Finding Ways To Stretch Your Ad Dollars Will Be Crucial In 2024
Digital consultants are anticipating an ad environment this year akin to the Georgia Senate runoff in 2022. That was a paid media environment that one consultant summed up in a single word: “Bonkers.”
Now, for those looking to stretch their ad budgets this year and find some savings, CTV/OTT spots might be an attractive alternative to cable or broadcast television.
That said, campaigns looking to invest in CTV/OTT ad placements in 2024 should have a production budget to match, according to Nick Passanante, managing partner at Turn It Blue Digital.
Ads that match the aesthetic — and production design — of social media posts have been growing in popularity since the pandemic. But Passanante warned that while those kinds of spots may perform well in certain verticals, CTV/OTT isn’t one of them.
“Sometimes the homegrown, shot-on-your-iPhone videos actually perform really fantastic — and in a whole lot of placements,” he said at C&E’s Reed Awards Conference. “CTV is particularly not a place where they perform well because you expect to see a CTV ad that is sort of a more polished commercial — basically a TV spot.”
For campaigns looking to save on their production budgets — and their placements — programmatic may be the way to go.
“There’s something called social video, social display — that’s basically taking the look and feel of a social ad, but placing it programmatically and in traditional 15-second or 30-second spots or in 300-by-250 display boundaries,” he said.
“Those actually perform really well because it is showing something that is similar that they [the target voter] expect to see in a social environment, in a sort of an ever-scrolling world, but it’s putting it on ESPN, it’s putting it on CNN, it’s putting it on on whatever app they’re scrolling through that day.”
He added: “That type of differentiation is a way to show your creative dynamics, if you will, but in a way that’s not breaking the bank because you’re basically reusing content that’s already there.”