The challenge for all marketers, B2C and B2B alike, is to stay with the audience as marketing accountability keeps the pressure on to find new and better ways to reach the market.

Luckily, it is hard to find anyone who doesn’t reference an online video they’ve seen recently. YouTube blazed the trail, coaxing users in virtually every category to consume video content. By 2015, Facebook’s video traffic grew to 4 billion views seemingly overnight and has since doubled to 8 billion. Running ahead of Facebook is Snapchat with 10 billion daily video views.

So, it is not surprising at all that video content is becoming pervasive across the digital landscape. Where go audiences, so go marketers. According to eMarketer, digital video ad spend is expected to reach almost $13 billion in 2018 and is the fastest growing spend category. Online video is no longer simply for entertainment. It is a core marketing medium and should be part of every consumer and B2B campaign consideration set.

At M/C/C, we were so convinced that digital video ad programs would take off, we committed to in-house video production resources in 2010 to develop content for our clients. We fully expected to produce pre-roll and in-banner video along with content for events, meetings and websites. However, what we didn’t see then were the vast options marketers would have for telling their stories in short form video. Publishers now offer more and more video ad units on consumer and industry sites, making video a significant opportunity for every advertising plan.

The most common video ad units have been in-stream pre-roll or mid-roll ads in which a publisher’s video wraps around the ad content. But marketers now have access to out-stream video ads not tied to any publisher content. These video units run within standard ad placements. They may appear on the right or left rail of the page or within the content of a written article. These out-stream video placements are designed to be 100 percent viewable. They deploy and play only when the unit is onscreen and the user is moving around the page. Since out-stream video is alongside the site content and not a barrier to it like in-stream video, the click-thru rates tend to be about 2.5 times higher according to a recent study by Marketing Land, making out-stream video highly effective and efficient.

The real game changer is programmatic buying. You can buy out-stream video directly by site, but programmatic buying helps hyper-target video ads, delivering the right message to the right buyer at the right time. Also, programmatic means more favorable ad rates and improved ROI.

Programmatic buying for video:

• Allows audience identification through demographics, intent, behavioral and context data
• Provides access to target audiences on mobile and desktop devices
• Enables optimization based on performance
• Combines with banner display and social to further engage the audience
• Delivers measurement of engagement and effectiveness in real time

There are many advantages of programmatic video programs, but they are not without challenges. Media buyers must understand which programmatic partners are committed to ensuring brand safety and quality inventory standards. Marketers can reap the benefits of programmatic video with the right answers to the right questions. An experienced agency partner can develop and execute media programs that leverage the unique qualities of video to bring attention to and action for your brand.