Afrigather This text is a part of a particular analysis sequence on the place CMOs are investing. More from the series →
That is the third installment in Digiday’s multi-part sequence overlaying the highest ad-supported streaming providers and a part of Digiday’s CMO Strategies series. In case you missed it, the first installment offered an outline of the assorted platforms’ choices, together with pricing and plans, advert choices, and new advert codecs, together with our methodology. The second installment examined which platforms obtain the majority of entrepreneurs’ advert budgets and advert placements.
Chief among the many choices entrepreneurs weigh when deciding on which streaming providers to put adverts are the advert attributes themselves — elements equivalent to advert break size, the variety of adverts in a pod and whether or not viewers are uncovered to the identical advert too usually.
To evaluate the worth of assorted advert attributes to advertisers, Digiday requested manufacturers and businesses which they thought of to be most essential for platforms to supply. General, advertisers’ solutions indicated that they purpose to supply viewers with fewer repeated adverts and shorter advert breaks, however they like to not give viewers the choice to skip adverts fully.
Frequency capping was an important advert possibility for platforms to supply advertisers in each 2024 and 2023, in response to Digiday’s survey. Frequency capping tied with quick ad-break size for the highest advert possibility final yr, and nearly half of respondents (45%) chosen frequency capping in 2024.
Nevertheless, the second- and third-most essential advert options have shifted since final yr’s report, primarily because of the addition of non-skippable adverts in Digiday’s reply set. Non-skippable adverts got here in second place this yr, bumping quick ad-break size to 3rd place.
Relating to frequency capping, the problem advertisers usually run into is that particular person viewers are uncovered to the same ad too many times in a given week. Advertisers usually attempt to restrict the variety of occasions a video advert is proven to the identical particular person to 2 to a few exposures per week. Nevertheless, typically viewers are served the advert greater than thrice that threshold, creating a negative brand expertise for customers.
Advertisers additionally battle to rein within the variety of exposures throughout disparate streaming providers. Particular person streamers can cap advert exposures inside their providers, but when a client watches a number of ad-supported streamers every week and an advertiser is operating a marketing campaign throughout every service, the viewer is vulnerable to see the advert in extra.
“We’ve to be extraordinarily strategic concerning the position of streaming for every of our manufacturers, and handle right down to the content material degree to make sure we stay related to our goal audiences with out over-frequency-ing them,” Verizon Worth’s CMO Cheryl Gresham mentioned in an e mail. Verizon Worth is Verizon’s portfolio of pay as you go manufacturers that features Seen, Straight Discuss and Complete by Verizon.
“The largest concern right here is that even whether it is taking place, we’ve little technique to maintain the platforms accountable with out entry to syndicated information sources,” Gresham added. “Though some community holding corporations are placing controls in place to regulate frequency inside their ecosystems — between linear, streaming or programmatic choices — there nonetheless isn’t a cross-platform answer, although the trade has been voicing considerations for years.”
Based on statistics cited by eMarketer, 30% of entrepreneurs and publishers imagine extra environment friendly frequency capping would enhance their CTV promoting spend. Carolina Portela, vp and director of strategic funding at IPG Mediabrands’ MAGNA, acknowledged the medium’s boundaries when she spoke on the first-annual CTV Connect conference in March. “We’ve challenges in the case of managing at a holistic degree,” she mentioned, throughout a panel on excessive advert frequency. “We’d positively wish to get extra mechanisms for that. We’re by no means going to be in an ideal, holistic administration world, however we’re placing a variety of thought into it.”
Among the many platforms Digiday surveyed, six confirmed that they provide frequency capping: Hulu, Netflix Commonplace (with adverts), Peacock, The Roku Channel, Tubi and YouTube.
For instance, Roku’s Roku ID for Promoting is a tool identifier that permits advert concentrating on and frequency capping on the Roku platform. It additionally limits disclosure of customers’ figuring out data and lets prospects choose out of advert concentrating on or reset their IDs at any time. “We’ve actually strict frequency controls throughout your complete expertise that makes positive that promoting is attention-grabbing, not bombarding,” mentioned Jordan Rost, The Roku Channel’s head of advert advertising. “We’re additionally consistently tweaking, evolving and optimizing all of the totally different promoting components to make sure promoting is a helpful a part of the expertise, not an intrusive one.”
Tubi’s Superior Frequency Administration device, which the corporate launched in 2020, reduces advert repetition by scanning frames to algorithmically establish logos and textual content. “To fight the longstanding concern of overfrequency in CTV viewing, Tubi additionally gives a proprietary Superior Frequency Administration device, which caps a consumer’s marketing campaign publicity on the marketing campaign degree, no matter demand supply,” Melanie Brown, vp of Superior TV at Tubi, mentioned in an e mail. “Along with preserving the consumer expertise, AFM permits these campaigns to serve the impressions to incremental certified audiences.”
Tubi’s AFM device prevents advertisers from putting a number of adverts from a model in the identical program when advertisers purchase from quite a few aggregators and prevents concentrating on the identical households a number of occasions.
The opposite aspect of the frequency capping coin is that typically advertisers battle to achieve viewers a adequate variety of occasions. Nevertheless, the common CTV marketing campaign’s attain has greater than doubled within the final two years to twenty.16% of advert tech agency Innovid’s 95 million CTV households, in response to the corporate’s 2024 CTV Advertising Insights Report. Innovid attributes the surge to a mixture of extra viewers watching CTV and types operating extra and bigger CTV promoting campaigns.
Harry Browne, vp of media innovation at efficiency advertising company Tinuiti, mentioned entrepreneurs’ frequency capping wants can fluctuate relying on their marketing campaign targets. “Advertisers who’re fascinated about producing a variety of impressions as a result of they’re fascinated about attain might desire a barely extra open frequency cap,” Browne mentioned. “However, normally, frequency capping and shorter advert breaks are useful by way of sustaining a top quality viewer expertise and sustaining the efficacy of that impression.”
After frequency capping, manufacturers and businesses mentioned non-skippable adverts have been the next-most essential advert choices for platforms to supply. Non-skippable adverts was a brand new addition to Digiday’s reply set this yr and its No. 2 placement pushed quick ad-break size to 3rd place.
For advertisers, the primary enchantment of operating non-skippable adverts is that they’re 100% viewable items, that means manufacturers and businesses can enhance their video completion charges and attain viewers with their complete message.
Nevertheless, Brian Albert, YouTube’s managing director of U.S. video offers and artistic works, mentioned the effectiveness of non-skippable adverts can rely upon the system viewers are utilizing to observe them. “We walked away from non-skip, 30-second adverts on YouTube when YouTube was predominantly a cell and desktop video platform as a result of it created a poor consumer expertise,” Albert mentioned. “However what we discovered is that consumer expectations are totally different on the large display. So, for YouTube Choose, which predominantly serves on TV screens, we reintroduced non-skip, 30 adverts as a result of we didn’t see the identical results as we did with non-skip, 30 adverts served on cell gadgets.”
Among the many platforms Digiday surveyed, eight confirmed that they provide non-skippable adverts: Discovery+, Hulu, Max, Netflix Commonplace (with adverts), Peacock, The Roku Channel, Tubi and YouTube.
Quick ad-break size (one minute or much less) got here in third place this yr amongst advert choices entrepreneurs search from ad-supported streaming platforms, Digiday’s survey discovered.
The power to supply viewers with shorter advert breaks issues to advertisers for a lot the identical motive as frequency caps do — advertisers run the chance of alienating viewers by exhibiting them too many adverts directly. Prolonged advert breaks create an interruption that distracts the viewer from the primary video, doubtlessly inflicting annoyance and a unfavourable model expertise.
“Shorter advert breaks, frequency capping, the place the advert falls, size, all of that is essential by way of creating a greater viewer expertise,” Tinuiti’s Browne mentioned. “The shorter your advert breaks, the extra pleasing your content material goes to be for the viewer. Thus, the extra engaged they’re going to be and possibly the simpler your advert goes to be.”
YouTube’s Albert identified that, just like non-skippable adverts, the effectiveness of advert break lengths can fluctuate relying on the viewing display. “After we have been growing front room adverts, we discovered that fewer, longer advert breaks truly work,” Albert mentioned. “So, the overwhelming majority of our viewers would favor adverts which might be grouped collectively as an alternative of distributed all through a video after they’re watching longer-form content material on TV screens. We all know that that have may be very totally different than on a cell phone. The overwhelming majority of the content material that’s being seen on a TV display is 21 minutes or longer in period.”
Based on Tubi’s 2024 Streaming Insights for Marketers report, which was performed at the side of The Harris Ballot, viewers’ most-preferred advert format is the usual advert break — just like what they see on conventional TV — positioned at handy plot level breaks in an episode or movie. Thirty-five p.c of viewers mentioned they most popular the usual advert break format, in response to the examine.
Among the many platforms Digiday surveyed, six confirmed that they provide quick ad-break size (one minute or much less): Discovery+, Max, Netflix Commonplace (with adverts), Peacock, Tubi and YouTube.
Victoria Vaynberg, CMO at Zola, a web-based marriage ceremony planning firm, mentioned frequency capping, non-skippable adverts and quick ad-break size are all essential advert codecs for platforms to supply. “Specifically, frequency capping and quick ad-break size are essential to the standard of the viewers’ expertise and, in flip, the advertisers’. The steadiness of sustaining consideration with out overwhelming the recipient is essential. We purpose to keep away from inundating them with repetitive messages,” Vaynberg mentioned in an e mail.
Finally, an important advert choices for platforms to supply can rely upon the viewers an advertiser is making an attempt to achieve. “It’s essential to supply much less cluttered environments with the chance to interrupt by way of with extra exact concentrating on to the target market,” Verizon Worth’s Gresham mentioned in an e mail. “Contextually related environments, equivalent to pause adverts, or customized items with QR performance are additionally changing into extra essential for us as we construct manufacturers and drive customers down the funnel. If consciousness is the objective, then non-skippable is essential.”
Coming quickly: For data on the sorts of first-party information entrepreneurs lean on for advert concentrating on on streaming providers, and whether or not it’s extra essential for platforms to supply premium or greater whole viewers attain, preserve a watch out for our fourth installment on this sequence.
