Are we reaching the earned media tipping point?
As brands shift their primary investments from ‘paid’ media to ‘earned’ and ‘owned’, we’re looking at a whole new world of possibilities for customer engagement, says Newcast’s Matt Davies.
Last month’s ad predictions from ZenithOptimedia forecast that TV spend was set to lose out to digital advertising for the first time. Confidence within the marketing industry is at an all time high, but television spend is set to fall from a 40.2 per cent share of spend to 39.3 per cent by 2016.
The figures provide a very telling insight into the shape of the industry over the next few years, with online video and mobile set to be key areas of this digital investment.
What’s clear from these figures is that we’re reaching a tipping point as brands shift their primary investments from paid media to earned and owned media, opening up a whole new world of possibilities for customer engagement.
We only have to look at 2013’s Christmas ads – which until now have largely played out via our television sets – to see this shift taking place.
The industry is evolving, but traditional advertising mediums are by no means dead”
Today, we’re seeing big brands look to online ads as a way to further engage audiences increasingly residing on digital platforms. For example, John Lewis used social media as a way to drive hype amongst its customers by previewing the ad a day early on YouTube. To further generate engagement the retailer created profiles for the ad’s main characters, as well as a designated hash tag that received 18,200 mentions over the launch weekend alone.
It’s widely accepted that an evolution from the ‘old world’ traditional model of media buying and advertising into a brave new world of ‘content’ and ‘relationships’ is one that happened long ago, yet this has continued to evolve at a rapid rate.
Now brands interweave a mix of marketing tricks and tools by utilising paid, earned and owned media platforms to achieve cut-through with consumers amongst a sea of noise. The points of influence that affect consumer purchasing decisions are growing and naturally brands have sought to become more influential by appearing in more of the places that their audiences inhabit.
However, the industry is loathed to completely disown traditional models in a hurry, nor do they need to. Consumers are still watching ads on television, particularly over the Christmas period where TV campaigns are still considered to be both prolific and effective.
The industry is evolving, but traditional advertising mediums are by no means dead. Content is very much about relevancy and ensuring the two mediums work in conjunction with one another and appear on the right platforms for the target consumer.
Real and proper conversations are gathered from social media”
The changing media landscape has seen networks rise to the forefront as facilitators of this shift in consumption patterns. Google, for instance, has recently collaborated with ZenithOptimedia’s branded content division, Newcast, YouTube and Google’s Wildfire to create VideoLab, a service that offers advice to brands on building their content strategy.
Fundamentally, VideoLab is a specialist consultancy helping brands overcome the digital hurdle, giving them the tools and the knowledge to create and implement video content strategies. The crux of this project is to help brands establish an “authentic attitude” through a video medium. This helps to ensure brand messages are delivered in the right way in the social-led environment, which naturally differs from traditional media channels.
The reason brands need to extend their marketing campaigns beyond traditional media and adopt new platforms is clear: the opportunities to gain insights into consumers and target them effectively are precious.
Real and proper conversations are gathered from social media. People say exactly what they mean and how they feel because they are in a social and safe environment with their friends or acquaintances.
The information gathered from these sources can be used as both qualitative and quantitative data to either prove or evolve hypothesis around big data. API, click and engagement data can also be folded into data sets and used alongside the big data streams.
This works to provide deeper and more robust data sets from which brands are able to create actionable insights. This gives the channel additional benefits over the information that can be gathered from traditional mediums and can be used to build stronger engagement with audiences on these platforms.
With online channels, brands need to be considering which content territories or themes they should operate in and earn permission to play in, and whether they should create original content or partner with others.
This is where content strategy and customer insight is vital and the function projects like VideoLab aim to uncover. If brands have the confidence and expertise to invest in and create more relevant, compelling and authentic content, it opens up a world of new possibilities towards building a truly omni-channel audience – one that engages across the full range of touch points.
Matt Davies is head of social and content at Newcast, a specialist branded content and experience division of ZenithOptimedia.