The Streaming Ecosystem Is Changing Everything. Where Do We Go From Here?

With the news that both Disney+ and Netflix will introduce ad-supported tiers, the transformation of the streaming landscape continues. Formerly closed ecosystems will be opening the door to advertising for the first time, and with that comes new opportunities and new challenges for brands. The hurdles that lie ahead are reminiscent of the early days of digital when the most coveted placement was the YouTube masthead and agency creatives had to cut banner ads in all kinds of obscure shapes and sizes. Similarly, ad opportunities are evolving fast today. Where you can and can’t place ads and what the format can be is changing by the day. Back in the day, when a TV network introduced a new procedural or a new reality competition program, as a marketer you knew exactly what you were buying into. Fast forward to now, where nearly 800 pieces of original content were released across Netflix, Disney+ and HBO Max last year alone. The TV audience has fragmented down across apps, devices and platforms, making targeting, not to mention measurement, difficult. Netflix Loses Nearly 1 Million Subscribers, Sets Ad Tier for Early 2023 Where do we go from here? Just as in those early days, it wouldn’t be surprising if the first wave of advertisers on these platforms earn outsized attention for their efforts. The whole industry will be paying attention to see which brands are in the mix, how creative they get and, most importantly, what the audience impact will be. Eventually, this extra attention will level off and we’ll all get used to seeing ads in our favorite Netflix or Disney+ content over time. Or we will pay extra to maintain ad-free experiences. We’re seeing new stories, new formats and even new distribution strategies, certainly not your typical broadcast or cable fare. This is one of the things that makes streaming unique, and wholly different from linear TV: The quantity and scope of releases evolve so quickly that you often don’t know what’s coming next. And the biggest challenge of all continues to be that no one, not even the platforms themselves, can predict the hits. 2021 saw Squid Game come out of nowhere to take the crown for the most watched show on Netflix while other highly marketed content fizzled out quickly. This new landscape will require intelligent and innovative solutions to support campaign planning and a robust understanding of both the content opportunities and how audiences engage with them, before and after release. In the same way a TV media plan used to come together around named shows and anchors plus some run-of-network, we’re going to have to figure out what that blend should look like within and across the streaming ecosystem. New intelligence for new environments Having studied the content landscape for over a decade now, it’s clear that all the efforts going into standardizing viewership metrics will be important. Given how many ways and places there are to watch content, it's a problem that needs solving. That said, we’ll also need to rely on new types of insights that help us navigate content-diverse spaces since it’s no longer as simple as buying weekly episodes of a procedural on broadcast. For planning across the streaming landscape, viewership data isn’t quite as helpful, as it’s a lagging metric that can’t be used to confidently project audience composition or size. Thus, the major challenge that lies ahead is finding a strong signal of audience interest that can help plan in the absence of tools and metrics that have historically worked well across traditional content. One flavor of insight brands and agencies are starting to test is anticipation for and engagement with content, signals that are typically available during the planning process. There are a number of ways to understand audience preferences and media habits but, given how fast the content wheel is moving, relying on data from popular social and video platforms is a scalable and real-time solution that can keep up with the ever-evolving landscape. When engagement intelligence is augmented with subscription information, content ratings, metadata and other emerging media signals, the result is a comprehensive understanding of audience behavior at scale. This approach allows marketers to get a read on what target consumers are looking forward to as early as possible and measure everything about their brand engagers, from anticipation for upcoming releases to conversation levels on current titles, demographics and more. Importantly, this approach surfaces intelligence on smaller, niche titles just as well as it covers the most popular topics. Marketers can use this information, well before any viewership insights come through, to architect solid marketing strategies and reach target consumers in the correct space at the right time. These new spaces are exactly that: New. And they don’t have the same set of rules that traditional TV content has played by. As such, we'll all benefit from tapping into new intel. How the Right Kind of Product Placement Can Elevate Your Brand Message