For Brand Advertisers, the Holidays Are a Time for Connection and Cooperation

With Black Friday approaching, brand advertisers have their holiday video ad campaigns ready. One thing they may still want to consider is the placement of those ads. With inflation concerns, consumers will be more prudent about their purchasing choices. To win over reluctant consumers, advertisers should seek video ad spots that go beyond reach and maximize brand connections.

One way to do that is to seek spots that maximize attention. While consumers will be more attuned to video ads as they seek gifts and deals, they still will opt to skip or scroll past ads if given the choice. In fact, according to Statista, 65.9% of app users will always skip an ad if there is an option to do so, while only 19.7% said they would watch (instead of skip) an ad that is relevant to them. To find more attentive outcomes, brand advertisers should seek Cooperative Media - or spots that yield 3.5 more attentive seconds on average than other formats.

What is Cooperative Media?

Think back to the days of network TV. While on your couch watching your favorite sitcom, music plays, the screen goes to black, and you know you have 1-2 minutes of ads before the show resumes. Beyond setting consumer expectations, this format also involves cooperation between the network and the advertiser. For the network, they get valuable ad revenue. And the advertiser receives a guarantee that their 30-second spot gets played in full. No, it’s not a guarantee the ad gets watched. But at least it gives stories a shot to break through. 

Now, think about the mobile ad experience. Many social platforms credit an ad if it's played and “in-view” for a few seconds. For a 30-second spot, that means 90% of that awesome ad is not even seen! However, for the social platform, it was a success! 

Thankfully, you can find platforms where 30-second ad spots can be played in full. Digital Turbine finds in-app environments where there is cooperation with the publisher to maximize attentive seconds. As a recent article in AdWeek points out: “The more attentive seconds spent with an ad, the better the brand recall, sales, and user growth.”

Bringing Connection and Cooperation Together

When viewing videos on social media, people’s fingers are geared to finding content. When an ad comes, their impulse is to skip or scroll to the next chunk of content. In games, the experience is different. Their fingers are interacting. The ads usually come on at a natural pause in gameplay, giving their minds a moment to reset. But their thumbs are already ready to react. Digital Turbine maximizes that moment by adding interactivity to video spots to encourage connection.

Mobile games that offer reward videos can further maximize your brand connections. The AdWeek article also states: “On average, Lumen found that rewarded video ads command 22 seconds of focused attention per ad compared to 2-3 seconds for ads in common social formats.”

Mobile games offer other advantages, too. For starters, it has a massive reach: 78% of people play mobile games. That’s higher than the estimated 72% of people who use Facebook regularly. And it’s not like people just go there for a few seconds. In our Black Friday insights, available for EMEA, LATAM, the Middle East, South Africa and Turkey, we share that consumers spend 28 minutes a day gaming, higher than the most popular social apps. And last, ads in mobile games play in a less cluttered environment - giving your story the benefit of 3x less competition than they would have on social media.

Are you looking for more ways to level up your holiday campaigns? Check out our guides on how to level up your Black Friday mobile strategy!

Contact DT today to find out more about the audiences that Cooperative Media can help you reach and how you can maximize your connections.