelling. You can leverage this easy (and colorful) tool in your arsenal to ensure you communicate your message with specificity. Design is all about storytelling; the colors you choose represent you and help you tell your story better — choose them wisely. 

• Colors that impact buying behavior

The following colors can hold people’s attention and encourage them to buy from you: 

• Red
• Blue
• Pink
• Yellow
• Green
• Purple
• Gold

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Why is Sound Important in Digital Video Advertising? 

One might think adding music to videos is distracting. Or over-the-top. Or worse, expensive. 

But when you put sound to good use, you can create a wholesome and frequently unforgettable experience. 

Here’s why sound is important. 

• It increases production value.
• It emphasizes your message.
• It sets the mood of the video,
• It evokes emotions,

A brand can use sound — language, lyrical, instrumentals, and even silence — to dramatically improve the quality of a video. Video ads with music trigger an emotional response. This kind of cue is a peripheral cue. This means that the cue lies outside the central message of your advert — outside your narrator, on-screen text. 

Studies show that certain chord progressions can create a different atmosphere. For example, a major chord can sound much happier and more positive than the minor one. The study says it may be the single most stimulating component in a commercial. Since video adverts are viewed as having an audience of non-decision-making consumers, the stimulating aspects of music can help persuade viewers. Music, a peripheral cue, can exert its greatest influence on brand attitude in a low-involvement ad setting. 

The messages conveyed by sound are more effective than cognitive. For example, calm music can decrease the audience’s anxiety. And major and minor modes can affect their feelings. 

Music has been shown to affect behavior at the point of purchase. And digital video advertising companies have been using it to their benefit for a long time. If you so much as change your in-store music, you can see the change in the pace of your customer’s behavior. The amount they spend exceeds the amount they originally planned to spend. 

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Good music can encourage customers to stay in your store a little longer. And this results in them making purchases they didn’t plan to. Along with invoking an emotional response, sound can tell your audience what to expect even before the main part of the video begins. 

For example, the sound of phones ringing, copies humming, and footsteps moving can tell you you’re about to enter an office before you even do so. The point is, besides invoking an emotional response, sound can also invoke meaning and drive decisions. 

How to Use Sound in Digital Video Advertising Campaigns

You might think yours is a professional brand image and don’t want to come across as being too casual by using sound in your online video advertising strategy. But you don’t have to use casual kind of music. 

You can add three types of sound to your videos: 

• Voices: The sound of someone speaking — nothing is better than sending your message. Ensure that the background message is not overpowering their voices. 
• Music: Pick the right track, and you can move your audience to tears. But the wrong one can send them running. Consider your script and choose music accordingly.
• Sound effect: If you don’t want to add songs to your videos, add sound effects, particularly if your videos are animated. You can convey a more influencing message with some carefully placed sound effects. Sometimes, something as subtle as a ‘swoosh’ sound can do wonders for your message. 

If used according to your script, these sounds can make your finished product come alive with the message you want to convey. It’ll ensure your audience listens to what you want them to hear. 

You may be compelled to ignore the artistic side of adding sound to your videos and might want to pick just anything without considering it. But remember — people hate it when they listen to a quiet video. Or when there is audio, but the quality is terrible. Or when they have to strain to hear what the narrator is saying. 

Genres of Sound that can Influence Buying Behavior

Regardless of demographic, the following genres of sound can encourage your customers to buy: 

• Classical
• Regional music
• Ambient or instrumental
• Pop or familiar music
• Holiday music (during the season)

In Summary

Your video needs colors and audio to make your storytelling influential, to have them coming back to you, and to, yes, buy from you. You can convince your target audience of your message using the right colors and sound in your videos. They can guide your target audience to a specific outcome or warn them against you. 

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