SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Fred Godfrey knows marketers want tangible results – he just thinks the advertising industry needs to do better at bringing them from the back-end to the front-end.
Godfrey’s Origin Media is a creative technology company used by marketers to bring interactive ads to connected TVs (CTV) and other devices.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Godfrey says the focus must shift to developing better ad creative.
Interactive creative
Godfrey spoke about the potential for CTV ads.
“A lot of time and attention and money goes into technology ‘behind the glass’, but where we thought it was really lacking was in front of the glass, in terms of the creative itself,” Godfrey says. “At the end of the day, that’s what the person is seeing.
“If you can actually really almost alarm them with something that isn’t creepy – relevant or personal – … (a viewer may say), ‘They’re talking about the town that I live in and they know the weather in my city and hey know today’s date!’
“Suddenly you’ve really got their attention, and that changes the game because they now feel like they’re being spoken to respectfully.”
Creative tools
Origin Media’s offerings include:
- Slingshot, a way of serving 15-second native CTV content, like games and QR calls-to-action, alongside existing ad creatives.
- Ad Studio, an animation software brands use to create TV commercials.
- Slate, a way for CTV channel owners to fill slots with ads including interactive spots.
Godfrey says Origin built Ad Studio because it wanted to make “creatives that were truly dynamic and flexible and agile – not just overlays that can be different based upon someone’s DMA or their geo, but actually have the core message, the story, within that creative”.
But he acknowledges the difficulty of encouraging viewers to interact with a medium that is largely “lean-back”.
CTV Propels Need for ‘Creative Agility’ in Ads: Origin’s Fred Godfrey
Performance problems
All of that may be the “front” of the screen, but there are still plenty of things getting worked out behind it.
Godfrey says many marketers are now keen to “see some kind of tangible, validating outcome in what their money’s getting them”.
“The problem with connected TV is, we haven’t really figured out how to define ‘performance’ because there are too many other questions that need to be answered first,” he says.
Godfrey says: “We need to strip back to the basics and understand what is it that a brand and an agency thinks that they want. Are they transferring ‘performance’ benchmarks from other screens to the big screen, or is there something else?
“One of the reasons performance is a difficult topic right now is because that delivery piece is getting muddled too much into performance because that’s where KPIs stand for in the P being performance. But that should just be table stakes.”
You’re watching coverage of Beet Retreat San Juan 2023, presented by LiveRamp, Madhive, Magnite, Paramount, T-Mobile Advertising Solutions and VideoAmp. For more videos from the Beet Retreat, please visit this page.
