TV is still a very effective
advertising tool. The power of video to tell stories and evoke
emotions is unparalleled by any other push-media channel.
Television sells and advertisers see the effect. So it was no
surprise that the TV-advertising market was less affected by the
recession and recovered faster than many other channels, notably
print.
However, TV is also suffering. The
effectiveness is declining as spots get lost in the clutter and
consumers are increasingly multitasking, using the TV just as
background noise in a similar way they used to consume radio. And
younger audiences are moving online, consuming more video content
online than ever before.
The question that advertisers ask
media agencies is no longer "TV or online?" The question of the day
is "How to best combine TV with online?"
To find the answer to that question,
we must consider three things: Firstly, how do you plan TV and
online reach? Secondly, how do you buy video-reach effectively? And
thirdly, how do you measure effectiveness?
Planning for more reach or
more engagement?
TV campaigns build reach quickly. But with increasing reach, more
and more spots simply reach the same heavy viewers because TV has
diminishing returns on investment.
Therefore many advertisers look for
online video to increase reach while maintaining the same budget.
By shifting the budget for the last TV reach-points into online
video, the overall reach can be increased without spending more
money. Other advertisers look for the multiplying effect of
cross-media contacts. Many research studies have shown that
delivering the same message through two channels is more effective
than delivering it twice in the same channel. And the opportunity
to interact and click onto the video to get more involved with the
offer is an additional benefit. So ideally, the consumer sees the
spot first on TV and then can click on the video ad if the product
or offer is interesting.
Delivering reach in online
video
The obvious solution is to buy video ads with the same content as
on TV. Pre-roll or mid-roll ads that are shown before or during
long-format TV content that is streamed on-demand on the internet.
Many TV Stations are offering catch-up TV, allowing viewers to
watch the shows they missed whenever and wherever they want. More
production companies are also producing high-quality video content
just for the web.
Pre-and mid-rolls are usually
single-spots, seen in an active lean-forward mode by active
viewers, generating a much higher impact than the normal TV spot
within an ad break.
Advertisers do also face some
challenges in this space, however. First of all, the reach of
video-content is limited. Despite the enormous growth rates of
video usage, most surfers still consume more traditional text-based
web than video. The demand for video advertising is strong, leading
to high CPMs, much higher than for traditional TV in most markets.
So alternative web options should be considered.
One alternative is to use standard
online ad-formats and stream the spot into them. The advantage is
nearly unlimited reach as those ads are available on all websites.
Advertisers also benefit from much lower CPMs as standard ads are
traded in a buyer's market where demand still is growing slower
than the available ad impressions. Even though effectiveness
research has shown that streaming-ads are not as impactful as
pre-rolls or TV spots, they are much less expensive and therefore
generate a higher ROI.
An even more powerful alternative is a
new ad format, the targ.ad TV Video-Interstitial, which GroupM is
rolling out exclusively for our clients. A full-screen single spot
that runs on multiple websites, combining the impact of a pre-roll
with the reach and cost effectiveness of a regular online ad. The
targ.ad TV format also offers social engagement functions, allowing
consumers to comment, rate, send to a friend and share on social
networks as well.
No one could argue that a full-screen
video ad is not what consumers want. However, targ.ad TV allows
state-of-the art targeting on demographics, interests
and limits the exposure. That leads to high acceptance
rates and rather low skip-rates by the consumer.
Targeting in high-reach
media
Today we buy media placements that have high reach and affinity in
the defend target groups, thereby trying to minimise wastage of
delivering the message to people we do not really plan to reach.
While we want to reach people with our media placements we do media
planning rather than audience planning. This is the same, whether
we buy a TV spot, a print ad or place a banner on a website.
In digital media, however, ads are
delivered in real-time to each individual user. So far, the promise
of one-to-one-marketing has not really been fulfilled, but new
targeting technologies are changing that. While people surf through
the web, anonymous user profiles are built with their interests and
combined with aggregated registration data to get demographic
information.
Then, when a profile is recognised by
the decision engine of the adserver, it is then decided which
campaign and which message to show to the consumer. This is a
fundamental change: it is not the placement of the user visits that
defines which ad they see; instead it is the knowledge about the
user's profile and interests. Now, we can target very specific
target segments with very specific messages and offers.
We do no longer have to use generic
ads, that have to appeal to a wide audience, but can give specific
users specific messages.
Advertisers no longer pay for
advertising contacts with people they do not want to reach, they do
not have to overexpose users that are heavy media users to build
reach with the infrequent users: frequency capping across
publishers allows us to control the number of contact a user has
with the campaign as well as the sequence of messages they see.
That is the secret sauce behind the
success of rather intrusive ad formats like targ.ad TV. If the ad
is well targeted, relevant and shown only once, it will not be seen
as disturbance by most users.
Many publishers offer
targeting but their offers are limited
Today, targeting is a standard offer from many publishers and
sales-houses. However, many of those offers have limitations. In
the first place, they are media-owner specific, making it harder to
iron out the weaknesses of each media owner's portfolio. MSN, for
example, delivers a lot of Hotmail impressions but offers more
casual content around general-interest topics. So a potential
car-buyer may go to special interest sites for their research - an
activity that takes place outside MSN.
The second weakness is that because
media owners need to know advertisers' targeting criteria to
implement the campaign, the process involves handing over some very
sensitive commercial insight and consumer profile information to
each media partner.
The third weakness is that because
different media owners define audiences in different ways,
targeting across a single campaign is not as precise as it could
be. As each publisher has their own targeting system, such
campaigns can't take into account total reach across the digital
landscape. Publisher-specific frequency capping has limited
effectiveness where over-exposure can be an issue.
Predictive targeting goes
beyond reaching the same user again
Behavioural targeting also restricts reach. While you are waiting
for evidence of a specific behaviour, the potential audience is
restricted. As a result media agencies and publishers have devised
solutions to these targeting challenges.
To extend the reach of behavioural and
other forms of targeting, smart use of data is applied through
predictive targeting. Predictive targeting allows advertisers to
match the anonymous profiles of consumers who exhibit the requisite
behaviour with those who are like them in every other key
respect.
This includes offline data such as
psychographic profile sand purchase behaviour captured by research
organisations or loyalty card companies, as well as anonymous
profile information such as the search ads they have clicked on.
The benefit of predictive targeting is that it extends the target
audience, even for actions such as display retargeting.
Although it's possible to retarget
based purely on those who have visited your e-commerce site or
filled out a contact form, for example, predictive targeting adds
users with similar profiles to widen the message. Likewise,
search-based targeting strategies can be extended beyond those who
have clicked on a Google keyword by creating a group of those who
have a similar profile.
How do we measure
effectiveness?
Online video, especially when delivered through sophisticated
cross-publisher targeting tools, can generate enormous efficiencies
for advertisers. We can increase the overall reach of the TV
campaign, generate multiplying effects that drive direct response,
or fill reach or frequency gaps in those segments that are harder
to reach by TV, like younger segments or working women.
But the question is does it really
drive effectiveness? Do we get higher awareness, ad-recall and most
importantly, purchase intent or measured sales?
To answer that question, sophisticated
analytics tools like econometric modelling can be applied, but such
tools need continuous tracking of all relevant data points for a
long time.
Quick results can be generated with
campaign specific tracking. MediaCom Germany, for example,
developed a powerful and rather inexpensive approach with TNS
Infratest, which answers questions about the necessary advertising
pressure for different objectives. What messages are mediated the
best? Is the campaign linked to the brand (brand linkage)? And of
course the key question from the TV-Online combined planning
perspective: How do TV and online work within the media mix?
Combined TV and online video
planning is the future and it is available today
TV is moving to digital channels and will eventually become
accurately targetable, a service Sky is already offering in the UK.
And the internet and TV are converging, giving consumers access to
content on all screens, the TV in the living room, the laptop,
tablets, mobile at home and on the go.
This is the future. And it is here
today. In many markets, we can reach more than 70% of the
population with online video and we can increase the effectiveness
of our combined TV-online campaigns. First planning tools exist, we
can buy and optimise online video very well and can target specific
consumer profiles with an accuracy that is unheard of in the
broadcast world, and we can measure the effectiveness. Generating
the specific learnings for each brand is a top priority for most of
the TV and online advertisers that MediaCom works with and we are
ready to deliver.