AI-Fueled Creative Resets Media Buying Expectations
For as long as we’ve had digital advertising, research has existed to prove that great creative is the most important input to driving campaign performance. But brands were limited in their ad format and measurement options, which is one reason why audience targeting became so important. For years, it was difficult to determine which elements within a creative were effective without complex manual testing, and the budget to back it.
With an explosion of creative technology like streaming digital video, AI-generated personalized commerce ads, and AI-driven campaign testing and measurement, the market is finally embracing creative as a major performance lever. Not only can advertisers make better creative, they can make more versions, test new creative strategies using real-time feedback, and understand exactly which creative elements drive outcomes.
Deeper Engagement, More Sales - Thanks To Creative
With a nearly two-decade history of audience-focused buying, media teams will find that they need to employ new strategies to make the most of new creative innovations - for both performance and brand. That includes adopting new campaign goals and KPIs - many of which can be lifted from shopper marketing and retail.
Many digital campaigns are designed to reach as many people as cheaply and effectively as possible, especially on programmatic. Across digital, typical campaign goals include minimizing CPM, maximizing audience reach, driving clicks, and maximizing attention and engagement.
With new creative tools already in the market, advertisers can explore new strategies such as including personalizing messages based on recent data like shopping behavior, and enabling in-ad commerce and assembling dynamic creative based on real-time context. These new creatives deliver much more value to consumers because they are deeply personalized. While all campaigns should be creative-focused given the outsized effect great creative has on outcomes, advertisers now have the ability to do it efficiently, which is creating a greater focus on creative-driven performance goals. We’re already seeing increases in creative measurement to understand effects on maximizing attention and engagement, driving sales, boosting interaction, encouraging social activity and much more.
At the same time, brand advertisers’ expectations will likely go up. Compare a full screen video takeover on CTV to a standard 300x250 banner on a website and the difference becomes obvious. Brands looking to create memorable moments are going to focus on the creative options and the placements that deliver the goods - and come to expect great creative performance as the norm on digital.
The Ripple Effect of a Shift in Pricing and Strategy
We will soon start to see what happens to prices and bidding strategies when advertisers are more focused on the actions that are possible with new creative tech. We’re already seeing the huge popularity of RMNs because of their sales-driven data - pair that with commerce-enabled creative and brands will be looking at the Open Web as an extension of on-site targeting. Performance-based campaigns will be much more focused on maximizing ROI on purchases and less focused on minimizing CPM. Combining valuable audiences with extremely effective creative will mean that even expensive impressions will yield high ROI.
Brand advertisers will also have a ton of new creative opportunities to choose from that can drive attention, engagement and higher brand recall - and these creatives tend to work best next to quality content. Think of a virtual test drive or outfit try-on, or real-time interaction with an influencer, or live shopping. This too will drive CPMs up - it’s unlikely that brands will want to deliver high-quality brand experiences on MFA content.
Cheaper inventory could become less interesting while high-engagement placements and placements that prove to deliver attention and engagement will be much easier to justify. It’s possible that the creative revolution helps quality publishers regain some lost ground, increasing demand and prices as advertisers look for places that give them the best creative context.
I’m already seeing advertiser expectations change when they employ high-impact or interactive creative. It used to be much more of a special project - but with AI tools, these creatives can be deployed at such a massive scale and with so much variety that they are starting to take over a much bigger part of advertiser budget. They want quality placement, they see what drives the results, and their media buying approach is shifting fast.
[Editor's note: This is a contributed article from Kargo. Streaming Media accepts vendor bylines based solely on their value to our readers.]
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