At Cadent's recent Future of TV Virtual Summit, media industry experts discussed both new innovations and old favorites in TV advertising. While the common theme was maximizing TV in all of its forms to find your audience, the methods by which this is achieved can be varied.
Jamie Power, chief data officer of Cadent, led an illuminating session discussing how to achieve this with OTT and CTV in the media mix. Power hosted the session featuring Dana Bhargava, head of experience planning & media at Sanofi Consumer Health. The very first question Power asked was "Is the word TV outdated?" and that kicked off a lively conversation about the continued brand building nature of TV. "It's not the 'bad guy' or outdated, TV is still the method of building brands" according to Bhargava. She continued "TV waste is a bonus to build brands, and in some cases can be seen as aspirational to luxury brands." If advertisers can expand how they think about the medium, they can achieve their audience goals.
How does OTT and CTV fit into this mix? According to Bhargava, OTT and CTV are integral to create a full media plan for brand building. "You can use dayparts to find your audience and build awareness. Extend reach into OTT/CTV to increase scale."
Power asked how this current climate affected Sanofi's media planning. While they were never off the air, Bhargava discussed how these extreme circumstances allowed for making changes and trying new ideas. Sanofi focused on awareness and created content to position their brands as a staple of consumer's households. For example, Sanofi made sure their products were available via e-Commerce, and embedded tech to facilitate consumers locating products. OTT/CTV was effective for content alignment and brand safety.
With budgets constantly being re-evaluated and shifted, both Power and Bhargava agreed that being able to justify spend on OTT/CTV, which is still a higher CPM in most circumstances, is a key component to making these changes. A key part of this is analyzing data and results. If something fails to achieve its goals, instead of tossing it out as a failure, really look at it to see what happened. If you can focus on exactly why you're using OTT/CTV, you can adjust expectations and budgets accordingly. Power added "to be investment agnostic to deliver what consumers are looking for and put the audience as your #1 goal, using OTT/CTV can deliver the best results for your brand."
Both Power and Bhargava agreed that media plans must look at specific audience data and set strategy by that data. While not all channels drive the same data results, multiple channels can be used to serve different needs. As Bhargava declared "there's no such thing as 'set it and forget it' anymore". Overall, we're still learning about these platforms, and through successful partnerships we can achieve these mutual goals.
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