Focus on Targeting

OTT ads have an obvious benefit over traditional TV ads. However, to make the most of the OTT ads, you need to know your audience first. That is a large amount of data.

Here's how to target the right viewers using OTT:

• Create the Buyer's Persona If You Haven't Already Created It. You can conduct interviews and surveys of your viewers to understand their likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, interests, etc.

• Segment Your Audience: Now that you know your audience, it's time to segment them. For example, if you want to show ads only relevant to women, you can just target the women segment.

You can create buyer personas using HubSpot:

Consistency Is Key

Is there an enormous difference between your OTT ads?

If yes, then it’s time to rectify them. Consistency in visuals plays a key role in OTT advertising. In fact, according to research, consistently presented brands are 3.5 times more likely to enjoy greater brand visibility than those with inconsistent brands.

Here’s how to get a consistent brand image with your OTT ads:

• Ensure that your logo and URL are present throughout the ad. Also, don't forget to add more links in your advertisement to let viewers know who you are and where to go.

Here’s an example of a consistent OTT ad:

Keep Up with Trends in Entertainment Industry

It’s not new for brands to follow the latest trends in their ads. Many brands like Nike to Apple regularly leverage trends to create iconic ads. And why not? They work wonderfully.

How to leverage trending things in OTT advertising:

• Make it Relatable: Only choose the trends that resonate well with your audience and brand. For example, if you’re running a marketing campaign for waffles, you can take advantage of the connection to "Stranger Things", a popular American TV series. Here the main character, Eleven, is obsessed with the waffles. As for fans, she has become an icon for the waffles.

Here’s an example of a brand’s advertisement that keeps up with the entertainment industry:

Implement A Clear, Yet Strong CTA

Most advertisers commit the mistake of not adding a strong CTA. If you want people to act, you need a CTA. Don't just tell them what you offer. Encourage them to act.

CTA is nothing new. You can include it at the end or even put it in between, whether it's visiting a site or filling a form.

Some tips for implementing a solid CTA:

• Be Specific. Do you want them to visit your site? Fill out a form? Follow you on social media?

• Keep it Short. Use persuasive words to encourage them.

Here’s an example of a strong CTA on an OTT:

Understand the Type of Ads and Use Them Right

It's no secret! People don’t like ads. So, OTT advertisers should blend their ads naturally with the content.

Now, there are different OTT ads that you can follow. They are:

• Branding Ads: These ads are suitable for introducing the company’s mission and vision. These ads act as a great introduction and should leave customers wanting more!

• Testimonial Ads: People believe people over companies. You can leverage users' experiences with the brand's products or services.

• Product or Service Ads: This advertisement is excellent for branding ads. However, these ads focus on specific services or products of the brand.

Here’s an example of a testimonial ad:

Consider Improving Your Offer

All types of ads, whether it’s OTT, TV ads, or social media ads, all ads have an end goal. These goals can range from brand awareness and lead generation to conversions.

However, if you notice lower engagement or interaction with your OTT ads, it may signify that your audience does not find your offer attractive. In such cases, it’s time to improve your offer value.

You can analyze CTA interactions using HubSpot:

Get Your Message Right at Right Time

This is one area where most OTT advertisers face lots of struggles. Even if your audience is on your preferred channels, they may not see or engage with your ads. It’s a complex process, and several factors are at play here:

• For example, when is your ad played if you book an ad space? People often tune out the ads that come during break or at last.

• Moreover, there are certain times of the day when your audience is more receptive to commercials. It’s up to you to find these optimal times and get your message to them.

The goal of OTT must always be to present your message (ad) at a time when the customer is receptive and has specific intent at the moment. They might want to learn more or buy.

A tip to do it successfully is to set aside a budget to research all these touchpoints.

A/B testing using Optimizely helps learn the best time for displaying ads to viewers:

Keep It Short and Simple

Reality check! People don’t like ads! But they hate it when ads are long and tedious! If your OTT advertisements run for 5 to 7 minutes, then stop! You are ruining it.

It might be tempting to design ads that are long and detailed. However, it's important to keep in mind that OTT viewers have the option to skip your message. So, it’s better to go with something short and straightforward.

According to the World Advertising Research Centre, 30 seconds ads are ideal for tapping into three components of good brand-building commercials. 30 seconds are enough to make emotional and intellectual connections without losing the viewer's interest.

Here is a top tip to follow:

• The ideal ad length is 30 seconds. You can extend in certain cases, like 45 seconds or 60 seconds. But only when you have a story to tell can you not be covered within 30 seconds.

Here’s an example of a video ad on an OTT:

Format Videos for Different OTT Devices

Don’t assume your ads will always be seen on TV or on a laptop. OTT appears across all devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and TVs.

This means you need to format your ad videos for all these platforms such that important messages are not left out due to screen size.

For example, let’s consider the following format. Traditional TV measures 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels tall, and the vertical version is 1080 pixels wide and 1920 pixels tall.

However, the format changes when videos are displayed on smartphones.

Most ads on smartphones use an aspect ratio that can either be square or taller than wide. As a result, it’s better to design ads that fit all screen types instead of TV sizes.

It’s also important to note that OTT is about premium, high-quality graphics. This means creative requirements are stricter than web-based platforms. If you don’t follow the guidelines, platforms won't run your ads.

Here’s an illustration of ad sizes:

Get the Budget Right

Developing an approximate budget for your OTT ads is always good, as no planning can devour your resources.

Things to consider while developing your ads budget are:

• Creative and Visuals: How much money will you need to create high-quality visuals and creative assets?

• Advertising Costs of OTT Platforms: Every platform has varied advertising costs. So, you must consider the cost of advertising on your favorite OTT channels.

Here are SonyLiv’s advertising costs:

Leverage Influencers

In the past 2 years, the world has witnessed a huge growth in influencer marketing. The best thing is that influencers are not going anywhere soon!

This means it's time to jump on the wagon and get started. Marketers and businesses can collaborate with influencers to expand their audience while gaining a new audience group from the influencer's already established audience. It's a win-win situation.

If you think you can't afford an influencer, think again because you don't have to collaborate with celebrity influencers anymore. You can leverage micro and macro-influencers to expand your viewer base.

Here’s an example of an influencer promoting a brand on Instagram:

Use The 1st Few Seconds Wisely

The attention span of human beings has always been short. However, it's getting shorter as digitalization progresses. Now the attention span is just 8.5 seconds.

So, if you want to create a successful OTT advertisement, you need to develop a story that will grasp people's attention. The 1st few seconds of the ads must give viewers a clear image of what your ad is about and why it’s worth their time.

Here's how you can grapple their attention.

Customization is a method that switches things up for the users. It can ensure that ads cater more accurately to different demographics in your audience.

• Develop A Powerful Hook. One of the easiest and fastest ways to grab viewers' attention is through hook. A hook is a quick preview of what's coming later in the advertisement.

• Interesting Visuals. People are naturally more visual. Your ads need to have interesting visuals to keep them from moving on.

Here’s an example of interesting brand ad visuals on an OTT:

Not Conducting Enough OTT Research

Like every day, a new OTT platform emerges; an OTT platform is not an option but a necessity. Choosing the best one is difficult with so many high-value platforms launched simultaneously. That's the mistake new marketers commit.

Running ads on every new platform that was recently launched will waste your money. Most new OTT platforms have not yet secured a strong viewer base.

Some OTT platforms restrict reach or have limited features that keep you from making a profit. Here's how you can avoid this mistake.

• Avoid blindly jumping on every new OTT platform. Research the user base thoroughly to understand whether it would be profitable for you.

Researching buyer personas is a critical element of OTT research:

Not Restricting Ad Frequency

Are you running your OTT ads without restricting frequency? If yes, then stop!

When you don't cap the frequency of your OTT ads, you will just over saturate your viewers with one ad.

This wastes your commercial potential and annoys the viewers as they do not want to see one unlimited ad time. This will just make your viewers suffer from a phenomenon called ad fatigue.

Here's how to restrict ads:

• Cap the frequency of ads shown to a single person. For example, one ad will be shown only three times to one customer. After the 3rd time, the customer will stop seeing the ad.

Here’s a chart that shows the decline of CTR in relation to ad frequency:

Platform Without Quality Inventory

Anyone who tells you that the quality of publishers does not matter is lying! Imagine this scenario, the content on your preferred OTT platforms is low quality. This means people will leave early.

This means if you are running ads on such an OTT platform, there’s a high chance most of this audience would not even watch your ads.

Since they are not happy with the overall content on the platform, it's more likely that they will leave the ads in between. Hence, it results in wastage of your ad spend.

You can view an OTT’s inventory by simply accessing the platform:

You Don’t Have a Well-Devised Marketing Plan

As OTT grows rapidly, platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime add new features every day. With so many features and different platforms, it is easy to lose focus on the main objectives.

If you think just getting your advertisements live will bring viewers, you are deadly wrong. Rome was not built in a day.

Netflix, which is currently one of the top OTT platforms, didn't build its audience by waiting for people to sign up. The company spends over 2 billion USD per year on acquiring new customers.

That's the harsh truth. You can't succeed without a proper marketing plan.

Here’s an illustration of a good marketing plan:

Being Impatient

Patience! Patience! Patience! That's what advertising is all about. You cannot expect to grow your revenue in a single ad.

Many OTT advertisers believe that after running an ad for a week or two, the world should shift in their favor. They should be making 100X more sales, more money, and be the rock star.

Unfortunately for them, that's not how the world works. People need time to respond to ads. If you have doubts here, ask yourself. When was the last time you brought a product after seeing an ad for the 1st time?

Most probably, never! So why do you expect your viewers to respond to your ads in the 1st week of the campaign?

OTT advertising demands consistency and a long-term strategy instead of a short one.

A vital element of OTT advertising consistency has clear CTAs:

Ad Spend Wastage

Ads spend wastage is a real thing. Unfortunately, many OTT advertisers ignore this area completely. Thus, wasting the majority of their spending without getting anything in return.

Here’s how OTT advertisers can reduce ad spend wastage:

• Focus on Branding: People doubt ads if they are unfamiliar with the brand. As a result, even if they like the service or product you are providing, they would be apprehensive about taking a step forward. Strong branding can help you remove doubts from the customer's minds. Hence making it easy for them to make the right decision.

• Don’t Wait for Ads to End to Optimize Them. Optimize them while they are still running.

Crafting ads relevant to the latest trends in the entertainment industry strengthen brand image:

Not using Day Parting Ad Strategy

Unlike television, where shows have fixed times, OTT has the flexibility to watch content anytime.

So, when running an OTT Advertising, you need to ensure that they display your ads when your viewers watch the content! And not at 3:00 AM when almost all people are asleep.

That's where the day parting strategy allows marketers to make the most of the ads spent by showing ads at the right time. Although it’s an important strategy, many businesses don't implement it and lose out on a major chunk of revenue in just ads.

Here's how to tackle these issues:

• Determine your customer's current lifetime value and customer acquisition costs. It will help you determine how much you can afford to spend on ads.

• Look at your analytics to determine when your viewers are most engaged.

• A/B tests your ads to know which ones are making the most profit. Discard the ones that are not bringing substantial results.

Here’s an example of dayparting an ad on Facebook:

Buying Inventory from Sellers Who Cannot Sell Your Premium Inventory

There are too many frauds ongoing in OTT.

If the seller cannot give you access to all the premium inventory, then there's a high chance that they are a reseller. Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu are very strict about who can access their inventory. Resellers are strictly prohibited.

Here’s an article highlighting fraudulent activities on OTTs:

Social Blade

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plan starts from $39.99 /per yr.

About

A social media statistics website, Social Blade, allows you to track your statistics and measure growth.

Features

• Easy Integration with Social Media: Several social media applications can be integrated with Social Blade.

• Information Gathering Made Easy: Through the dashboard, users can access information about account statistics, revenue projections, live subscriber counts, and similar channels.

• Live Tracking: Live streaming has become a vast industry in recent years. It can, however, transform. The popularity of some channels may last for a long time, while the popularity of others may fluctuate. Real-time feedback on your content is available with Social Blade.

BuzzSumo

Pricing

$79/month (save 20%), paying yearly

About

With BuzzSumo, you can find the most relevant social and search engagement, content, and outreach opportunities within your organization. Find out what your customers are looking for through amazing features such as trending stories, customer questions, and content success. Buzzsumo also helps in monitoring what's important to your brand.

Features

• Find Out What's Most Shared: BuzzSumo's most shared content report is one of its most powerful features. When you enter a topic and click search, you will see the most shared content online. In addition, you will see an aggregate value of all channels.

• Conduct a Content Analysis: BuzzSumo's content analysis report will give you a broader understanding of content types that gain traction.

• Post-Performance: Determines which types of content resonate best with the target audience by tracking how much engagement each piece receives (views, likes, favorites, comments, etc.).

Awario

Pricing

$24/mo. Starter Plan

About

Using Awario, brands can get insights into their customers, markets, and competitors' data that matters to their business. Originally, Awario started as a simple side project derived from SEO PowerSuite, another product from the same company.

Features

• Powerful Analytics: Analyse the growth of your mentions, sorting them by positive, negative, and neutral sentiments, identifying top influencers based on social networks, comparing several alerts, and analyzing your progress.

• Geolocation Search with Multi-language Support: Awario monitors mentions of keywords in any language and location throughout the Internet. Whether you're a small business monitoring local media or a big brand with mentions around the globe, they're always available to help.

• Boolean Search: Get relevant results by being flexible with your search queries. With our comprehensive guide, anyone can learn to use Boolean search (which sounds complicated but is incredibly simple). If you receive too many irrelevant results with a simple search, you can use it.

Upfluence

Pricing

Their official website does not mention pricing details. However, they have varied pricing plans, including Growth, Scale, and Enterprise.

About

Upfluence’s founders wanted to help create organic connections, where the platform was born. Previous to it, Upfluence was a combination of Publisher and Facade, a directory of influencers.

Features

• Easy to Use: Workflow features allow you to develop a system that will help you save time.

• Extensive Database: With 3 million influencers and a collective reach of 82 million, Upfluence has the edge over other influencer marketing tools.

#paid

Pricing

About

The #paid influencer marketplace allows brands to specify campaign goals, the scope of desired content, and a few details about the most suitable creator in campaign briefs. However, the brands can go a step further in determining the influencers they want to work with.

Features

• Easy to Use: It has a very clean and easy-to-use interface. The design team of #paid has created a very intuitive interface. Although the platform has a simple interface, it can handle complex tasks. Using #paid will not overwhelm the user at any point.

• All Services Under One Roof: The company offers a wide range of services, including campaign management, third-party analytics, influencer content amplification, global influencer payments, fraud detection, and audience health. It also allows you to reach your target audience without being restricted to followers.

• Organized System: Organization of the deliverables and communication is a helpful feature. The agents at #paid to treat their customers with respect and constantly communicate. It makes users feel like they are looking out for the user's interests.

Grin

Pricing

About

Easy-to-use influencer marketing software with all the critical features one would expect from a top-notch platform. Organizing everything into workflows ensures that users never get lost. A grin can be seamlessly integrated into the existing systems of even the largest organizations.

Features

• Large Record of Influencers: The influencers available through Grin's searchable database are those from the most popular social media platforms. The number of influencers you can find on the website exceeds 100 million, with approximately 37 million profiles containing email addresses. With Grin's Lookalike feature, you can find more influencers like your chosen ones.

• Effective Emailing System: Grin integrates directly with email systems like Gmail and Outlook, so all messages you send come from your address, not some weird one-off address.

• Real-time Communications: It is important to communicate with influencers through SMS and Slack since they are often younger than you and do not check their emails frequently.

Pitchbox

Pricing

About

Pitchbox is a popular marketing tool that has been garnering lots of attention. It's easy to use and helps you reach the right influencers at the right time.

Features

• Pipeline View: It allows all your important metrics in one place. This includes campaigns, history, etc.

• Campaign: Here, you can find a list of all campaigns to date, including active and inactive Campaigns.

• Contact Database: Pitchbox helps you form contact databases. This includes influencers who will be best for your campaign.