These online streaming platforms that consumers are signing up for are referred to as OTT (over-the-top) media. Today’s marketers need to become familiar with the concept of OTT and find opportunities to embrace it because they can more effectively reach consumers by taking a cross-channel approach to advertising.
One of the motivators behind the cord cutting movement is that consumers have become disgusted by the number of advertisements that they’re forced to watch with conventional cable, especially if the advertisements aren’t relevant to their needs. With OTT consumption, however, advertisers have access to advanced data analytics that allow them to target their messages to a very specific audience. As a result, they’re able to earn more conversions and maximize their return on investment from advertising on these online streaming platforms.
What is Cross-Channel Advertising?
As we move into 2019, we can expect OTT viewing to continue to experience explosive growth. To capture the attention of consumers that are spending more time online than ever before, businesses need to implement a cross-channel advertising strategy.
Cross-channel advertising refers to serving paid content to consumers across a variety of digital channels, including search, social media, video, and more. According to a recent survey, 72 percent of consumers want to see content from their favorite brands across multiple channels. Google recently revealed that 74 percent of consumers say that their brand recall is better when seeing advertisements on multiple online platforms.
OTT Consumers are Multi-Taskers
Something that should be noted about consumers that stream video content online is that they’re often using secondary devices (tablet or mobile device, for example) to research products and service that they see advertised during OTT consumption. In fact, according to a recent study from the Video Advertising Bureau, 65 percent of consumers are turning to secondary screens to research products or services that they’ve seen advertised while watching programming on platforms like Netflix and Amazon.
Businesses no longer need to take a scattershot approach when trying to reach audiences across TV programming. Instead, they can rely on advanced data analytics to serve the right ads to the right audience at the right time. As a marketer in today’s digital era, you can see the types of OTT content your target audience is viewing and the devices and apps that they choose to consume this content on to fine-tune your advertising efforts. This data can reveal more about consumer preferences than they even know about themselves, which is extremely powerful information for marketers to have.
Mastering Cross-Channel Advertising Has Its Challenges
While we know that today’s consumers want to be reached across multiple online platforms, mastering the cross-channel advertising approach is easier said than done. One of the biggest challenges that businesses face is being able to create ads that are optimized for a variety of screen sizes, platforms, and browsers. With this being said, you need an experienced digital marketing partner on your side to help you optimize your advertisements to ensure that you can serve your target audience the cross-channel advertising that they desire in a manner that will provide a positive user experience.
In summary, there is a data-rich OTT ecosystem out there waiting for your business to take advantage of. Tapping into this data will allow you to create a highly targeted cross-channel advertising strategy so that your content is seen by the right people on the right platform at the right time.
How New York Ave Can Help
As you begin to develop your digital marketing strategy for 2019, it will benefit your business to incorporate cross-channel advertising, especially considering that more consumers will be turning to OTT media in the coming year. Knowing how to get started with cross-channel advertising can be challenging, which is where we can add a lot of value.
Our team at New York Ave is committed to helping you build a personalized digital marketing strategy to make your business more memorable. Considering that brand recall is increased when your audience consumes your content across multiple platforms, cross-channel advertising needs to be a priority for your business.
Let us help you tap into the data-rich OTT ecosystem and create a highly targeted cross-channel advertising strategy that will produce results for your business. Contact us at New York Ave to learn how we can help you to maximize your digital marketing results!
