What Are You Waiting For? CTV is not going away, so why aren’t you investing more of your ad dollars in this space? With linear viewership and spending levels dropping virtually every year, the epitaphs for TV advertising have been widely reported in the trades. What is lost in this chicken-little hysteria is that video advertising is thriving - thanks to CTV. Television isn’t in decline, it’s just in transition from traditional to digital distribution channels. The same way that TV elbowed its way into the radio-dominant entertainment world of the 1950’s, streaming has arrived and is here to stay. Let’s not forget that when television made its debuted and soon dominated, radio still had a role - albeit a backseat role. Similarly, traditional TV isn’t being replaced by CTV, just improved upon and augmented. Seismic Shifts The CTV marketplace in the ’22-’23 upfront saw massive growth with a 35% increase in spending, which translated to over $6.4B dollars. Coupled with the time spent metrics where TV viewing and digital video viewing times are nearly identical, it clearly shows the continued growth and consumer adoption of CTV. In fact, 2/3’s of the digital video dollars committed this upfront were spent against streaming services. eMarketer projects that total US CTV spend this year (upfront and scatter) will reach $19B this year. The upfront haul this year was more than the total, full year CTV haul from three years ago. In fact, Disney says 40% of it’s upfront spending went to its streaming platforms and Peacock doubled their upfront revenue to $1B this year. Objective Look As with anything in this business, when you peel back the shiny veneer & Wall Street numbers, there are some challenges & shortfalls. CTV Benefits- Audience Targeting- More accurate & planful allocation of budgets to specific, high value audience targets Original Programming- Upscale, original programming Better Measurement Than Linear- Data allows for more focused view of who your ad reaches More Video Eyeballs- Pool of additional impressions helping to offset linear declines But They Have Issues Too... Uniformity & Measurement - Too many walled gardens prevent the ease of buying across streaming vendors and the sharing of data between them Frequency Capping – Again, the lack of shared data and the sheer number of vendors running CTV makes it difficult to set frequency caps Getting Crowded While streaming has been around for years, the last 3 years have seen an explosion of providers enter the fray. And they have been significant players, many of which are from traditional linear vendors looking to stem the tide of broadcast erosion and to add revenue streams. Peacock, Discovery+ and Paramount have all established viable streaming offerings in short order. It’s clear that the networks recognized the consumer shifts and had no choice but to embrace CTV or risk irrelevancy. Over the next 12 months, there will be even more competition and more choices. Several major players will roll out their own CTV services. Disney+, Netflix and to a lesser degree, HBOMax are three heavyweights poised to add more choices to the genre. The existing footprints of Disney and Netflix alone are enormous and will increase the pool of available impressions significantly. These two behemoths have 110MM and 180MM monthly users respectively - incredible scale at launch. These two will both improves and complicate the CTV space. And HBOMax is set to be combined with Discovery+ to launch a more robust offering with differing tiers. On the one hand, we will have more options to invest in and more competition to help mitigate costs. But the lack of standardization is a challenge. The nomenclature each vendor uses are unique to them. There is little-to no coordination between CTV partners. So there is no uniform way for brands to track a single data set across multiple partners because none of them are speaking the same language. What Does This Mean For Clients In spite of the headwinds facing CTV, the positives outweigh the shortcomings. Streaming is here to stay and it’s a valuable compliment to our media plans. It allows us to augment the losses on the linear side of the aisle with quality, targeted video impressions. Test and learn…and then test some more. Experiment and try multiple vendors to determine which ones fit your marketing objectives the best. These are fertile times to add more targeted tactics to your upper funnel media plans. Additionally, we expect Disney+ and Netflix to offer more unique, creative messaging opportunities. They have never accepted advertising before, so with a clean slate, it would behoove them to come to market with non-traditional ad formats. In a sea of streaming sameness, the hope is that they embrace the idea of truly partnering with brands to help us bring our marketing campaigns to life in new and exciting ways. Conclusions The industry’s collective focus has swung decisively toward the challenge posed by audience fragmentation. The decline of cookies and other identifiers is one big reason for this shift. Another is a shift in consumer behavior that has fractured media impressions across a growing number of applications and mediums. As the world rights itself after a pandemic that threw so many media consumption patterns upside down, the streaming world will begin to settle into a new normal. One where it is part of everyday life in a way it wasn’t before the pandemic. It has earned a seat at the table alongside the more established media tactics as a quality medium that can buttress media plans beset by the loss of affordable, quality, linear activity.
What is Cross-screen Marketing? Cross screen marketing, also known as multi screen marketing, is the digital marketing practice of synchronizing a comprehensive campaign across the different screens a user is likely to be interacting with while relaxing. As media and marketing professionals, how do you tap into the ever expanding landscape of multi-screen, multi-tasking, multi-engagement devices/screens that are ubiquitous in our world today? This question results in a domino effect evoking many more questions: How are we best equipped to deliver a brand's message, value proposition and ultimately elicit conversion? How does the multi-screen environment change the marketing funnel? How do we utilize the various screens to effectively engage the fragmented consumer who simultaneously use these devices? How do we gauge the duplication of reaching the same users vs. gaining necessary reach into the right target that may not be downloading a mobile app but is a regular visitor to a website via their laptop? Benefits of Cross Screen Marketing Our target audiences are multi-tasking across devices. Even among those with just a television and computer (two screens), 52% of users report that it's somewhat or very likely that they're using another device while watching television. With each screen added to the mix, that percentage rises, 60% of smartphone users (3 screens) and 65% of tablet owners (4 screens) say that multi-device use is the norm while watching TV (source: eConsultancy, May 2012) Planners must understand the impact that multi-screen usage is having on their clients' brands as the stats derived by recent studies highlight the importance of creating a multi-screens strategy: According to a report conducted by Videology, a video advertising technology, brands who implement multi-screen marketing experience 9x brand lift An eMarketer study of TV and online video found brands achieve a 7% reach increase when adhering to a multi-screen approach A co-authored study with Google and Nielson found multi-screen users have 17% more ad recall Marketing in a Multi Screen World: What to Consider Time of Day Whether it's a TV ad to launch to increase awareness followed by that person searching for more info on their work desktop, then targeted by a location based incentive on mobile or longer brand engagement via a tablet in the evening, day parting is key to making this a continuum of messaging not just singular efforts. Consumption Habits We need to understand the consumption habits of our audience in order to maximize how we weight each channel in the overall media mix, so we can reach them in the right place at the right time. We should take advantage of what these different screens and their particular experience 'opportunities'? offer. When developing a media strategy, marketers need to consider all screens, what their audience consumes on each screen and when the audience consumes the content. The era of the connected consumer has just begun. To succeed, marketers must adapt media planning and buying strategies to fit the needs of the multi-tasking mavens.
The ways in which brands engage consumers digitally are constantly changing. Online, brands are conversing with consumers through social media. In print, consumers are interacting with brands via QR codes on their ads. But there is one behemoth in the media world that has been very slow to accommodate a society that enjoys instant interaction: television. Brands are just starting to realize the potential of engaging consumers though TV advertising. Over the past few months this has become misoprostol more noticeable. Cable companies are beginning to offer interactive ads to brands. Here's how an interactive ad works: a commercial will start playing and shortly after, a prompt will appear at the bottom of the screen allowing viewers to decide if they would like to see more information. Brands can also choose to offer product samples, coupons, or other types of perks for the consumer. For example, recently, Comcast customers in Pennsylvania were able to use their remotes during Hershey's commercials to opt to receive coupons for Hershey's candy. There are also ways to engage with television viewers without going through cable companies. Old Navy, after killing their 'Supermodelquins'? campaign, is partnering with Shazam, a music recognition application for smartphones, to interact with television viewers. While Old Navy ads play, a notification appears in the corner of the screen prompting viewers to pull out their smartphones and 'Shazam'? the song playing during the ad. When they do, they are directed to 'secret goodies, song downloads, style tips and more.'? Utilizing methods such as these can provide brands with quantifiable results as to how many consumers actually took the time to interact with their ads - this will aid in gauging the effectiveness of their media spend. In my opinion, television advertising needs to become less 'traditional'? and more innovative if it wants to better compete in the new media market for many reasons. First, viewers are usually engaged in other activities while watching TV ' they are more than willing to multi-task. Second, with the saturation in the market of video game systems like Nintendo Wii, Xbox Kinect, and PlayStation Move, consumers are becoming more accepting of interacting with their television. Finally, if brands don't start engaging viewers via television, they won't appear as technologically savvy as their competitors. We as marketers work in a multi-screen, multi-tasking world and we need to constantly adapt. The possibilities for instantly engaging consumers via television are endless, and worth figuring out.
Author's Note: Comcast is an AMP client, but we are not involved in their direct mail marketing and I am not involved in the account. Just wanted to share a positive consumer experience, which happens to be from one of our clients. It is safe to say that most apartment building mailrooms have a collection of junk mail/direct mail pieces filling up the recycling bin. There are days that I don't even read the title of the latest mailer ' if there are 3 other copies of it in the recycling bin, I promptly add mine to the collection. If 3 other people thought it was junk, that's all I need to know. I recently received a piece of direct mail with a cool red graphic on the front ' and when I glanced in the recycle bin, no one else had tossed theirs, so I kept it. The front read 'xfinity. Welcome to more choice, more control, more speed. And more HD than ever before.' After reading the xfinity mailer, I was pleasantly surprised that they weren't trying to sell me more choice/control/speed or HD. Apparently while I had been traveling, xfinity had snuck into my cable box and left me with a complimentary system upgrade. I was skeptical (how much would this free upgrade increase my next bill?) but this 'junk mail'? actually made it out of the mailroom and up to my apartment. Later that day, I was setting my DVR for the next Yankees game, and before I could select it to record both the game and the post-game show (this is how I've been recording the 'end' of the game, since the Yanks usually go beyond their scheduled time'?¦), xfinity prompted me with something like: 'This program might run over, do you want to extend this recording and for how long?' Amazing! Yes I do want to extend it, and hey xfinity, you just saved me from doing it the long way, I appreciate that. Other new xfinity features included searching for programs with an on-screen keyboard to enter the program name, and significantly quicker searching (remember how you would try to advance a few hours forward in the guide menu and you would end up on next Thursday? Totally fixed.) All of this positive xfinity energy had me updating my facebook status that night, following @comcastcares on twitter and sending a few texts to spread the news. I might be a more avid DVR user than most, but I appreciate the $0.03 that xfinity probably spent on my non-junk mail, because I am hooked on the new experience. While these are not ground-breaking DVR features, (obvious even) they have successfully changed my DVR experience. If xfinity had under-delivered on this promise of more control/more speed/more choice, as marketers often do, it would have been just another piece of junk mail. But now I find myself actually looking forward to the next piece of non-junk mail from xfinity, as long as it's not another Triple Play offer. So marketers, the next time your brand has something to say ' whether it's via direct mail, on a social network or at an event: make it catchy, keep it relevant and most importantly, deliver on your promise. You will have friends and fans in no time. Hey xfinity ' talk to me. I'm listening. And watching.
