Technology & software

3 Reasons Animated Videos Are The Most Budget-Friendly Advertisements

Businesses are always looking for the most budget-friendly methods of accomplishing their goals. The more they save, the more they can reinvest in other areas of their infrastructure. Read about the benefits of animated videos here.

Additionally, the advertising landscape is always shifting when it comes to costs. In late 2022, two-thirds of the UK’s largest advertisers cut television spend, favouring last-minute promotional campaigns and traditional media too.

Advertising campaigns can often cost companies an arm and a leg to get off the ground and be viewed by as many people as possible. If there’s no significant return on investment (ROI), then eye-watering amounts of money can be wasted.

Consequently, the safe bet for most businesses is animated videos. The marketing method tends to be the most budget-friendly form of advertising. Here’s why.

Greater Flexibility

As we just mentioned, more advertisers were favouring last-minute promotional campaigns. Animated videos can flawlessly feed into those strategies.

Animated videos are typically quick to produce. There’s no shooting schedule, location scouting, stunt coordinating, set building, or elaborate hiring procedures for on-screen talent and camera crews. A director, a couple of voice actors, and a handful of great animators and sound engineers are typically all that’s required here. Faster turnaround times are guaranteed.

There’s creative freedom with animated videos too. Complex scenes can be more easily conveyed in a digital medium, and abstract ideas (such as if a company is advertising offering software) can be more easily presented. Moreover, a clear sense of artistry can underpin all of the content displayed. The visual language used can make a huge impact, giving businesses more ways to take more creative chances without breaking the bank.

Once animated videos are made, they can be tweaked and repurposed across various channels and platforms, enhancing their longevity. Their aspect ratios can be adapted, screen sizes altered, and they can be used across television advertisements and in presentations, social media campaigns, and emails welcoming clients to a service. If trends and business objectives change, edits are easy. All of these things can be achieved without complicated production logistics or undermining the ROI.

Animated Videos

Scalable Production Processes

We’ve touched on the production processes animation is often subjected to. However, professionals in the field have greater insights to share here, especially regarding how they work with clients.

Services specialising in corporate animated video production state that they can create content for any budget size. They can develop kinetic text videos, higher-end pure-play animation videos, and stock footage videos to suit firms’ requirements. The content can be made for recruitment software companies, universities, corporate travel websites, and any other entities, too – they need only submit their brief to get the ball rolling.

So, there’s room for scalability, even when working with professionals in animated video production. After inviting clients to get in touch, they’ll work with them to understand their brief and budget, and only then explore ways to create an animated video that’s designed to generate a great ROI. In other words, costs don’t spiral out of control, and the creative side of things never breaks away from feasible and sustainable production methods.

Services like these also understand that video content has the highest likelihood of going viral online. All of the content they produce is optimised to not only be consumable but shareable too. That will generate significant cost-savings, as businesses won’t need to involve another list of people to get their advertising viewed.

AI Integration

Artificial intelligence is leading to significant cost reductions in multiple sectors. The technology also plays a cost-effective role in the creation of animated videos in advertising.

There are many ways AI can be used to save money in producing animated videos. They include:

  • Pre-visualising the animation – AI can be used when storyboarding an animated video by generating visual representations of ideas, allowing marketers and animators to quickly plan and plot their content.
  • Automating parts of the animation process – Using machine learning and pre-defined templates, AI can generate some (though not all) animations through automation.
  • Creating assets – AI can create objects, background elements, or sometimes even entire scenes depending on what’s asked of it. Artists and designers may need to spend less time creating these assets themselves and can instead devote more time to detailing the animation process, saving time and money and potentially generating a higher ROI.
  • Optimising the animation – Businesses can analyse all the data surrounding the performance of the animated video with AI, gaining quick and crucial insights on viewer engagement metrics and more. Equipped with this knowledge, animations can be quickly refined and improved upon in future.

Natural language processing means the technology can convert text to speech, synthesising voices in the process. However, it’s widely understood that synthetic voices are nowhere as clear and engaging as those belonging to voice actors, so the prospect of replacing them to cut costs should never be considered. Consequently, it’s important to exercise caution with the use of AI. It’s not a substitute for experts but a tool that makes already talented individuals more efficient in certain situations.