In conversation with Nikhil Kumar, Vice President – India, SEA & ME, mediasmart
Creating meaningful brand experiences among the target audience has become a linchpin for marketers. And in recent years, Connected TV has become increasingly important as it offers a highly targeted advertising experience, allowing marketers to reach specific demographics and audiences. As CTV continues to grow in popularity and viewership, it is becoming an increasingly essential part of the advertising mix for brands and marketers looking to stay ahead of the curve in today’s ever-evolving media landscape.
To understand how can brands leverage the synergy of DOOH and CTV in the upcoming IPL season to create a seamless consumer experience, we had an exclusive discussion with Nikhil Kumar, Vice President – India, SEA & ME, mediasmart.
Agency Reporter – How important is the upcoming IPL season for brands to leverage the power of CTV advertising?
Nikhil Kumar – We have seen that high-adrenaline sports events always carry high viewership interest. Cricket is of course no less than a religion in India and every season of IPL carries with itself a great fandom that translates into record viewership. But even during the recently concluded Football World Cup, the interest generated by online audiences was massive. There were reports that the final match of the Football World Cup had a concurrency of over 10 million viewers on Jio Cinema! What’s appealing about such sporting events, be it football or cricket, is that the user is highly engaged on the screen and that’s primetime for brands to advertise.
Consider the scenario where you’re engrossed in a match, and suddenly an ad pops on the screen that caters to your specific needs at that very moment. If you are retargeted with an ad on your mobile at that time or within the next 24 hours of seeing the ad, there is a high likelihood that you will take immediate action. This is because the prompt satisfies your intent without any delay.
In this context, CTV App measurement plays a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness of your advertising campaign. By enabling advertisers to effectively acquire users across screens, seamlessly track installs and in-app events of both their CTV and mobile apps in real-time, CTV App measurement ensures that brands can make the most of this unique advertising opportunity.
This advanced technology not only allows brands to stand out from the crowd by advertising on big screens but also empowers them to optimize their campaigns based on real-time measurement insights. As a result, advertisers can achieve better targeting, drive more app downloads, and ultimately create a stronger connection with their audience during high-adrenaline sports events like the IPL.
Agency Reporter – What are the key benefits of adopting a multi-screen approach to advertising, especially during high-adrenaline events like the IPL?
Nikhil Kumar – An event like IPL not only celebrates cricket viewing, but many parameters that touch across cricket genre take a front seat. Whether it is organic searches of cricket matches and scores, app downloads on cricket and gaming apps, viewership across time bands, IPL is not just about watching cricket but about being a part of the celebration of sport spread across a span of 2 months. So an advertiser who is interested in a cricket-loving audience that is active during this time, has many opportunities to reach consumers across multi-screens and in multitude ways. This means an advertiser is able to cut across CTV, across publishers, on mobile, and even across genres such as OTT, news, etc, to programmatically cater to these audiences and have a unifying reach. A multi-screen approach helps to reduce ad fatigue by being publisher agnostic and drive better results and ROI.
By adopting a multi-screen strategy, advertisers can create more immersive experiences to seamlessly integrate the viewer’s online and offline experiences and create a more impactful omnichannel marketing experience.
Our comprehensive solutions integrate the consumer’s journeys across connected screens by combining the highly immersive world of CTV advertising with real-world targeting through DOOH and relevant targeted messaging on mobiles. On CTV, our Household Sync, Engagement Sync and Offline Sync provide niche solutions for brands to target a user throughout their journey.
Agency Reporter – How do niche targeting solutions and programmatic technology empower brands to create more meaningful engagements with their audiences on CTV?
Nikhil Kumar – CTV advertising has made the traditional world of television advertising more powerful by offering precision targeting, automation, and measurability. CTV delivers a compelling brand story that brings together a superior advertising experience – all the while making advertising on television more transparent, measurable and impactful!
Brands have used advertising on television for awareness, recall and purchase, but the traditional advertising on television has lacked precision targeting. It was also not tailored to the viewer’s interests nor was there a way to measure the effectiveness of these campaigns.
Niche targeting on CTV allows brands to reach specific audience groups and create further subsets. Targeting on CTV can be based on demographics, screen size, and location. By identifying the unique characteristics and interests of a particular audience segment, brands can create tailored messaging that resonates with the end user. Programmatic technology empowers brands to make use of data to make real-time decisions to optimize their campaigns, customize ads using dynamic creatives and offer unmatched scale. The end result is an ad campaign that offers better engagement and ad recall for improved impact.
Agency Reporter – What are the top challenges facing brands when it comes to creating effective CTV advertising campaigns?
Nikhil Kumar – One of the biggest challenges can be around the fragment OS environment. CTV devices like Smart TVs, streaming boxes, and gaming consoles often run on different operating systems. With different technical specifications, ad formats and measurement capabilities offered for each OS, it can be challenging for an advertiser to navigate. Advertisers are faced with the challenge of optimizing their ads for each platform to ensure they are delivered and measured correctly while achieving their desired outcome. In this complex landscape, working with a CTV advertising partner who understands the technical specifications of different platforms is crucial.
A CTV advertising partner can help advertisers create and deliver ads that work seamlessly across all platforms while reaching the right audience through advanced data analysis and programmatic buying. By syncing CTV ad campaigns with ads on other connected devices, advertisers can increase engagement and ensure that their campaigns are always at the forefront of new developments.
One of the key advantages of CTV advertising is its ability to combine the compelling storytelling of TV advertising with the precision targeting and capabilities of programmatic and digital advertising. By analyzing data, advertisers can identify areas that need improvement and adjust their campaigns accordingly to ensure the best possible results.
With a platform designed for CTV advertising, you can quantify your TV ads with dedicated KPIs and track and attribute systems to measure conversions. As the landscape continues to evolve and new technologies and platforms emerge, working with a CTV advertising partner can help you stay ahead of the curve and maximize the impact of your CTV campaigns.
Agency Reporter – How can brands use Household Sync, Engagement sync, and Offline sync technologies to better target users on both their CTV and mobile devices?
Nikhil Kumar – The digital landscape has immensely evolved. Creating a seamless consumer journey across screens is needed now more than ever. This is what mediasmart helps best with. Our solutions track the user journey from exposure to action, enabling advertisers to target their audience with consistent messaging, regardless of device.
Our household sync technology is a powerful tool that enables advertisers to target multiple devices within the same household, resulting in more effective campaigns. To enhance targeting capabilities, our engagement sync technology utilizes data from user engagement on one device to retarget them with relevant content on other devices.
Furthermore, our offline sync technology enables brands to target users based on their offline behavior, resulting in more personalized campaigns that resonate with users’ interests and behaviors.
By combining these technologies, brands can create highly targeted and personalized ad campaigns that reach the right audience on the right platforms. We’re also proud to offer our Digital Out of Home (DOOH) with Audience Sync offering, which bridges the gap between the physical and digital worlds, further enhancing our capabilities.
Our teams are constantly working to increase ad awareness through user engagement, striving to improve the overall ad viewing experience. Our extensive research and development efforts have resulted in methods that enhance user engagement, ultimately leading to stronger customer experiences and increased awareness of the advertisement.
Additionally, we offer a unique solution for app marketers that taps into CTV’s potential for online advertising. Our QR Code feature allows viewers to quickly scan and access the app store, resulting in increased reach and awareness opportunities. We also offer multiple targeting options, including intent-based targeting, demographic targeting, and geo-fencing, which capture valuable data and metrics.
Agency Reporter – What are some examples of interactive formats on CTV ads that can help brands better engage with their audiences?
Nikhil Kumar – The interactive ads on CTV are highly attractive for brands looking to generate a higher level of brand engagement and recognition. There are several powerful types of ad formats that can help brands achieve this. This can be via formats that showcase the brand and product in the first few seconds of the ad by creating an animated background where products and the main messages of the ad gain a dedicated spot for higher levels of brand recognition. Another interactive format is personalizing the ad creative charging bar with a totem of the product to leverage high levels of completion view. This is achieved through the progress bar sync format, where the product or service becomes a part of the video. Finally, brands can also create powerful redirections on CTV with Smart QR codes to boost brand strategy.
Agency Reporter – How can brands measure the impact of their CTV advertising campaigns beyond just awareness metrics?
Nikhil Kumar – Unlike traditional TV advertising, CTV lets advertisers track viewer behavior and engagement in real-time, providing them with a better understanding of the effectiveness of their campaign for efficient campaigns to improve ROI. Our India CTV 2.0 report, released last year, revealed that 9 in 10 viewers of CTV recall being exposed to ads. 81% of those exposed to ads claim that the ads influenced them. We have also undertaken brand lift studies with Kantar for our clients advertising on CTV which have shown not just a significant increase in brand awareness, but also tracked metrics that have proven CTV’s impact on purchase intent, message association, brand favorability.
While awareness metrics are important, brands can also measure the incremental lift in sales achieved during and post the campaign. By analyzing the use data for attribution modeling, brands can determine how much of the traffic or conversions came from CTV ads versus other channels. By analyzing metrics such as CTR, VTR and more, brands can get insights into how engaged a viewer was with their ads and adjust their strategy accordingly. With cross-device attribution, brands can track the user journey across multiple devices and channels, including CTV. This allows them to see how CTV advertising influences user behavior on other channels and devices, giving them a more complete picture of the impact of their campaign. Brand lift studies are a way to measure the impact of CTV advertising on brand perception and awareness. These studies can be conducted before and after a campaign to determine if there was a significant increase in brand awareness or perception.
Agency Reporter – What role does personalization play in creating effective CTV advertising campaigns?
Nikhil Kumar – The advertising for one-size-fits-all is all but gone. Today’s consumers are more inclined to receive advertising messages and purchase from brands that resonate with them. Personalization is the name of the game, and if you’re not doing that you have lost the match! Personalization is an essential element in creative effective CTV advertising campaigns, and makes television advertising power-up by empowering advertisers to reach specific audience cohorts and target them with the right message at the right time. For this, the Household Sync technology equips advertisers with the right tools to target different people in the same household and improve ad efficiency by syncing ads with other devices in the same household. Advertisers can also choose to target cross-screen audiences with greater efficiency. By analyzing a viewer’s behavior and response to ads, advertisers can adjust the frequency and timing of their ads to maximize engagement without overwhelming the user.
Agency Reporter – How can brands use DOOH technologies to incorporate CTV advertising into their audiences’ journeys?
Nikhil Kumar – CTV advertising with DOOH can be a powerful addition to media budgets for advertisers to create more immersive and engaging advertising experiences for a unified brand story across multiple screens. By targeting users on CTV, re-engaging them on mobiles, and using newer technologies like DOOH in conjunction with CTV, we’ve entered a new world of advertising. This advertising not only delivers for brands, but also leaves a greater impact on the users because of the personalization aspect of messaging that offers more relevance.
Agency Reporter – What are some best practices that brands can follow to stay ahead of the competition in leveraging the power of CTV advertising for better engagement and brand awareness during high adrenaline events like the IPL?
Nikhil Kumar – In India, cricket is a sport that is enjoyed with family and friends at the comfort of home & also often in the evenings at bars and restaurants. Brands can capitalize on this by using mediasmart’s technology for time-based advertising combined with location data and DMP segments. This approach can help reach the same audiences beyond the regular publisher-led approach, enabling brands to effectively engage with their target audience during events like the IPL.
Another important factor to consider in leveraging the power of CTV advertising during events like IPL is the increased engagement of users with gaming ads. As the season progresses, users’ organic scale to consume or play cricket-related games increases, making in gaming ads more engaging and effective.
Finally, it’s also important to utilize the right creative capabilities by implementing attention-grabbing formats that go a step ahead of the traditional branding TV spots. Once the targeting and creatives are set, then amplification of the campaign’s reach should be considered too. Syncing with technologies like Household Sync & DOOH can make the CTV advertising more powerful and immersive.