Balancing Content Environment and Massive Reach Remains Digital Video’s Challenge

NewFronts: How digital video buyers can approach content targeting

It’s springtime, which means one thing in the media world: NewFront/Upfront season. Since the NewFronts launched six years ago, brands have come to understand the value and impact of digital video. In that time, there’s been tremendous progress and innovation in premium online video choices. However, with all those online video choices, very few can truly deliver scale.

The reality is, marketers will continue to follow audience consumption trends and digital video investment is poised to grow at a considerably faster rate than television. This brings a new challenge to brands and media buyers: how to target the best content environments on scaled online video platforms. As with any challenge, there is also a tremendous opportunity and the solution is content targeting.

At Zefr, we navigate the vast, diverse video content on YouTube, the world’s largest online video platform. Basically, we’ve built a highly selective, curated approach to the platform that enables brands to choose their specific content environments. On TV, this how it has always worked. On YouTube, content targeting is the next frontier.

So how do brands succeed in the new era of digital content targeting? By sticking to their key principles, and applying them to every platform.

Be true to your brand values

Each brand’s values are different. Building, maintaining and growing brand equity is not an easy task—one that you would never want to put it at risk. Brands can be consistent in applying their principles when choosing their preferred content environments regardless of the platform. That’s why a content targeting approach on YouTube is so important; it helps brands better align with content that more appropriately reflects their brand values while simultaneously building and growing brand equity.

Follow the audience

Even though TV caters to a massive viewing audience, contraction and fragmentation nonetheless continue. Younger viewers, for example, now associate “watching TV” with on-demand video platforms like YouTube, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. Brands are underserved in this ecosystem. Netflix has no ads. Amazon has limited ads. Hulu has limited scale. Meanwhile, YouTube is a massive-reach vehicle that continues to grow at approximately 30 percent annually. Its unique combination of scale and diverse content makes it the perfect platform for content-targeting solutions, built for brands.

Content environments matter

This is not a new concept. Brands have been choosing their specific programming on TV since the beginning. With the availability of new tools, brands can now be more selective in choosing their content environment on digital platforms as well. With the recent issues facing the digital ecosystem related to fraud, viewability and brand safety, the pendulum that swung so far toward audience targeting is swinging back to content targeting.

Deliver strong results

It all comes down to striking the right balance and finding the sweet spot where the content environment and audience meet. We partnered with IPG Media Lab to study the impact that content targeting has on brand metrics. What we found was a significant lift in key metrics like purchase intent, recommendation intent, and overall brand favorability.

When you marry the right audience with the right content, your results will be stronger. It’s as simple as that. The challenges brands face as they try to succeed on new video platforms without compromising their core principles are not going away, but there is a solution. Content targeting is that solution.