Making video advertising work in a complex media landscape

Twenty years ago, you could advertise to millions of people with a commercial during a single primetime show, say Friends, and reach the bulk of your target audience. However, today viewers are watching their favorite content across thousands of channels and on-demand options, hundreds of thousands of websites, and millions of YouTube videos. Multiply that by the number of devices a person might use in the course of a day and you have an idea of how complex and fragmented the media landscape has become. Primetime has shifted to all the time, anywhere, across every screen.

Complexity may be one of the biggest challenges facing our industry, but it could also be our greatest opportunity. We can reach audiences where they are in the moments that matter, with messages that will have the most impact with a precision never before possible. Recently at the DoubleClick Leadership Summit, we discussed four key strategies to help you do just that.

Be on the best screen for the moment

Whatever they choose to watch, consumers have made clear that they’ll watch it on the best, most convenient device in that moment. Brands need to be ready to capture their audience’s attention at any time across any show, and any screen.

Last year we acquired a company called mDialog that specialized in delivering personal (or addressable) TV advertising seamlessly across connected devices for live and on-demand TV programs. Recently we announced that the integration of mDialog into the DoubleClick platform. With the new Dynamic Ad Insertion in DoubleClick brands can connect with viewers wherever they are and make those interactions more meaningful and relevant to each viewer. Dynamic Ad Insertion in DoubleClick gives advertisers 1-to-1 addressability while reaching consumers through the live programs and TV shows they love, wherever they’re watching.

Connect and engage with every interaction

We know that mobile video viewers are nearly twice as likely as TV viewers to feel a sense of personal connection to brands. We also know that higher attention drives purchase intent. Meanwhile, the average attention span has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013. Reaching consumers with video ads isn’t enough anymore. You need to engage them fully once you do. It’s time to move from fixed creatives to malleable, dynamic formats that drive higher engagement.

TrueView is an exciting creative format for driving engagement with video. As devices become more personal, so must digital creative. With TrueView, consumers choose whether to watch a video ad--and advertisers only pay when they do. User-choice in video advertising has been so successful in driving engagement that we recently increased the number of ways TrueView could be bought by making it available in DoubleClick Bid Manager. By combining user choice with programmatic buying, advertisers can not only reach consumers in the moment, but really connect with them in a personal way.

Buy smarter across every screen

As consumers demand more choice from their viewing, advertisers need to ensure they’re reaching the right audience with the right message and driving the greatest impact across all screens. To do so, they must be able to leverage data and automation to make smarter buying decisions, for both linear TV and digital video campaigns.

Programmatic buying and selling capabilities have evolved dramatically across reservations, private deals and open auction model, but they are still predominantly focused on digital video. At DoubleClick, we are exploring the promise of programmatic TV through new technologies across OTT devices, connected TV’s and even linear TV. Once programmatic TV expands to include linear TV, advertisers will be able to target, buy and measure all their media, more efficiently and intelligently, from a single integrated platform.

Focus on impact not views

In a world of abundant content and channels and limited marketing resources, it’s no longer about being everywhere. It’s about being present in the moments that matter for your audience and measuring what happens as a result. To this end, TV and brand buying must evolve beyond knowing just whether your ad had a chance to be seen (viewability) and was seen by the right audience (GRPs).

As an industry we need to evolve from brand buying based solely on reach metrics like GRPs and viewability to more actionable, impact-oriented metrics that tell you how your ad made the viewer feel, what it made them think and ultimately what it made them do. At Google and DoubleClick we are working to ensure these impact metrics are real-time so that you can turn insights into action, reduce waste and optimize your campaigns while they are in flight instead of looking at after the fact reports.

Published by Rany Ng, Director of Product Management, Video & TV Advertising, Google