Cord-cutting has grown steadily over the past few years and exponentially in recent months. With the continuous production of smart TV’s and accessories that allow consumers to stream their favorite shows right on their TV screen, cable companies, TV networks, and other advertising agencies are adapting and mainstreaming to this new way of media streaming.
In particular, brand advertising is taking on a new strategy that will allow them to utilize this new technology trend and make their advertisements and commercials more consistent and concurrent with OTT standards. Most importantly, advertisers have set the goal to not only create high-performing advertisements that fit the protocol of OTT but to have these advertisements be interactive, as well.
How Advertisers Can Utilize OTT Content
In the 2017 Innovid’s Global Video Benchmark Report, research showed that interactive video significantly exceeds and performs much more efficiently than pre-roll video in categories such as completion rate, timed earned, and user activity (source). With that being said, through the use of OTT, marketing agencies will have the ability to create advertisements that directly target specific individuals. With advertisements that are both interactive and viewer-specific, viewer engagement is predicted to only increase since it encourages consumers to click through to the website. Many of these interactive ads include overlays, additional videos, image galleries, branded microsites, and much more.
Additionally, using advertising strategies that are congruent with OTT platforms and have interactive characteristics will help to increase value and create higher benchmarks in comparison to standard ads that are not interactive and reach a general audience rather than a specific one. Basically, ads that are run on standard cable at random are really based off of the careful guesswork of market researchers. Of course, this guesswork was created through the means of control groups and (random) studies; however, many times ads were created and further published in the hopes of reaching out to a specific demographic and have that demographic be engaged with the content they are advertising. In reality, it was a lot of guesswork that was proved to be successful a while. That is, until advancements were made and the way consumers viewed their favorite shows began to change.
Interactive Ads Make the Difference
Continuing with the benefits of OTT advertising, if marketers can stick to these guidelines and create interactive, user-specific ads for OTT purposes, agencies would be looking at a 561% increase in total user activity. As if those statistics weren’t enough, OTT advertising content would also allow for marketers to efficiently measure its performance at the same time it’s running. Based on its rating and success rate, marketers could then make adjustments where they are needed and release the improved versions of these ads that will generate more viewer interactivity and leads.
Due to easily accessible delivery channels and marketing information, advertising agencies will be able to create interactive ads that increase engagement time, improves return on investments (ROIs), and is viewer-specific. Some marketing companies are even creating ads that allow them the ability to produce certain campaigns that can narrow in on specific consumer preferences and even engage in personal conversations with the customers who are watching giving a whole new aspect and roll to the world of marketing.
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