ADOTAS – Today’s consumers are multi-screen addicts. For example, they may begin a search on a smartphone, move to a desktop computer to gather more information and then finish the task on a tablet. According to a recent report by AdReaction, 41 percent of screen time is simultaneous usage of TV and a digital device. Consumers often watch TV while using a mobile device to get more information on the show or actors – or even tweet or comment about a show via their social networks.
That’s why marketers need to move quickly to meet the new challenges of engaging the multi-screen consumer. Advertising campaigns today should work across multiple devices and media, with digital technology serving as the backbone. This presents enormous challenge and opportunity, as brands look toward the promise of being able to engage multichannel consumers wherever they are, on any screen. I’ve outlined the below five tips for advertisers to improve their ad engagement and ROI when implementing multi-screen ad campaigns.
1. Interactive ads: By focusing on engagement, advertisers can increase overall ad performance. Specifically, interactive mini-game ads can outperform standard banner advertising by up to 22.5x. This level of engagement from interactive ads shows the need for the industry to adopt an engagement-focused advertising funnel. For example, brands focus heavily on figuring out what drives purchase intent, and engagement is a key piece of that equation already. With interactive devices, advertisers can create ads that focus on engagement by using rich media creative platforms that take this into account.
2. Streamlining multiscreen deployment: As consumers switch from one screen to the next, advertisers need to ensure their ads can make the switch while maintaining quality and performance on multiple devices. Advertisers should be able to create one ad and deploy across multiple channels and devices and measure the performance all from one platform. Say you are watching an episode of NBC’s The Blacklist via Hulu Plus on your Apple TV. During the commercial break you see an ad for the new Maserati Ghibli and it prompts to schedule a test drive by visiting their website. Later after the show, you are on your tablet and start searching for Maserati, and a video rich media ad with similar content provides you with the same ad experience, but instead of prompting you to go to their website, it gives you the ability to locate your local dealer and sign up for a test drive right within the ad unit. Managing this type of creative consistency on one platform streamlines performance.
3. Having a social presence: The best advertising campaigns today find ways to use social as part of the mix. It only makes sense for interactive ads to take the lead on doing that. If you look at mini-game ads, social sharing goes way up – as high as 16 percent – due to competition between players. Knowing that, imagine a big-box discount retailer running a mini-game rich media ad that allows people to mix and match different combinations of outfits – a shirt, skirt, jacket and shoes – then after selecting the outfit the consumer posts it to Facebook to get advice from their friends. This level of social shopping and integration are major factors in influencing customer purchase decisions, considering research shows that nearly 40 percent of social media users purchase an item after sharing it on social sites. By combining the results of highly engaging interactive ad units and social sharing, brands can greatly impact their bottom line.
4. Locally relevant: Local advertising is a very big focus these days. But what this really means is that advertisers are trying to figure out ways to advertise to a particular user and not just a rectangular device where they view content. With locally relevant data as part of an interactive advertisement, such as a store locator or local content, advertisers can start to create a dialogue with the viewer – it’s no longer only about promotion, but also about being helpful and useful. And this is essential for advertisers to think about when developing multichannel campaigns.
5. Deep and real-time analytics: Advertisers need to view metrics and analytics that go beyond impressions, clicks and conversion rates to understand how a user engages with an ad. Any interactive advertisement must capture and measure user events such as taps, swipes, clicks, mouse-overs as well as interaction metrics, from game scores, registrations and custom events, to video metrics that show starts, stops and completed views and measure them in real-time. But most importantly, marketers should integrate measurement with ad creation solutions to allow for dynamic content and creative updates without disruption. This way, advertisers can make changes on the fly to improve performance, which ultimately leads to better overall ROI.
With consumers watching TV shows on tablets, or jumping between a smartphone and a TV to engage with content, it has become increasingly difficult for advertisers to engage with consumers and measure the impact of a unified, omnichannel campaign across devices. Today, advertisers and marketers need to ensure that they have an effective multiscreen strategy in place. By implementing interactive multi-screen ads, that are consistent across different platforms with meaningful analytics, brands and marketers will be primed for success in engaging consumers wherever they are.