Advertisers are grappling with significant changes in the way they reach target audiences through online media as tracking cookies disappear, privacy regulation becomes more pervasive and digital “walled gardens” proliferate. These challenges have contributed to renewed interest in contextual advertising that targets audiences based on the content they’re most likely to consume.
“There’s a realization — whether that’s around brand safety, whether that’s because there’s so much content out there and so many places to advertise — that … where we’re showing up is as important as how we’re getting there and the people that we’re trying to target,” Jonathan Waite, global head of activation, media experience (MX), at Havas Media Group, said in this interview with Beet.TV.
“The environments that we show up in as brands is as important as the people that we’re trying to reach, and really and truly, that’s been missing for too long,” Waite said. “I think it’s really interesting that those things are now coming back.”
Is Anyone Paying Attention?
Consumers have more ways to watch video content as they hook up their televisions to the internet, install broadband Wi-Fi at home and sign up for higher-speed mobile service. Because watching television while looking at a smartphone, tablet or laptop has become more common, marketers may be less sure that consumers actually paid attention to viewable ads.
“People may spend 220 minutes a day consuming media, but they spend less than nine minutes of that time even looking at ads in any way, shape or form,” Waite said to Rob Williams, senior editor for Beet.TV. “We’re exposed to 4,000 ad messages a day. We’re definitely not paying attention to all those.”
Measuring attention is “bringing back the human into the planning process — understanding how people are realistically consuming the advertising that we’re putting out there,” Waite said. “We have to be thinking about how we respect that, how we create the right value exchange and how we make sure that the advertising we are putting out there is getting the right kind of attention to deliver the results that we want for our brands.”
You are watching “Gaining Consumer Attention in a Shifting Media Landscape,” a Beet.TV Leadership Series presented by GumGum. To learn more about GumGum and the Mindset Matrix, please visit this page.
