7 Advanced Media Planning strategies for video in APAC

Media planning is the process and documentation that marketers use to determine where, when, and how often they will run their advertisements in order to maximise performance and ROI of those ads. To be successful with your media planning, you must understand your target audiences on a very deep level and apply the below strategies and tactics.

As with any form of marketing (or business) activity, organisations need to have the right tools to complete the job successfully. This can mean implementing an ‘out of the box’ solution or developing custom solutions, but what it all ultimately comes down to is what problem the organisation is trying to solve in the market and which technology is best suited to do that.

Research from Google & the Boston Consulting Group has acknowledged automated & integrated technology as one of six core enablers for organisations in achieving Digital Marketing Maturity along with the associated revenue and cost reduction benefits. By having the right technology in place within the organisation, it allows marketers to effectively and efficiently place their digital video ads across the web to the right inventory and provide them with the control to ensure their video ads appear for the right person, in the right format at the right time.

As part of our recent blog on the expansion of streaming services in the region, we highlighted the significant growth of consumption of this medium, particularly within the Greater China and South-east Asia sub-regions. The growth of streaming is not just limited to these markets alone with subscription video on demand having 70% penetration in Australia (according to Statista)

In our blog, we explore how the increased use of the internet and mobile penetration has had a strong impact on the growth of video streaming. The key element to consider around the explosion of streaming services in APAC is whether there is any video streaming inventory that would be appropriate to include within your media plan given its growing popularity.

Importantly, DV360 has a comprehensive range of inventory across streaming services, including live streaming and Connected TV which you can manage all in one place with the rest of your digital media inventory (and additional channels when you leverage other tools within the GMP).

As the second largest search engine and second-largest social media platform in the world, YouTube is clearly a platform that marketers and advertisers should be considering as part of their video media planning.

The platform has continued to steadily increase its global reach and with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it only accelerated the rates in which people are viewing video content on YouTube. In fact, 49% of consumers who regularly watch YouTube do so to learn about a specific topic and 1 in 5 Australians want more content on How-to or tutorial videos to help them learn new skills.

Source: Trending on YouTube: How people are using the platform to learn at home, Think with Google

Importantly, YouTube inventory can only be bought through Google’s advertising products (Display & Video 360 and Google Ads) meaning that by buying your video inventory through those platforms you can consolidate with your other digital media buying. For DV360 customers, you will also have a range of other benefits you can link to buying YouTube with other inventory, including frequency capping across all your digital media.

Importantly, for organisations that build first-party data, there will be less emphasis on the use of third-party cookies which has now been announced by Google that it will be deprecated within Chrome in 2023. In fact, Laura Quigley, senior vice-president Asia Pacific at Integral Ad Science specifically had this to say about first-party data for video, “according to a recent IAB report, the escalation of audience-based buying and the impending loss of third-party identifiers makes first-party data an even more critical differentiator when selecting video partners.”

From a planning perspective, the richer your first-party data is, the more effective and data-driven your approach can be when strategizing audiences for your video campaigns.

One of the key benefits of using Display & Video 360 (DV360) and the Google Marketing Platform is the ability to consolidate your first-party data across channels using Floodlight activities, with the fact that “integrated campaigns are 31% more effective than non-integrated campaigns” (according to Think With Google) this is essential for maximising budgets and conversions.

As an additional benefit that is specific to DV360 and the Google Marketing Platform, you can also combine your first-party audiences with the Google audiences available in platform which are based on demographics, life events or intent-based signals (custom intent, custom affinity), allowing for more granular targeting for your video campaigns. Importantly, as part of the media planning process, advertisers must strongly consider the different combinations of potential audiences at their disposal.

According to the Impact of Stay-at-Home Behaviours on CTV report, CTV has become mainstream in markets such as Australia where eight in ten consumers have access to CTV along with the fact that “60% of advertisers in Australia are already buying connected TV (CTV) inventory plan to increase their spending in 2021” (The Drum). 

In addition to this, consumers may be starting to feel subscription fatigue with 76% of respondents reporting that they are willing to see ads in exchange for watching free streaming videos which means that there is even higher potential growth in the CTV space.

For big brands that have previously used TV as a primary channel for their media spend, now is the time to start reflecting on splitting that budget given the “ROIs for both TV and online video are 35% higher when they’re strategically integrated” (Think with Google).

With 80% of marketers reporting an increase in leads due to automation (Startup Bonsai), sequential messaging (sequential advertising), an advanced marketing technique which uses a series (or sequence) of messages to tell a particular story, is an effective method to apply automation within your video media planning and is effective in personalising your videos and message based on previous engagement.

As an advanced feature within Display & Video 360 (DV360), there are two ways to create video ad sequencing in the platform:

Importantly, creating a video sequence campaign forces marketers to really understand the intent of their audience and how to engage them, with prospects only progressing through the sequence of messages once they have engaged with previous video messages in the campaign.

According to Nielsen, the optimum exposure to digital advertising across Australia is 5-9 times to improve the overall brand lift of the campaign – “increasing the resonance by 51% on average”. With ad fatigue a real concern for many advertisers, applying the right frequency caps not only across your video ads but all digital ads is essential for ensuring that your ads maximise engagement and do not feel intrusive to your prospects.

Importantly, within Display & Video 360 (DV360) you can set frequency capping at a line item, insertion order, or campaign level which provides advertisers using the platform with the power to control how many times their ads will display for a given time period overall, for video as an overall channel and/or for each individual inventory being spent on across each market. The below video highlights some of the benefits that Samsung have achieved using frequency capping in DV360 to maximise their budgets.

Source: Google Marketing Platform: Samsung improves cost efficiency with Programmatic Guaranteed, YouTube

There are many different considerations that marketers and advertisers need to take in consideration when it comes to buying and implementing campaigns with video. Without the right technology in place, there are limitations on the ability to capture and use first-party data for inventory such as streaming platforms, YouTube, and connected TV; it also impacts the ability to manage frequency across different channels. With this in mind, DV360 is an integrated platform that allows advertisers the control to granularly apply advanced digital media strategies from their media plan.

For consultation or support in developing a video media plan for your organisation or to procure a license for Display & Video 360 (DV360), please contact the experts at FiveStones today.