An action guide for successful online motion picture advertising

To answer this question, it is not enough to talk about screens and the use of mobile devices. Rather, the three cornerstones of a successful campaign - media, data and creation - must be subjected to a holistic examination.

Creation - understanding usage situations

If you simply use your TV spot for digital channels, you can expect reduced user acceptance for many placements. Today, it is no longer enough to simply adapt the dramaturgy and spot length. Communication concepts are needed that understand and interpret the user's specific media and usage situation.

One example of this is the difference between home entertainment and to-go entertainment: Thanks to popular apps such as Instagram and Snapchat, the portrait format for videos on the smartphone has now become much more important. In combination with interactive elements and fragmented snapshots, this is a much better way to pick up target groups on the smartphone than by means of poster campaigns. Interruptive advertising and classic suspense arcs, on the other hand, are better suited for longer moving image content and moving image use in the context of home entertainment, for example as pre- or mid-roll for long-form content on YouTube.

Basically, it's about individualizing communication. Of course, this means more effort and costs for the advertising strategy, but the relevance increases and with it the advertising impact of each campaign. In addition to an individualized communication strategy on the part of the advertising client, however, the media are also in demand. Alternative offers to the classic pre-roll must be created. A look at the new formats of the social media platforms shows where the journey is heading. Snapchat's social story format has already been copied by Facebook and Instagram. Here, the user intuitively decides which content is interesting and in what depth he wants to engage with the topic. The same should apply to new advertising formats: Advertising must involve the user and not communicate head-on.

Data - build your own data segments

There is no question that successful video campaigns today must be data-driven. And yet, disillusionment has set in over the past few years, especially when it comes to data quality. Today, only the leading social media and search platforms (Google, Facebook, etc.) and the major e-commerce players have a truly functioning socio-demographic data product. Telecommunications companies and diversified media houses will also play a relevant role in the future, provided they have done their technical homework. However, this valuable 1st-party data is often only available to advertisers on the respective platforms and is only marketed to third parties to a limited extent - if at all - independently of the media. Outside of these silos, functioning data aggregation is complex and data quality is usually questionable. Indicators of this can be found in measurements by independent providers, such as the Link Institute in Switzerland. We at Stailamedia have had good experiences in the recent past with a combined approach of cookie-based 3rd party data, 2nd party data from publisher log-ins and a constantly dynamic and automated allocation of publisher pages.

Even though building sustainable data segments is complex, every advertiser has to deal with it in order to further minimize wastage. Compared to the environment-based purchasing of linear TV advertising, data-driven models are significantly more efficient and also device-agnostic. Users see the right video at the right time, on the right device, no matter where they are. That's why more and more advertisers today are turning to their own data management platform and automated media buying via programmatic marketplaces.

Programmatic media buying - whether in-house or agency-operated trading desks - is becoming increasingly important, as confirmed by figures from this year's "Programmatic Advertising Compass" published by the BVDW. In the last three years, the market segment has grown by 45 percent in Germany. There are currently no figures for Switzerland, but a revenue report for the programmatic market here is being planned by Mediafocus.

Media - Viewing Channels Holistically

"Video killed the TV Star" - don't worry, it's not quite there yet. A representative study by Deloitte and the Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft in May of this year examined moving image usage in Germany. The question "Do you use TV broadcasts via cable, satellite, DVB-T/antenna at least once a week?" was still answered with yes by 65 percent of all respondents. This is closely followed by video portals (e.g. YouTube) with 51 percent, the media libraries of the TV stations with 33 percent and social video with 31 percent. Linear TV use in Switzerland behaves similarly to Germany. According to Mediapulse, linear TV in Switzerland will still reach 61 percent of 15- to 59-year-olds this year. Among Swiss between 15 and 29, however, the figure is only 41 percent. For advertisers, this means that only four out of ten of the very advertising-relevant young target group can still be reached with TV advertising.

Of course, it would be nice for advertisers if this segment had simply switched to a similarly comprehensive medium like TV and could now be addressed there. But the reality is that young users today move in highly fragmented environments. Channel-fixated media planning no longer works when the smartphone is used at home in the living room during primetime and the user jumps from one video offer to the next.

The biggest media challenge for advertisers therefore lies in the efficient combination of the mostly self-contained social media platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram) with publishing sites, web TV, and ad-financed VoD platforms. Reach and contact classes must become plannable across the entire market, because only a holistic media view and media planning will lead to success in an extremely fragmented digital market. While linear TV streaming and video-on-demand offerings are mainly used in the evening, news, gaming apps, and social media content accompany users during the day. On the way to work, on the road, or on the way home, moving image content on mobile devices is an integral part of everyday life. Therefore, cross-media and cross-channel online moving image offers urgently need to be created. Only in this way can advertisers and media agencies cover the entire market from a holistic media planning perspective.

Boundaries merge

Consumption and distribution of moving image content is changing faster today than ever before. New video formats are coming to market, and they need to be more native than a pure pre-roll. The leading social media platforms set the standard in this regard. If you want to keep up with the development, you have to make your creative, data and media strategy dynamic and constantly make fact-based adjustments. Defining the right KPIs is the basic prerequisite for this. This is the only way advertisers can understand who has seen a campaign, how visible it was, and which creative works best where. Independent measurement of these indicators, combined with a media strategy that is as diversified as possible, helps to exploit the full market potential. The boundary between performance marketing and brand communication will become increasingly blurred.

The author: Michael Baum . . .

. . has been involved in data-driven marketing of digital media for over 12 years. He is CEO of the media and data exchange Stailamedia and an industry expert in video advertising and adtech. In his previous role at Adconion Media Group, he was responsible for sales in Southern Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Eastern Europe. Prior to that, Michael Baum worked in sales for Creative Weblogging in Palo Alto and Adviva Media (now Specific Media) in Munich.

This article is a supplement to the Werbewoche industry report "Moving Image" published on October 20, 2017.