Australian publishers Seven West Media, Network 10, SBS, Foxtel Media, Pedestrian Group and Daily Mail have joined forces to launch a programmatic ‘Editorial Video Marketplace’.
The new marketplace, run by Telaria, aims to simplify buyers’ access to this professionally produced premium content with daytime audience reach and scale, as per the official statement.
Luke Smith, head of programmatic sales and audiences at Seven West Media said: “The demand from advertisers has been clear – that there is a need for quality video delivering high viewability and completion rates within brand safe editorial environments at scale.
“It is important that the premium value and impact of editorial video is able to differentiate itself from other forms of short-form like social video. This marketplace, available programmatically, will be a means to make that easily accessible for buyers and advertisers at scale,”
Flaminia Sapori, head of partnerships at media agency Cadreon said: “It’s encouraging to finally start seeing publishers working collaboratively to provide alternative independent options in this space — creating ease of access, and most importantly, a new narrative for editorial video, giving it the credit it deserves, and perhaps start influencing more social budgets being redirected to new premium ecosystems.”
The news comes after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) released its final digital platforms inquiry report in July calling on the government to act against the tech giants.
ACCC had raised concerns, at the starting of the year, about the market power of Facebook and Google including the companies impact on Australian businesses, particularly their ability to monetize content, as well as outlined concerns about the extent that consumers data is collected and used by companies to target advertising.
Feature Image Credit:The marketplace aims to simplify buyers’ access to this professionally produced premium content.
he power of video advertising may be well documented, but as consumer behaviour changes amid familiarity with video browsing on mobile devices, marketers who think the rules of engagement for digital video have already been written – and that there is a one size fits all approach – should think again.
The rise and effectiveness of native video on social media has been well researched to date. Engagement rates, reach, frequency and return on investment studies all show positive associations. But until now, there have been few studies showing the rise and performance of native video formats across the open web, specifically on premium publisher environments, where in-feed native video formats are becoming increasingly common.
We recently sought to fill that void through an analysis of more than 30 million in-feed video views run across our platform from January to April 2018. While we expected to be able to report findings on native video on the open web that were in line with the positive findings in social media, we didn’t expect that our findings would challenge the very notion of ‘what works’ in native video. But that’s precisely what happened.
Conventional wisdom in the video space, based on social data, has indicated that less is more when it comes to native video advertising, with many espousing that anything longer than 6 seconds in native video is simply too long. However, our findings would seem to contradict the perceived wisdom that mobile users have limited attention spans and are only interested in short video content.
According to our findings, smartphone users are more likely to spend time engaging with long-form video ads compared to 6-second ads when executed correctly. In fact, 72% of mobile users who have watched 6 seconds will continue to watch and engage with video up to 22 seconds. When native video reaches 15 to 22 seconds in length across premium publisher environments, mobile and tablet users that have watched this far are significantly more engaged than desktop users.
The evolution of our ‘mobile minds’
Perhaps it shouldn’t be all that surprising that people’s attention spans for native video seem to be growing longer. While the findings in our report represent the first of their kind in native video, there have been several studies undertaken around the attention of mobile phone users when it comes to reading. Over time, conclusions have shifted.
One study in 2010 found that reading on a mobile device was impaired when content was presented on a mobile-size screen versus a larger computer screen. But a similar study, undertaken six years later in 2016, showed different results. This study, conducted by the Nielsen Norman Group, concluded that there were no practical differences in the comprehension scores of participants, whether they were reading on a mobile device or a computer. In fact, the study found comprehension on mobile was about 3% higher than on a computer for content that was just over 400 words in length, and at an easier level to read.
Why the difference in results? It’s very possible that, over the period between 2010 and 2016 — the exact period during which smartphones became ubiquitous — we’ve all become more accustomed to reading on smaller screens. It’s reasonable to assume that the challenges the average person had reading on a small screen back in 2010 no longer apply now that people have adjusted to life on those smaller screens.
In a similar manner, it would appear that user behavior is changing around video consumption on mobile devices as well.
Well-held assumptions that less-is-more for video length and the broader worries about a crisis in user attention spans very well may prove to have been misplaced.
Creating compelling video content
As attention spans for native video lengthen, marketers would do well to reassess their best practices as it relates to creating content for mobile consumption. In particular, native video creators should think carefully about improving video performance during the key drop-off periods on a specific device.
For videos that will be consumed on mobile or tablet, videos should be edited to pack a punch in the first 6 seconds, in order to draw in users. The latest data suggests that the optimal length for native video content on mobile and tablet should be between 15 and 22 seconds. After 22 seconds, user interest does wane. If videos have to be longer, marketers should ensure that there are more-exciting sequences and enticing calls to action around 22 seconds, in order to maintain viewer interest up to 30 seconds.
If nothing else, these recent findings demonstrate that marketers must remain fluid in their understanding of how users engage with content on their devices. Behaviour is shifting, and yesterday’s best practices won’t necessarily apply tomorrow.
Rather than bundle social video into sponsorship deals, Premier League clubs want to carve out its commercial value to convince sponsors to pay more for that engagement.
The modern-day newsfeed is as stuffed with posts from wannabe stars and celebrity spats as it is with videos from training grounds and changing rooms. Yet many of those creating this content aren’t sure of its commercial worth as it becomes increasingly hard to ignore how much more exposure football teams can get on social media compared to TV.
But because it’s tricky to track the value a brand gets on social, it’s arguably been massively undervalued. No commercial chief can point to half a million Facebook views and say ‘that’s just helped secure my new partnership deal’ when measurement is so blunt. On the other hand, many would ask ‘what’s the cost of not doing it?’
Hundreds of millions in the case of Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo, whose social media accounts generated an eye-bulging $500m in value for Nike last year according to sponsorship analytics company Hookit.
While Ronaldo isn’t a club, he is a media owner like the Real Madrid team he plays for and, just like his employers, the Portuguese forward knows that content and platforms he owns are in high demand. The world’s most prolific athlete on social media had one post last year that was worth $5.8m after it racked up 1.7m ‘likes’ and nearly 13,000 comments due its timing with Portugal’s Euro 2016 victory.
Ronaldo’s post was worth $5.8m after racking up 1.7m ‘likes’
Valuations like these are frequent as they are rooted in the old media equivalency rules of sponsorship. Hookit’s methodology uses average number of impressions per interaction to come up with a monetary value when really sponsors want a clearer way to compare social media posts with TV inventory. What the likes of Hookit do prove, however, is just how much teams could be missing in the media valuations they currently conduct – especially as brands demand sharper measurement from all parts of the marketing mix.
“Some clubs are not doing it [measuring social video] right and those who aren’t need to change the way they are approaching brands,” says Jean-Pierre Diernaz, vice-president of marketing at Nissan Europe. The car maker, which sponsors Manchester City and the Uefa Champions League among others, sees a potential in a fast spinning sports industry and yet is perturbed by what it deems is an unwillingness to fix what has become a largely inefficient market.
The social video sports revolution
Pound-busting TV deals pushed the 20 top-flight English teams to post record revenues of £3.6bn between 2015 and 2016 and yet they still struggled to make a profit. Collectively, Premier League clubs made a pre-tax loss of £110m, according to Deloitte, stressing the need for additional revenue streams at a time when many commercial bosses are yet to properly monetise their online fanbases.
“Every club has a certain number of fans but what is important is those who are actively engaging with the club,” continues Diernaz. ”The clubs need to be actively showing on the platforms that here is the value. If you look at the top 20 YouTubers in the world they are getting a lot of business with what they are doing so why would you not be operating the same as a football club. It’s clearly a strategy that would accelerate this for clubs.”
Several Premier League clubs are wise to the opportunity, resolving to give brands what they want in the hope of extracting more money from sponsorships. When City Football Group’s (CFG) commercial boss Tom Glick says he can see a time when social video could help his team renegotiate deals, he’s actually talking about a point when he and his team understand the market value of every post and the revenues they generate.
Numbers like that could come in handy if City were to try to convince Nike to top the £60m a season, 15-year deal with Chelsea when it comes to renegotiations. A club like Manchester City could potentially command tens of millions in media value on TV coverage alone. Add social into a mix and that could significantly inflate the media value of said sponsorship deal. Placements that were once thought useless on TV such as those at the club’s training ground could be worth more to a sponsor looking to reach the growing number of younger fans who aren’t only concerned with what their club does on match days.
Training ground placements could prove valuable to City, with fans concerned with the club beyond match day
“Often what’s holding social video back is it is generally wrapped into a larger sponsorship deal which can undervalue what that media represents because its not pulled out or compared with other formats – like display advertising – that might be getting sold… to me social video is more valuable than a display ad on a club’s website and yet in many cases these things are not necessarily being valued in the same way,” suggests Gareth Capon, the chief executive at social video production business Grabyo.
“If you’re a training ground sponsor then you don’t get much TV presence on game day, it’s more the main kit and headline sponsors,” he continues. “But now with social video you suddenly have all these assets where fans who want to know what’s happening with their club each day get to see your brand and those posts are shared all around the world. That’s a real change and the value for that media is not well understood… but once it starts to get compared with traditional TV advertising or and other forms of advertising, or at least it’s valued as a component of an overall sponsors package, then I think its value will rocket.”
Being able to quantify the value of social media
Southampton, like City, have made strides in recent years to move away from being so reliant on broadcast, focusing on depth of engagement rather than mass exposure. WPP-owned sports marketing agency Two Circles is helping it make the transition, which is very much a work in progress. “It’s about how best to value the video so we’re not only doing it in a traditional sense,” says James Kennedy, Southampton FC’s head of marketing. “We’re going down much more of an impression-based route as oppose to a sales route.”
This means partnerships aren’t typically signed off with an agreed number of tweets and database blasts to feign brand activation. Rather, Southampton are focused less on selling price and impressions and much more on delivering engagement and value.
“The ‘impression-based route’ is about understanding a brand’s target audience and helping them reach this group (in a targeted, cost efficient way) across the club’s entire digital network – web, email and social,” adds Kennedy. “So while achieving mass brand exposure and positive affinity is one objective, Saints can help brands develop campaigns to achieve specific objectives because they can segment their entire digital fanbase.”
Methods like this are heavily reliant on equivalent media value measurement. In the case of Southampton, the club argues that it doesn’t apply an “equivalent” media value in the traditional sense. However, because they – along with Two Circles – eschew inflated media values, they have a more consistent benchmark for a marketer to compare the impact of a campaign with buying the media space elsewhere.
Southampton FC’s marketers have become smarter as to how they use their owned media to generate commercial value
Simply put, what Southampton et al are using involves reach and frequency measures of signage to determine the value of sponsors exposure. These are calculated in differing ways and to varying degrees of sophistication but every measure – or impression – is ascribed an equivalent media value that a marketer can compare with paid for advertising. Hence, the underlying assumption for any brand tracking social video this way is it keeps their sponsorship rooted in the value of logo exposure as well as brand equity.
“The way content is valued is media equivalency so if Chevrolet wanted to buy ad space from TV for millions of people then how much would that cost versus being on the front of the Manchester United jersey… it’s exactly the same premise for how we [Nielsen Sports] value digital and social content,” says Max Barnett, global head of digital at Nielsen Sports. The measurement firm is readying a product it claims brings social media and traditional media valuation together for the first time, meaning for every minute of brand exposure data collected, an average of 5,000 data points are input to algorithms to calculate qualitative and valuation based outputs. While similar tools exist, Barnett hopes Nielsen’s own alternative becomes a unified measurement of sponsorship across all media channels.
“We’re seeing more clients’ commercial teams target 15% to 20% share of media value through digital and social” he continues. “If you have declining TV audiences then that’s a really important gap to fill. The audiences are more than likely not leaving, but consuming the content in a different way. Likewise, you could see brands selecting properties with a more significant social footprint to align to their wider marketing channel objective. Could we also see brands go after digital and social assets in the not too distant future? That depends on how rights holders want to package and promote.”
Is it time for football clubs to think like media owners
Some Premier League bosses hope to do this using social metrics such as earned impressions, shares and followers. The Drum understands a number of commercial bosses have at least considered the possibility of adopting a cost per engagement as a new standard in ROI measurement. While these talks are yet to materialise into anything beyond speculation, that they are even happening is vindication enough of social video’s potential value.
Putting a price on social video has been a thorny subject for some time and it was a challenge we have been seeking to shine more light on with our research report series,” says Michael Litman, founder and chief executive at Burst Insights. For example, the social analytics firm found that of the top 20 best performing videos across each social video platform from last season only Manchester United and Chelsea saw exposure value within the set reach over 31m. Arsenal ranked third, Liverpool FC fourth, Manchester City were in fifth place and Tottenham Hotspur rounded out the top six.
“This shows that for example Arsenal are overachieving on social video performance versus actual player performance on the pitch,” adds Litman. “Spurs fans on the flip-side I think will prefer to be nearer the top of the table in real life. I think we will see in time real world performance, correlating more closely with digital performance as the clubs become more akin to global media broadcasters in their own rights.”
Sports sponsorship has become a new game stuck with old rules. No longer is it enough for rights holders to give sponsors the most media for their money. Instead, sponsors want to know how the rights they’re buying add value to their brands, a shift that’s forcing the likes of Manchester City and Southampton FC to behave more like media owners.
The global success of the top six [Premier League] clubs generates a constant demand for sponsorship assets,” says Tom McDonnell, chief executive at digital fan interaction specialists Monterosa. “Brands are looking for end-to-end solutions that entertain and engage. It’s not enough to count a ‘view’, which could be fleeting, but to also consider interaction and active conversation. If a club provides better assets via social video with proven engagement and interaction, it differentiates the club’s offering and that hits the bottom line.”
In a 2016 study of marketing professionals and online consumers, 88% of marketers stated video was an important part of their marketing strategy, while 69% of online consumers said they would rather watch a video than read a product explanation.
In a different study, statistics prove that businesses using video grow company revenue 49% faster than companies without video content. Why has video assumed this dominant role?
1. Two Key Ways That Video Ads Can Be Persuasive
Taking a psychological view of advertising, there are two key ways that ads can be persuasive: the central route and the peripheral route.
The central route refers to situations whereby the consumer is invested, in the sense that they want or need the product, and thus can make thoughtful decisions based on facts and logic.
The peripheral route is where the receiver does not think carefully about the communication itself, and instead makes decisions based on superficial stimuli, also known as “cues.” Cues can include colors, music, storytelling and more. In the peripheral route, content and facts may be ignored or overlooked.
2. Basic Tips about How to Apply psychology to video advertising
By applying psychology to video advertising, we can begin to map out a marketing strategy for preparing video content. First, audiences must be identified along with both the facts and emotions that drive them to make decisions.
Is the target audience retirees?
How should they be approached differently than, say, millennials?
Once we have discerned our target audience and what makes them tick, we can construct a story that will wind them up and get them going. Colors, music, sound, design and other technical aspects must then be carefully crafted to fit the story and stimulate the senses of the targeted audience.
