TL;DR
- As the video streaming market evolves, all eyes are focused on improving monetization and delivering an outstanding quality of experience, says ad tech solutions vendor Broadpeak.
- Blending media measurement and market research is one way to effectively plan for streaming ads, the company says.
- In-context advertising testing can track how well ads maintain audience interest and measure ad impact on things like product awareness, consideration and purchase intent, within a streaming environment.
With almost 100% of US TV households subscribing to a streaming service, media planners must incorporate Connected TV and streaming video into their ad buying mix. A decade ago, the medium lacked advertising potential, but now many of the large streaming services are growing their ad-supported user base, and FAST platforms are gaining traction too.
“To effectively enter this arena, media planners need to take a balanced approach. Instead of just comparing it to TV, it’s important to understand its unique performance abilities and adjust plans accordingly,” advises Heather O’Shea, Chief Research Officer at marketing consultancy Alter Agents, writing in Advertising Week.
Unlike TV ads with fixed schedules, streaming allows for more flexibility in ad placement and targeting, more similar to digital media. Media planners should use this to deliver personalized messages that connect with viewers, O’Shea says.
Streaming video certainly presents exciting opportunities for advertisers, but many unknowns remain. For instance, measuring the effectiveness of streaming ads poses a unique set of hurdles, given the fragmented nature of the landscape and the lack of standardized metrics.
“Many media planners still have a lot of questions about how to best implement advertising on streaming platforms,” O’Shea says. “This medium lands somewhere in the middle between traditional TV, which has primarily been used as an awareness tool, and digital advertising which is heavily utilized as a direct response tool.”
Her focus is on gathering the data and insights planners need for defining the best approach. One tactic where Alter Agents have had “significant success,” she says, is using in-context advertising testing. This method can track how well ads maintain audience interest and measure ad impact on things like product awareness, consideration and purchase intent, within a streaming environment.
“It results in a deep set of insights that media planners and advertisers can put to work right away.”
READ MORE: Blending Media Measurement and Market Research to Effectively Plan for Streaming Ads (Advertising Week)
Technical solutions to digital advertising will be represented across the exhibition and conference at NAB Show. Among vendors with product in this area is Broadpeak. It brings its targeted ad insertion solutions to the show and will demo a “disruptive” feature that boosts the performance of targeted advertising for video streaming services by allowing viewers to click on banner ads and receive a notification on their phone, guaranteeing clicks for advertisers.
“Today we are at an inflexion point where ad budgets will flow back to TV,” says Pieter Liefooghe, business development director at Broadpeak. “First of all, we are now able to bring the targeted advertising technology from digital advertising to the TV screen, by either implementing client-side ad insertion, server-side ad insertion, or a combination of both,” he explains.
“Secondly, due to how personal data for targeting purposes is collected and used in digital advertising, there are increasingly privacy concerns and laws that make this ad medium less attractive compared with targeted TV advertising.”
Broadpeak has also issued a “Guide to Ad Insertion,” including information on how digital advertising has impacted the spend of TV advertising. The Guide carries an overview of connected TV advertising, which has seen increased interest from advertisers, as well as an analysis of ad partnerships that can further increase the business case for TV service providers to implement an advertising solution.
At NAB Show 2024, the company will also showcase a new Spot2Spot feature.
“Today, most targeted ad technologies are limited to full ad break replacement, minimizing value for the targeted audience,” CEO Jacques Le Mancq explains. “With the Spot2Spot feature, content owners can replace specific spots within the ad break. Broadpeak will demo spot-level ad replacement for addressable TV and comprehensive ad tracking for both replaced and non-replaced ads.”
