Consumers continue to shift their video viewing habits. Up to 26% of viewers watch more steaming than traditional TV. Advertisers are taking notice. Ad-​funded video on demand captured $26.7 billion from marketers globally last year. But advertisers also have concerns about the format. And these concerns, ranging from targeting to measurement, may hinder future growth.

Audience Targeting

When your clients opt for video ad purchases, 55% do so on the basis of reaching a specific audience, according to research from Advertiser Perceptions. Researchers say that 20% of marketers still don’t believe they are reaching their target audiences. And marketers also suspect that the ads they deliver aren’t relevant to about 33% of the people they reach.

Safety

Advertisers with big budgets, upwards of $25 million, still support linear TV as their most important channel (51%). These advertisers also use other platforms such as social media (31%), but growth in these other platforms may be slower than expected, because businesses want their messages to appear in safe and noncontroversial environments. 

The issue of fraud also looms large for 80% of advertisers, especially when they consider spending money with untested partners and on untested formats. This concern is likely why they continue to do business with partners they’ve trusted in the past. Justin Fromm, executive VP for business intelligence at Advertiser Perceptions, says, “While the major internet platforms will lead in volume of streaming ads, TV network safety is keeping them the gold standard in video as the platforms evolve.” This is especially true as the networks sell more CTV time through their streaming services.

Measurement

Marketers are trying to balance delivering effective creative ad elements through the right media type and to the right audiences. This is nothing new. But technology was supposed to improve on the results that traditional media formats delivered. By now, your clients likely imagined that they would be able to definitively measure sales and brand lift when they run a digital ad campaign. Some of that information is available, but how accurate are the measurements? And what do media companies report to clients? Often, it’s about reach and frequency or completed views.

One study, based on large advertisers with over $1 million to spend, found that only 23% of U.S. marketers said they were very satisfied with measurement solutions. And only 21% said they were very satisfied with their ability to optimize based on back-​end results.

Data and measurement will become increasingly important for marketers this year as the availability of cookies fades. To deal with this change, 79% of marketers have invested in data. Here’s what else they’ve done:

• Invested in data partnerships 50%
• Hired a data scientist 35%
• Acquired a customer’s data platform 30%

Despite best efforts, media campaigns sometimes fail to make an impact on the marketplace. What happens when campaigns fail? About 58% of marketers spend less money with that media company going forward. About 55% want ‘make-​goods,’ which means you’ll be using time you could have sold to another client. Business might also stop advertising (44%) or demand a lower rate (41%)

You can head off some of these problems by helping your clients target the audiences they want to reach and by giving them a picture of their digital presence in the marketplace. Going forward, they'll want to connect with the 26% of viewers who watch more streaming content. Check out AdMall by SalesFuel to obtain audience profiles and Digital Audits, two important tools to help your clients generate better results from the advertising investment.