Why data and the wow factor are equally important for BVOD advertisers
In this article, the second of three articles about the opportunities and challenges for marketers planning BVOD advertising, Magnite’s Australian Managing Director James Young speaks with Jordan King, Director of Audience and Automation at Nine Entertainment and Nicole Bence Network Digital Sales Director at Seven Network.
Understanding the value of your audience
Few would dispute that TV has proven its branding power, but today’s innovations in addressability and programmatic access to this supply offers brands a unique opportunity to take advantage of BVOD.
According to Jordan King, if you are excluding CTV because you are trying to use cookie-based targeting, you are capturing less than half of the total audience.
What would you consider best practice for BVOD buying?
Having a strategy which is compatible with, and built around running via all BVOD inventory including Connected TV (CTV) that uses the power of addressable advertising where appropriate is absolutely best practice. If you exclude CTV simply because you are trying to use cookie-based targeting, not only will you capture less than half of the total audience but you also limit the quality of the interaction with the viewer. That can be the difference between achieving your marketing goals and failing.
When you use first party data across BVOD, you have the opportunity to address an audience that is double the size with declared, deterministic data. By contrast the value proposition of a non-CTV based environment is a greatly reduced audience and using inferred data to try and deliver your message.
What data do you make available to advertisers, and how can they best leverage that data?
Nine Now is a data-rich environment where our advertisers are able to use first party data across our assets. The collection of this data is done via single sign in (SSI) and not cookie based, meaning that we are able to build our segments on deterministic data and not infer it from probabilistic data. The use of true first party data also enables us to accurately target CTV devices which are cookie-less environments making any probabilistic data highly ineffective.
Advertisers can best leverage these data assets by engaging with the publisher directly. We don’t pass this data to DSPs and it can only be utilised via deals that are set up on the supply side.
What advice would you offer to brands who are considering addressable advertising options? Should it be an ‘always’ or an ‘occasional’ strategy?
True addressable advertising is a relatively nascent concept, but it’s one that is effective and simple to implement for advertisers. As a strategy, it will be most effective if it’s ‘always on’ when targeting core audiences and ‘occasional’ when targeting broader awareness from non-core audiences.
Can you deliver targeted and personalised campaigns through programmatic pipes?
As all of our addressable products are built from proprietary first party data and only available through the sell side, we are able to deliver targeted campaigns via programmatic pipes.
Whilst our audience data allows us to technically target very niche audiences, BVOD remains a reach-based medium. Therefore, we use our audience data to deliver personalised campaigns by targeting audience cohorts at scale.
The wow factor of the CTV experience
With audiences expecting a positive and seamless TV viewing experience in the BVOD format, it’s critical that broadcasters deliver on this to build long term rapport with their consumers. Seven Network’s Nicole Bence reports as TVs have become increasingly connected, and device reach has grown, Australians have developed a strong appetite for BVOD video content that’s more than just catch-up TV.
What have you done to ensure a strong (user) experience when audiences watch your content through connected devices?
7plus is becoming a habitual part of Australians’ video streaming lifestyle, so we’ve grown our content library and expanded our product feature set accordingly. We analyse data to help us simplify the path to video consumption for our users and we place emphasis on optimising search UX and ensure coherence across all of our connected devices for a positive viewer experience.
Some of your competitors rely on subscriptions (SVOD) rather than advertising (AVOD). How do you ensure strong advertising and a positive viewing experience for audiences?
Core to our strategy in 2021 is EAVE (enhanced advertiser and viewer experience). This involves enhancing the viewer experience with simple features like ‘My Watchlist’ and personalised recommendations that allows us to serve the best suited of our content to viewers.
We’re also re-imagining our Freeze Frame to offer brands more available advertising real estate and launching another high impact format to take advantage of time between episodes. Another forthcoming feature is an ad-lite experience for our VOD viewers who binge watch, delivering opportunities for brands to deliver an enhanced experience. Our in-content ecommerce format will offer marketers the chance to better use creative beyond a traditional TVC to engage audiences and deliver value with offers such as shoppable links.
What should marketers consider in terms of user experience?
Device usage changes the mindset of a consumer – so a viewer watching on their mobile during transit is different to a consumer engaging on CTV in their lounge room. Understanding how to enhance or bring value to that moment as well as convenience for the moment after they engage with your brand is critical. You need to consider how you can remove friction and create a more seamless journey.
Do you have any data about the impact a poor (or positive) user experience can have on viewers?
The quicker a user is able to access engaging content, the longer the depth of session and engagement. Additionally, the longer a user spends searching for content to watch, the less time they typically spend watching video in that session. 7plus is optimised to address both these experience areas.
What has been the most important catalysts for audience adoption and migration to BVOD?
Migration to BVOD has been steadily growing along with internet speeds, as consumers embraced it thanks to the convenience, on-demand, quality and breadth of content it offers. In turn this positive experience helped convince people that it was worth paying for content online which in turn drove the well-publicised rise of SVOD. As consumers moved to streaming, content creators followed with even higher levels of quality content and improved tech, which contributed to an increasing adoption of streaming generally and the introduction of new business models such as subscriptions rather than ads.
Today consumers still stream considerably more BVOD than SVOD, with sport, live content, movies and shows all growing strongly. Nostalgia content and popular series-based drama are even more popular with regularly consistent return viewers and increasingly longer average session durations.
Continue reading:
TV but not as you know it: insights for marketers exploring BVOD
