U.S. Media Planner Survey Takeaway: Disruption Reigns!

Specifically, the study identifies the disruption and decline of television, mobile opportunities and the rapidly growing focus on programmatic as key trends in the rapidly changing advertising world. The good news, for those of us in the digital place-based (DPB) arena, is that planners indicate these changes will fuel the growth of our sector over the next several years ("our sector" being the screens people see during their daily journeys in airports, taxis, office buildings, elevators, gyms, restaurants, shopping malls, etc.).

Let’s look at some of the findings:

Television in Decline

More than two-thirds (68%) of media planners rated TV high in effectiveness today, but just under one-half (49%) believe TV will be as effective in three years.

There is no denying the dominance of television (in all its forms) on the video landscape, but at the same time it is quite apparent this influence is trending in a much different direction.

Mobile Opportunities

While television is in decline, planners expect other screens' shares of media budgets to rise over the next three years: mobile (+86%), online (+67%), DPB (+34%).

These results speak to the rationale behind the DPAA's "Video Everywhere" strategy. Sixty percent of those surveyed regard video everywhere, i.e., integrated multi-screen campaigns, as important in delivering advertising impressions, with 84% saying they will be important in three years. The planners said that DPB screens will more than double in importance (56% vs 27%) to the video everywhere strategy in three years' time.

In addition, even though DPB and mobile are often thought to complement each other, there was a sharp drop in the percentage of planners who indicated they would fund a DPB buy out of mobile (12% this year vs 22% last year). So our advice to DPAA members is to emphasize their synergy and compatible executions with mobile.

Rise of Programmatic

Nearly nine out of 10 planners (88%) said they are buying programmatically for all brands they work on today. Among this group, 28% of their total media spend is being bought programmatically. Three years from now, they expect this figure to grow to 48% of budgets. The importance of programmatic to the DPB industry is made clear by the fact that 67% of planners said they would be more likely to recommend DPB as part of media plans given its availability in programmatic buying systems.

Other Noteworthy DPB Findings

Slightly more than half (50.4%) of planners said their recommended media plans included DPB in the past 12 months, up from 45.9% in 2014.

National TV outpaced local TV as a potential source of budgets for DPB buys by a margin of 20% to 15%, suggesting that a substantial number of planners regard DPB as more of a national medium than they do traditional outdoor.

The three primary reasons planners gave for including DPB in their media plans were geotargeting (62%), reaching a specific audience (57%) and connecting with consumers on the path to purchase (50%). Notably, the sharpest increase for including DPB was for video everywhere/video agnostic planning, up to 20% from 9% in 2014.

This study provides quantifiable verification of what we have been witnessing over the past couple of years; namely, that video agnostic/video everywhere planning and programmatic are where media plans are heading, and that digital place-based media stands to gain tremendously because of these trends.

The input from the 310 surveyed planners employed at full-service, media services and digital ad agencies helped us shape the agenda for our eighth annual Video Everywhere Summit in New York on November 3. Sessions will include programmatic, a video agnostic debate, mobile-DPB case studies and other topics designed to help make sense of our ever-changing video media world.

The opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage/MyersBizNet management or associated bloggers.