3 tips for getting your ads seen in the attention economy
In the attention economy, old ways of measuring ad success don't work. Learn three ways to grab consumers' attention -- and keep it.
Privacy Sandbox presents a challenge for advertisers. But for video advertisers, focusing on the Sandbox could prove to be a red herring to an industry plagued by massive amounts of ad waste, perhaps as high as 65%.
This isn’t to downplay the significance of the Privacy Sandbox, Google’s attempt to create a privacy-preserving alternative for advertisers as it deprecates third-party cookies. But with the rise of walled gardens and a mobile-first web, video advertising has become a land of compromises. And if those ad spend issues aren’t addressed, the sandbox will only worsen them.
The social problem with video advertising waste
According to Statista, two-thirds of consumers will skip video ads the first chance they get, regardless of relevancy. It’s likely no coincidence that this number is nearly identical to the 65% of ad waste plaguing the industry and it has nothing to do with advertisers not finding relevant audiences.
Mobile phones are already small screens, and advertisers spend a lot of money on social platforms like Facebook that clog those small screens with as much content as possible.
The result is that ads compete for eyeballs, likely against more desired content. Since publishers want to keep eyeballs on their platform, they give consumers easy access to skip or not view ads.
As such, video ad experiences are compromised into parts of an already small screen, interrupt user experiences, and are easily skipped or missed—resulting in a wasted spend for the advertiser. What’s more is that this doesn’t even consider the resources invested into building these 30-second creatives.
On top of all of this, the social platform still gets paid. Since they have their own measuring sticks, they can self-attribute conversions that they are only loosely tied to. So the platform controls the user experience and the measurement, and as a result has no revenue downside by delivering experiences that aren’t truly beneficial to the advertiser.
Advertisers should focus on the outcomes they want
If you recall when Apple got rid of cookies on their Safari browser, the result was a significant shift, but the ultimate impact wasn’t as dramatic as many feared.
Advertisers took some actions that likely were long overdue, particularly by utilizing their own first-party data. By owning their audiences and KPIs, many advertisers were able to mute the effects and give themselves better insight than they were getting from self-attributing platforms.
The indirect result of this was that it fragmented measurements of ad success. No longer is there a one-size-fits-all measurement for video advertising success—like post-click or video completion. Brand advertisers who look at these metrics to determine success or failure miss the big picture.
Savvy advertisers know and understand their ultimate campaign outcome and measure success based on what works for them. What matters in our post-privacy world is understanding what can help measure what brands need—focusing on their specific desired outcomes.
In other words, we’re past the days when a publisher determines what is a successful ad experience. Brands that take ownership of true positive outcomes will be able to determine this for themselves.
The cooperative model
In order to get the most out of their ad spend, brands should seek video advertising spots where the goal is to capture attention for more than a few seconds. With so much money consolidated into environments where advertisers have little to no control over the experience and measurement, ad waste will continue to be a problem.
Instead, advertisers should seek “cooperative” environments where publishers find non-interruptive, “friendly” moments to show ads.
The cooperative model is best exemplified by network television, where commercials occur during natural breaks in content. This collaboration benefits all parties involved: viewers are not unexpectedly interrupted, networks generate ad revenue, and advertisers have comfort knowing their 30-second ads are played in full.
In mobile, these environments are more challenging to find. However, there’s one mobile format that closely models TV: in-game video. Game developers place ad breaks at natural game breaks, like after a level completion. Users anticipate these ads, minimizing interruption.
Furthermore, these ads are un-skippable and dominate the entire screen with sound. Due to their cooperative nature, in-game ads command 5-10 times more attentive seconds than social formats – a metric that research vendors like Lumen Research and Adelaide Metrics have found to increase brand recall in purchasing decisions.
Driving real engagement with video ads
Advertisers may be resting their laurels on the high reach, and the perception of engagement provided to them by social media platforms. However, mobile games have grown in popularity, with estimates that 1.67 billion people worldwide will play them.
As games come in many types and sizes, it’s wrong for advertisers to assume their audience isn’t in games. Various audiences play games, including parents, foodies, avid shoppers, and more. And, what’s more, ad space can now be bought in games with all the same programmatic tools brands and agencies are used to on other media, giving advertisers further faith that their ad will be shown to the right people.
The truth is that platforms will always ensure that there are ways and means to find the audiences they want. We saw this before with Safari and mobile web, and we will see it after Google’s Privacy Sandbox. No matter what, the critical question for advertisers is whether those audiences will engage with their ads or just scroll or skip past them.
