Behavioral Trends Shape Marketing Spends

You’d have to be living on Mars to think that the advertising tactics of yesterday are the same tactics that reach and engage the youth of today. The media landscape is changing before our very eyes. Young consumers are in complete control over their content, audiences are consuming their information through multiple screens, and an engaged consumer trumps an exposed consumer.

So, how does this apply to driving consumers in store to buy your product? If you’re a buyer, no matter the category, you are concerned with how your on-shelf products are being marketed.

For products perched on the toy and consumer electronic shelves, and when targeting today’s youth, we are in a TV/digital world. According to Kantar Media, in 2014 alone, online video spend was up 229 percent, while banner spending was up 1.4 percent, with advertising dollars clearly shifting from TV to the new formats.

In your media mix, you must measure each medium and analyze how your message reaches, connects, engages and drives your target audience to retail to buy. You can assign attribution modeling to determine which touch point gets credit for the conversion or sale.

Making An Impression?

Before we can get the consumer to buy, we first have to reach and engage them. But how can we engage them if they don’t see our message? This means viewability, a close cousin to measurability, and a critical term in the forefront of today’s marketing vernacular. A viewable impression, via Wikipedia, is “a metric of ads which were actually viewable when served (in part, entirely or based on other conditional parameters).” Understanding the term can help you  drive ROI. Whatever media you choose to embrace, viewability matters. It is a measurable and a reliable metric.

Impressions might look good on paper, but the messaging you are paying for may not reach your audience. Your digital units (banners and videos) might be fraudulent in click reporting or simply living beneath the fold, never to be seen by the audience that you seek.

There are numerous accurate measuring tools that actually measure which ads are being viewed and which ads are not. Imagine if a video is playing beneath the fold, on auto play. On paper, it looks as though your target consumer viewed that video. But the reality is they never saw your video. Unfortunately, you paid for it. And you are now working off a false set of delivery metrics. It’s no wonder your click-through rate is low.

Google Says What?

Google recently said that “more than 56 percent of ad impressions are not seen and that an ad served does not necessarily equal an ad viewed.” ComScore reports, “more than half of display ads…do not have the opportunity to be seen by a consumer.” These are startling numbers. But with the right tools, you can optimize your campaign, in real time, and lessen the units that are not viewed and find more viewable placements.

Viewability is not limited to digital. It is alive and well in TV, too. Just because your audience is measured doesn’t mean they are tuned to your message. TV spots control 100 percent of your screen, but viewers are sometimes distracted. This is why multi-messaging advertising, across platforms, is pivotal.

When it comes to marketing to kids and moms, TV spots are delivered in terms of ratings measured by Nielsen. Now audience viewing is place-shifted and time-shifted. Recent ratings on most kid networks are down, while overall audience levels are running steady. More screens have come into play, as kids are watching content on TV, PCs, tablets, mobile devices, console gaming systems and beyond.

Remember: “Behavioral trends shape marketing spends.” Focus on tight targeting and engage your audience with targeted, multi-screen messaging. Prioritize impressions that reach a real user and can make a real impact. Analyze your campaign and adjust. Your product sales will be better because of it.