Developing an Integrated Marketing Strategy: Digital Display and Video

According an article from eMarketer companies invest — on average — approximately 40% of their advertising budget in TV. However, the following information gathered in the 2013 AOL Mega-Audience Survey: suggests TV is increasingly being supplemented and even replaced by digital display and video advertising:

• Over 60% of consumers who spend their time “watching” TV actually play games, do research, e-mail, shop, and read on their tablets or smartphones simultaneously.
• During commercials, an additional 30% of those consumers spend their time on mobile devices or tablets.
• A majority of consumer product and service research, as well as conversions, occur via smartphones or tablets (as opposed to desktops or shopping in person).

Further research by AOL suggests advertisers should alter their strategy to incorporate activities that are specific to and/or most utilized on smartphones and tablets:

• During this time spent on their tablet and mobile devices, consumers engage most in e-mailing, gaming, and social networking (70%, 55%, and 61%, respectively).

In an integrated strategy that incorporates digital display and video, advertisers can take current TV commercials and implement them as online video while users are streaming shows, gaming, shopping, or social networking on mobile devices and tablets. Unlike standard commercials, however, these videos would be interactive and more aggressive. In fact, AOL’s study has shown consumer engagement increases by 197% by adding interactivity.

Online videos have the ability to leverage social interactivity, whereby users can still connect with an advertisement without leaving their content. They also allow users to freely, easily, & immediately view gallery images (in 3-D, 360-degree views), directly shop & access coupons, provide interactive & enticing calls to action (in the form of Flash, interactive overlays, & engaging copy), provide directories & location information based on user’s exact location, allow hot-spotting (whereby users are able to view important product information during pre-roll), and offer a variety of content that appeals to different users across a wider audience. Finally, an advertiser has the ability to run videos both on platforms such as YouTube, or on any other given website.

Even more easily incorporated into this integrated strategy than video are standard display ads that range from static to dynamic. These ads direct you to a landing page that has specific product information reflecting what is depicted on the ad (within a maximum of two clicks). They also incorporate an enticing CTA (which can also incorporate Flash).

These capabilities across online video and standard display advertising allow advertisers to not only improve brand engagement, interactivity, and awareness, but also increase e-commerce sales, product awareness, website traffic, and video content distribution so that they are able to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their advertising.

In addition to being more engaging than TV advertising, online video and standard display offer results that are measurable. Using analytics tools, advertisers are able to track impressions, clicks, click-through rates (clicks ÷ impressions), and share of voice as well as metrics such as dwell time (the average time users spend engaging with your ad) and unique users (the number of new users). These metrics allow advertisers to effectively evaluate and optimize a campaign to ensure the best results.

From its directness in consumer targeting and variety of content, to its measurability in terms of results and growing popularity, digital display and video are channels worth considering for advertisers in an effective integrated strategy.

-Nicole Pettit, Display Media Coordinator

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