On Monday, February 24, 2020, Digiday hosted its Hot Topic: Addressable TV event in New York City where media marketers zeroed in on the acceleration of audience-based targeting for sharpening campaigns.
Industry leaders from KERV, Digitas, Mindshare, Modi Media, Horizon Media, Havas, Jaguar Land Rover, Dentsu and more filled the discussion and provided new insights into this trend.
Programmatic is a methodology, not a media channel
The key takeaway from the one-day event was that the addressable TV media strategy still has a lot of room for growth. While the growth in connected TV viewership has made it easier for advertisers to aim their campaigns at specific audience segments, addressable TV advertising is still being fine-tuned.
The size of the audience is currently limited and should still be paired with other media such as a linear strategy. Convoluted sales environments, measurement issues and inventory limitations have frustrated advertisers’ abilities to pinpoint audiences on TV. Measurement and cross device frequency capping are presenting challenges.
Data can solve a lot of challenges
KERV is not a device graph company, but there are many technology companies that are working to solve this problem. Currently, there is a problem of publisher/content versus platform – making the frequency puzzle even more difficult as consideration for both content/show and device frequency need to be considered.
Once cross device is truly connected, KERV can maximize ad add dimension the frequency modeling, by interaction. KERV maximizes frequency-based impact by personalizing and/or versioning creatives based on the initial object-level touch patterns, in real time, depending on when the ad needs to be served. Imagine being able to frequency model against object category!
Connecting data its its own challenge
Laura Destefanis, manager, brand & retail advertising at Jaguar Land Rover, and Ryan Webb, client partnerships at Xandr, spoke about closed loop reporting to reach in-market auto intenders by combining relevant creative and audience-based buying.
This is where KERV steps in to further drive success by adding layers of value from modeling directly to interactions which connect with their bottom line.
Vevo and TVision talked about measuring engagement with music video content with details around research highlighting how long viewers spend engaging, view demographics and view patterns. KERV makes this extremely easy with new audience targeting methods and action-based consumer data visualization reports from in-video interactions at the object-level.
Modi Media discussed how the addressable TV ad market has historically been hindered by a lack of available inventory, and a struggle to stitch together a national audience. Marc Cestaro, director, addressable lead at Modi Media, discussed how addressable is overused and should only be 1-1 targeting at the household level zip versus HH.
Overall, the day was filled with valuable insights from an influential group of advertising executives.
Video measurement in the advertising technology industry is an interesting beast. The current industry measure of value for a standard in-stream video ad is determined by completed views, and if the video was viewable on a human user’s screen (sometimes audibility is added in there, but you catch my drift). The industry says that a completed view of a video ad is one of, if not the primary, KPI for the format.
With this in mind, advertisers tend to create shorter ads to increase completed views, so all is well in performance land. The problem digital marketers face with this is it’s an ineffective measure to determine video campaign success. There is no way to really know if your video ad was actually viewed attentively, or if the viewer disregarded the ad all together.
I agree that verified, “human-time” spent with consumers is the goal for your advertisement, but forcing the performance, by simply cutting an ad’s time duration down, is nearly fraudulent. I love the idea of opt-in video, but then the intention data is a bit grey as you know very well why the user chose to interact. People chose to interact so they can have an ad-free environment, and also to get back to their content.
Advertisers and marketers should be measuring video success based on engagement and time spent with their brand.
At KERV our immediate answer to this ongoing performance obstacle is to wrap interactivity on in-stream and pre-roll video ads. The content can be skipped, doesn’t have to be interacted with and simply gives existing placement more dimension and intelligence into interest.
If a video is of interest, the consumer can lean-in and learn more. More specifically, the consumer can even directly click out if that is what they want to do.
Say someone watching your ad likes a camera, vacuum or a jacket – whatever is featured in the video – the KERV Interactive experience can provide feature information and click-to-purchase options, for each object uniquely, right inside of the in-stream experience. The intelligence can also allow you to analyze the difference in the initial interaction versus the click, time spent with unique or grouped objects along with so much more.
At the end of the day, interactive content enables the user/consumer to spend more time with a brand’s video – regardless of the video length. The time users spend interacting with a video has proven to be longer than the original asset’s length. Interactive video provides advertisers a new solution for significantly increasing the performance and engagement of a video ad without cutting the ad down in length. We actually recommend 30 to 60 second assets over 15 seconds to allow the consumer time to lean into the experience.
KERV is solving problems in a way where information is being shared with users without taking them out of their current experience. Interactive technology provides convenience for users in the sense that they are taken directly to products, destinations or services – each object can have a unique link-out URL. This helps active users, who are interested in taking the next step with your brand, receive information and access more easily and efficiently.
Our interactive, ad tech platform isn’t shortening the ads. Instead, KERV maximizes the content’s time, and, in turn, gains earned time spent in front of valued consumers.
As we solve these problems for consumers and brands alike, we are also paving the way for a whole new data game for the video advertising industry. KERV is capturing the interest and intent data as users organically interact with any processed video.
At KERV, we have first-party data, organized by user agent, down to the object-level. We can report out on high-value scenes, objects as well as slice-and-dice by user segment, device, etc.
Without the organic and precise nature of our technology, the data would be unorganized. Even worse, without the precision, the data wouldn’t be able to point towards the consumer’s true intention or interest.
KERV can tell you if a user is more likely to buy a product of a certain color or category, and even if the user is in-market to buy groups of products. All of this data is based on the consumer’s organic interactions within our video experience.
Creating an interactive video with KERV is easier than you think. We don’t need custom-made videos. All we need is quality video creative, clean supply and strategic user groups.
KERV is a data-driven video lab.
Click here to learn more and connect with us for any questions.
