CPV in video advertising: everything you need to know about this model

The constant struggle for the attention of the user audience forces brands to look for extraordinary solutions for advertising campaigns. Those that would distinguish them from competitors and captivate buyers. Recently, special attention has been paid to video formats. They are used both in communication with potential buyers and directly in the struggle for their attention. In parallel with this, classic text or graphic advertisements that call to go to the site and study the product range in more detail are gradually losing their relevance. Yes, they certainly have all the elements that will attract customers, but the lack of interactive content significantly reduces their effectiveness.

It is this aspect that contributed to the increase in popularity and effectiveness of video advertising on the Internet. The relative novelty of this solution also worked. But at the same time, a related question has become relevant, namely, what methods of monetization and promotion of advertising video content should be used to get maximum efficiency at the output. But this is a fairly large task, implying the need to implement an impressive range of tasks and technical solutions. Now we will focus on only one method, but it plays an extremely important role in the advertising strategy, providing the maximum effect at the output.

Today's review will be devoted to such an issue as the CPV metric. In particular, get to know in more detail what it is, how to calculate it, and what indicators in this case can be considered the norm. We will tell you how advertising platforms count views. We will provide the key differences between the CPM and CPV metrics, which are often confused even by professional marketers. We will tell you what the maximum and actual rates per view are. We will provide the main advantages and disadvantages of the CPV model, and also describe the methods for optimizing and improving advertising campaigns using this metric. The information provided will allow you to get a detailed understanding of this model and start using it in your work.

What is CPV: getting to know the model

CPV is a model that is just gaining momentum among advertisers. It is an abbreviation for the phrase Cost per View, that is, payment per view. And here we would like to immediately draw your attention to the closest and more common analogue, namely CPM (Cost per Mille), in which the advertiser's site is charged a certain amount of money for every 1000 impressions. And here it does not matter whether the person watched the video or just scrolled through it, the payment will still go away. It would be quite reasonable to assume that the efficiency of such a model is ultimately not very high: the audience comes to the site in limited quantities and, accordingly, does not bring as much money as expected.

Unlike CPM, the CPV model assumes payment for each full video view, that is, from the beginning to the end. And this is a more effective approach to advertising, allowing you to optimize the costs of launching ads and get more impressive results at the end. That is, the CPV model assumes setting rates for advertising video campaigns and assumes charging for the fact of watching the video. Here you specify the maximum CPV rate, that is, the amount you are willing to pay for each view.

The convenient thing is that here you do not have to pay for absolutely every user who comes across your ad on the Internet, as well as for those who accidentally click on it. Instead, you focus on people who are interested in your ad, because how else can you explain the desire to watch the video to the end? That is, in the case of using Cost per View, a view will be counted if one of the following conditions is met:

• the viewer has watched at least 30 seconds of your video ad;
• if the duration of your video is less than 30 seconds, then the user has watched it to the end;
• there is interaction with the ad, whether it is a click on the CTA button with a call to action or on the banner accompanying the video;

In other cases, money will not be withdrawn from the advertiser's balance.

When is it worth using CPV?

Experts note that the most appropriate use of the CPV model will be at such stages of the sales funnel according to the AIDA classification as Interest and Desire. That is, it is suitable for cases when viewers are not familiar with the brand at all or have heard something about it. That is, with your ads you will stimulate them to get to know the company and its products in more detail. As a result, the advertiser gets the opportunity to attract exclusively interested target audiences to their online presences and then systematically promote them along the sales funnel using remarketing technology. That is, here visitors will initially be transformed into leads, and then from them — in buyers.

A bidding strategy such as CPV is suitable for advertisers pursuing the following goals:

1. Encouraging potential buyers to visit the site.
2. Attracting relevant customers, the desire to interest them in the goods or services provided.
3. Attracting a sufficiently wide target audience to the site by using useful and interesting information about your brand.
4. Increasing awareness of the target audience about the brand, increasing market coverage.

We would like to draw your attention to the fact that you can set bids using the CPV model directly when creating your advertising campaign on the Google Ads platform. To do this, you initially select the option “Awareness and consideration” or “Create a campaign without selecting a goal” in “Goals”. The Video views video campaign subtype will also be available, i.e. “More views” or campaigns with serial display. In the latter case, we are talking about solutions that allow you to display a set of different videos in a predetermined order.

Platforms that still use the CPV model

Along with the Google Ads advertising platform, the CPV model can also be used on other platforms. In particular:

1. DV360. Here, the CPV model in video advertising is quite similar to Google Ads. The advertiser will pay for viewing or other interaction with the ad. Thanks to this, campaigns can be configured quite accurately, not only for a narrow, but also for a fairly wide audience using various site applications.
2. TikTok Ads. Uses a CPV model, within which advertisers will pay for at least a 6-second view of the ad or interaction with it. The option that happens first will work here. This solution ensures coverage of a wide audience that may be interested in your product or service. It also provides convenient measurements of the effectiveness of advertising campaigns based on the number of views.
3. Meta Ads. When using this advertising platform, the advertiser will choose for which actions the audience will be charged when watching the video. Thus, ThruPlay views assumes the need to fully watch the video if its duration is less than 15 seconds. If the video is longer, the view will be counted for the first 15 seconds of viewing. Another option is a continuous two-second playback of the video. But here a special requirement is imposed on the ad itself: it must occupy at least 50% of the entire screen area.

Before starting the actual work, it is important to decide which advertising platform will be the most effective in your case, and then place a bet on it when developing the ad itself.

CPV model in video advertising

The CPV metric indicates how much the advertiser will approximately spend to ensure that a visitor watches his advertising video to the end or at least for a certain period of time. Based on this parameter, marketers can evaluate the competitiveness of the ad at the auction, and at the same time determine the demand for such advertising among the consumer market.

Let's say that you launched a video ad and see that a few weeks later there is an increase in the cost and views. This will indicate that your potential buyers are no longer actively interacting with the ad, that they are already tired of it, and the competition at the auction in this segment is too high. The opposite situation is that the CPV indicator falls. This means that the competition will decrease, meaning that new opportunities for attracting the target audience will open up for you, but at a lower price.

The Cost per View indicator helps marketers and advertisers themselves understand how effective their videos are. If you see that you have to pay too much to view a certain ad, but you do not notice an increase in conversion, then there is no point in wasting your advertising budget in vain within this model. You need to either change the ad itself or switch to another payment model, because you will simply lose money and will not get a return on advertising.

Advertising accounts are used to track statistics on views, as an option in the same myTarget or Facebook Ads. Today, these platforms most often use the CPV model in advertising payments. Is it worth using this solution within your business? Today, marketers highlight 3 situations when it is worth using the Cost per View metric:

1. The advertiser is set to pay exclusively for users who will watch the video to the end, show interest in the brand or a particular product.
2. Searching for an audience for remarketing. That is, when the focus is on attracting people who have already interacted with your brand and know about it. This will be a kind of reminder with a call to return for a purchase.
3. The emphasis is on identifying an interested audience, one that will perceive video advertising well enough and will be ready to interact with it.

Whether to use the CPV model in other situations is your choice, your decision.

How to calculate CPV yourself

The CPV calculation formula itself is quite simple. To get this coefficient, you need to divide the total cost of advertising, that is, the costs that you allocated for this campaign by the total number of views. To make it clearer, let's look at a simple example. Let's assume that you spent $1,000 on your advertising and received 100,000 views from it. So, now we perform simple mathematical operations:

CPV = $1,000 / 100,000 views = 0.01 cent per view.

As you can see, there is nothing complicated about this and each of you can calculate the CPV yourself. But here it is also important to understand what the resulting figure shows: is it good for your business or, on the contrary, not so much.

What is the optimal CPV indicator?

So, you performed the mathematical calculation and received a certain CPV coefficient as a result. But how do you understand how good this figure is for your business? Unfortunately, there are no standardized metrics that you can use to determine how effective your advertising is. The fact is that the cost per view directly depends on a number of factors:

• the platform on which you launch your ad;
• the level of competition in your niche;
• the specifics of the business itself;
• the features of the advertisement, its level of creativity;
• the specifics of targeting settings and a number of related points.

The only way to understand what the optimal CPV indicator will be for your advertising campaign is to test it on different platforms, use different creatives, and then analyze the results obtained.

Features of accounting for views by advertising platforms

Each advertising platform has its own specifics in counting user views of ads and these points should definitely be taken into account when choosing the most suitable option for launching your video:

1. On YouTube (Google Ads) and in Yandex Direct, the advertiser is charged for viewing if his video is produced for at least 30 seconds, or in full if its total duration is shorter. The user's transition to the site directly from the video will also be taken into account here.
2. Zen will count your advertising video as viewed if it was also played in the open tab for at least 30 seconds for long ads, or in full if their duration was less than 30 seconds.
3. In Facebook Ads, the advertiser independently chooses what he would like to count as views directly during the advertising campaign setup. Alternatively, this could be watching the video to the end, watching it continuously for the first 2 seconds or more.
4. In myTarget, payment will be debited from the advertiser's account after 10 seconds of viewing.

Consider these points so that the money debited from your advertising account does not turn out to be an unpleasant surprise later.

CPV and CPM: main differences

At the beginning of today's review, we already mentioned that modern video advertising uses 2 types of metrics: CPV, that is, Cost per view (payment per view) and CPM, Cost per mille (payment per 1000 impressions). And many are still confused about these indicators, which entails a number of mistakes that provoke excessive spending of the advertising budget, to avoid this, we will now examine these indicators in detail, focusing on key aspects:

• Features of work. CPM involves paying advertisers for displaying their ad. It does not matter whether there was a click on the ad. It is also important to understand that in this case, the advertisement will be broadcast to absolutely everyone, regardless of whether they showed interest in your company or a specific product. In the case of CPV, payment will be charged for each individual view, and not for displaying the ad. That is, users decide for themselves whether to watch the video to the end or to let it hang around. In the latter case, the advertising budget is not spent.
• Benefit for the advertiser. In the case of properly configured targeting, CPM provides a fairly good coverage of the target audience. But still, such advertising is very often perceived by the audience as annoying, imposed, which causes a natural desire to skip it as quickly as possible. CPV is initially focused on interested users, those who are ready to contact and perceive the ad, perform certain target actions.
• Conditions for writing off the fee. When using the CPM model, money will automatically be debited from the advertiser's account every time the ad is shown 1000 times. Accordingly, when using the CPV model, payment is debited for each view: if the user scrolls through your message, the funds will remain in your account.
• Optimal conditions for use. CPM is used when it is necessary to increase audience coverage, increase recognition of products or brands on the market. CPV is suitable for cases when the focus is on increasing conversion, on increasing website traffic.
• Example of use. On most platforms, CPM will be counted after users watch a 5-second video. After that, they will have the opportunity to scroll through it. Such advertising appears before the video, at the end, or even in the middle. CPV is mostly used in videos that are launched on social networks or specialized video services. In most cases, it is supplemented with text comments. It turns out that users independently decide whether to watch such content to the end. That is, if they are potentially interested in this product, then with a high degree of probability they will watch the ad in full. Such advertising is perceived by the audience in a completely different way, because people consciously watch it. This has a positive effect on the number of target actions performed.

We hope that this information has allowed you to understand the details of both models and understand in which cases it is worth using each of the options.

Maximum and actual CPV rate: what are we talking about

When setting up advertising campaigns using CPV models, you will need to set a rate for viewing. And here you come across such concepts as the actual rate or maximum rate. To get your bearings in these decisions, let's consider them in more detail.

Maximum rate in the CPV model

The maximum rate for viewing when using the CPV model is the highest amount that the advertiser is willing to pay. It is determined based on information about potential coverage based on the previously specified targeting parameters and the price per view that is relevant in this segment and at this point in time. We would like to immediately draw your attention to the fact that the maximum bid will not always work, but it will have a direct impact on the following points:

1. Ad ranking in search results: the higher the bid, the higher the probability that your ad will attract the audience's attention;
2. the place where your ad will be displayed: a higher bid automatically moves it to more popular advertising platforms.

We would also like to draw your attention to the fact that in Google Ads, specifying the maximum bid is a mandatory condition when creating any campaign. You can also choose this option in the case of creating an ad group at once, launching a single advertisement, and also later, directly at the stage of managing ad groups. But you should still understand that despite all the advantages that setting the maximum bid guarantees, you should understand which solution will be a priority for you at a given time: getting the maximum number of views or optimizing your advertising budget.

Actual bid in the CPV model

Practice shows that most advertisers try to minimize advertising costs, so very often their actual bid is lower than the maximum. Moreover, Google Ads auctions provide the option of paying a minimum amount to get higher positions in the search results compared to other advertisers. The final cost that will be paid for a view is the actual price. Its size directly depends on the quality indicators and ad rating. Both of these characteristics are numerical, which means that you can operate with them.

Thus, the quality indicator indicates the relevance of your ad to relevant queries. This indicator must be multiplied by the maximum cost per view to determine the ad rank in comparison with offers from the closest competitors. That is, this is how the ad rank is determined. After you accurately determine this indicator, Google will independently calculate the actual cost per ad view. The main indicators here are information about the rating of the competitor's ad, which is placed in the list immediately after yours, as well as the quality indicator of your ad.

The ads with the highest rating win the auction. In this case, the cost of viewing the video, that is, its actual price, will slightly exceed the cost per view that is set in another ad immediately following yours in this rating.

Advantages and disadvantages of the CPV model

One of the most significant advantages characteristic of the CPV model is the absence of payment for random users, that is, for those who simply waited until it was possible to scroll through the ad and did so. That is, here the audience that is not interested in communicating with your brand and your products and services, in particular, is automatically filtered out. Also, the following points should be attributed to the advantages of this model:

• ensuring increased control over the price of viewing;
• attracting only an interested audience ready to interact with the content;
• the ability to focus on how effective your advertising video is based on the actual number of views.

But, as everywhere, the CPV model, along with its advantages, also has disadvantages. And the first thing you should understand is that filming creative high-quality content that will literally engage the audience from the first seconds and promote full viewing, clicking on the link, will require a lot of time and material investment. That is, you will need to create a product that will effectively stand out from the background of analogues. And in conditions where the market is overly saturated with advertising, achieving this will be quite problematic. It is also important to understand that you will not be able to provide such broad coverage as when working with the CPM model.

And here it is important for each of you to weigh all the pros and cons using CPV metrics in your advertising, and based on this, make the most balanced and correct decision.

We also suggest that you study the material «Everything a customer needs to know about video advertising», in order to avoid mistakes when developing and launching such campaigns, optimize the budget and get the desired result at the output.

General recommendations for improving and optimizing CPV campaigns

Even before thinking about optimizing a launched advertising campaign using CPV metrics, you should understand what price range will be optimal for you. Here you need to take into account the real situation at the auction at the time of launch. And here a number of recommendations will help you:

1. Make measurements of the CPV indicator simultaneously with other characteristics. This is the only way to see a more complete, full picture. For example, it is also worth considering the cost per 1000 views (CPM), the cost per installation (CPI), and the cost per completed view (CPCV). Thanks to an integrated approach, you will be able to understand how your advertising campaign works, see its weak points and take a number of measures aimed at improving the indicators within the allocated advertising budget.
2. Constantly monitor the launched videos. You must understand that ad impressions are paid for by you to one degree or another. This means that you cannot leave the advertising campaign to chance. It is necessary to monitor the main indicators and, based on them, improve targeting data, select appropriate landing pages, and adjust key queries. Each launched campaign must be tested and supplemented with appropriate tags.
3. Bet on really interesting and high-quality videos. One of the most important tasks for you is to interest users. And this can only be done if you offer them truly high-quality content. It would also be a good idea to test it on the target audience before launching, ultimately launching all the solutions that will receive the most responses. You can also initially upload your video in square, horizontal and vertical formats, supplement it with different types of messages. Literally in the near future after launch, you will see which option is most popular with the audience and not to bet on it, but to disable irrelevant solutions.

Following such recommendations, you will be able to launch truly high-quality video advertising based on the CPV model, which will be positively received by the audience and will meet your expectations.

Summing up

In today's review, we looked at such a model of payment for video advertising as CPV, that is, payment per click. Here are a few key points to highlight:

• according to this model, payment will be charged when the user watches 30 seconds of the video or interacts with its interactive elements;
• to calculate the CPV indicator, you will need to divide the total cost of your advertising by the number of views it managed to attract;
• this model is focused on campaigns aimed at attracting a truly interested audience, as well as those people who have previously interacted with your business: it allows you to improve the quality of communication, reduces costs.
• setting a maximum amount for viewing an advertisement is an opportunity for you to control expenses and distribute the budget as efficiently as possible: the actual cost is mostly lower than the maximum;
• the main advantages of the CPV model are: this is cost control, simple determination of the effectiveness of the commercial, focus on people who perceive such content most positively.

But still, as with other advertising campaigns, the main difficulty is in finding creative ideas that can attract the attention of the audience, interest it and stimulate subsequent interaction. And here, familiarity with the market as a whole, analysis of the actions of competitors and the advertising that they launch will provide you with significant help. You can automate and simplify the work associated with collecting such information, structuring it and analyzing it. Mobile proxies from the MobileProxy.Space service will provide you with significant help in this. We suggest you follow the link https://mobileproxy.space/en/user.html?buyproxy to evaluate the features of this technical solution, make sure that the tariffs are available and test the product for 2 hours absolutely free.

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