Warren Jolly is CEO of adQuadrant, a leading digital marketing company, and has overseen more than $500 million in ad spending.
If you want to be a successful advertiser in today’s environment, platform strategy can be as vital to a campaign as compelling creative. No matter how innovative the concept, it has to reach your core audience with impact. Getting involved early with an emerging advertising platform offers brands the opportunity to connect and engage with consumers in a fresh, new way typically at a lower cost than more established platforms. For marketers, choosing which platform to experiment with means understanding how its unique technology and userbase can give you an unfair advantage against competition in your market as well. Here are five important factors to consider in your approach to working with an emerging advertising platform.
Get in early.
Once you’ve identified the potential value in an emerging platform, you’ll benefit from moving quickly. Brands that were the first in their category to advertise on TikTok with the right creative strategy, for example, gained the advantage of an excited, rapidly growing audience open to absorbing fresh content through the lens of education or entertainment. Consumer attention can be fleeting. When you have the opportunity to capture it in a novel manner, the risk is often worth it. The last thing you want to be is late, or altogether missing, from a platform where your consumers are spending big chunks of time.
Take advantage of existing ecosystems.
Connected TV is an example of an emerging platform that lets brands take advantage of existing ecosystems. Streaming services such as Apple and Hulu have a deep understanding of their customer’s behaviors and interests, enabling them to present subscribers with more personalized advertising, which puts your message directly in front of the ideal consumer audience. Similar to Apple’s advantage in owning their own operating system, Connected TV platforms have explicit opt-in from consumers which provides brands with much better targeting and attribution on results than many other platforms which have been impacted by the recent changes around privacy and tracking user data.
Know where to find your consumer.
When it comes to platform strategy, the most important consideration—especially for new brands—is knowing your consumer persona. Map out who they are, then invest in research that tells you where they live online and consume content. In reaching younger consumers, social media channels like Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram make the most sense. For older audiences, YouTube, Facebook and native content using a platform like Outbrain or Taboola might be more effective. Different content resonates on different platforms. Make sure your creative reflects that.
Study competitor metrics.
Pay attention to competitors on the same platform. On TikTok and YouTube, you can correlate the amount of engagement (likes, shares, comments) on an ad or piece of creative with the amount spent. From there, determine the differences in your creative and strategic approach, and be prepared to shift dollars appropriately or rework a possible flaw in the campaign. Taking note of what is and is not succeeding in the overall landscape, especially among your core audience, should be a critical part of your decision-making.
Keep up with advancing AI.
When it comes to emerging platforms, AI promises to support marketers in two crucial ways. Generative AI, which Google already offers, can customize ad images down to color, scenery and background on a user-by-user basis based on their attributes and preferences. Predictive AI will be a valuable planning tool, enabling brands to project the outcomes of various platform investment scenarios. AI is going to play an undoubtedly larger and more powerful role in marketing. It’s in your best interest to continually stay on top of its advancements.
Emerging advertising platforms with real potential don’t come around often—maybe every seven to eight years—in my opinion. For brands, being thoughtful of when, where and how there is an opportunity to use an emerging platform to its advantage can mean the difference between reaching consumer audiences ahead of the competition with personalized messaging that sticks or missing the boat and getting left behind.
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