By Jeff Lucas, VP & Head of American Sales, Oath
For advertisers in 2018, brands matter, trust matters and solutions matter. Ad campaigns are only as strong as the environment in which they’re placed. Prioritizing brand-safe premium content helps to build a trusted brand identity.You may recall from our inaugural Brand Love Index released earlier this year, that trust represents 20% of brand love around the world and is the highest indicator of brand loyalty and admiration. One key aspect of this is verified, insightful data. As a values-led company, Oath provides that level of trust by putting consumers first when it comes to leveraging data and helps marketers do the same.
There’s a special intersection between great content and commerce using data in a brand safe environment. That intersection is the ad solutions, from digital video, to mobile, from premium sponsorships to addressable TV advertising. It’s through the combination of great brands, trusted data and effective ad solutions that marketers succeed.
A continuation of the anywhere, everywhere video revolution
Over my two decades in the media industry, I’ve seen the line between TV and digital video begin to slowly and then rapidly blur.
By now we’re all aware that consumers are increasingly mobile — across generations and geographies, watching content whenever and wherever they prefer, even engaging with multiple devices simultaneously.
According to a recent eMarketer report digital video’s share of total advertising will near 50% by 2020, thanks to ecommerce spending and shifting viewership from traditional TV to digital channels. Last year over half of all digital video consumption occurred on smartphones and 83% of total mobile data consumed was on streaming video. Marketers can take advantage of this insatiable consumer appetite for digital video content by creating premium content across categories like news, finance, sports, and lifestyle, and delivering an engaging video ad experience across screens.
Becoming mobile-best
It’s estimated that by 2020, 80% of the world will be mobilized. In order to stay relevant and top of mind when a consumer is distractedly browsing on mobile, brands have to build the best mobile experiences for on-the-go users. That means creating killer mobile content, trusted mobile data that performs, and mobile-first ad tech. Take for example Mobile Moments, a new full-screen ad canvas that’s revealed as a user scrolls vertically until the experience fills the entire screen. It’s an immersive format that helps convey an overall brand experience in a premium context.
We’re also seeing unprecedented advancement with new ad formats like AR and VR, enabling brands to engage with consumers on mobile more than ever before. Brands like The Home Depot and Pottery Barn have run AR ad formats resulting in an average of 2+ minutes engagement. Consumers appreciate how AR helps them visualize products in their own space and describe the experience as fascinating, fun, clever, and intuitive.
5G has huge implications for the future of mobile content and ads, from providing better quality to less latency. Backed by the power of Verizon and with 5G on the horizon, we’re looking toward a 5G-enabled future that will provide an exceptional experience across mobile, TV and OTT — plus a whole new playing field for marketers.
The next generation of storytelling is storyhearing
Content marketing is built on insights, strategy, creative and distribution. Brands must seek unmatched distribution with purposeful storytelling to drive consumers to act. Plenty of publishers and advertisers can tell a brand’s story, but the key lies in distribution to ensure a brand’s story is heard by the right audiences.
We call this storyhearing. You have to do more than create content; it’s about distributing it through the right channels to ensure the right audience hears the content to ensure it has the right impact.
More precise measurement with addressable advertising
Traditional TV advertisers are stuck trying to make-up for the 10-foot gap, between the TV screen and their viewer. The solution? By combining powerful data signals, household addressable TV helps advertisers deliver the right message to the right viewer at the household level, during a single spot break. Addressable TV allows precise measurement after a campaign airs, so that brands can measure their ROI with precision.
While broadcasters and cable networks talk the talk of addressable advertising, they simply don’t have the right data, because they can’t bridge the gap between TV measurement and viewer engagement.
As the delivery mechanisms for TV change at an increasingly rapid pace, Verizon Fios HHA combined with OTT and CTV is beginning to allow marketers to access the highly viewable, fraud free, power of large screen, living room viewing with the precision and accountability of digital. Brand marketers can also use these insights to inform their broader TV and sometimes even digital, spending.
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