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.”
