by admin - 20 Aug 2021

Major changes have erupted in the past two years, right from lifestyles to education to entertainment. Over-the-top platforms have become mainstream entertainment channels, as evident by the surge in their viewership. As people are rapidly inclining towards online streaming services than traditional TV, brands are swaying towards OTT advertising. It is because your ads must be where your consumers are, and hence more than 57% of marketers are preferring OTT for advertising along with social media advertising and Google advertising. Are you still wondering whether you should consider advertising on OTT platforms or not? Here are the benefits of OTT advertising and the key tips for advertising on these digital streaming platforms.  

1.AUDIENCE’S INCLINATION TOWARDS OTT SERVICES 

OTT platforms like Netflix, Hotstar and Prime Video have existed over years, but the surge of viewership these platforms got in 2020 and 2021 is incredible. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdown, the entertainment hubs like cinema theatres remained closed that made OTT, a major entertainment source, accounting for record-high OTT viewership.  

Before the pandemic, there were hardly a couple of OTT platforms, and they were also striving hard to thrive under the shadow of cineplexes. The general public was not willing to shift to these digital screens, and hence the movie makers also kept away from these platforms. Only limited content was available on OTT media which was also outdated.  

However, when cinema theatres were closed, people started seeking new media of entertainment and OTT was quick enough to grab viewer’s attention. The number of OTT platforms grew enormously from two to more than 40 OTT services available as of today in India. The movie producers, entertainment series makers have all started making a transition to these direct-to-digital platforms to keep the revenue flowing.  

When the audience started inclining more and more towards the OTT platforms, brands also started making the transition to these services. Whether it’s YouTube or Netflix or Prime Video, all these platforms started getting loaded with advertisements.  

2.ADVERTISING ON OTT REDUCES WASTE OF MONEY 

Anything that is done digitally has advantages over its non-digital counterpart, so is with advertising. When advertising on cable TV, you advertise your product to the masses rather than targeting the ideal target audience. For instance, if you are doing a local business, you would air your advertisement on a local TV channel, and it would be shown to every person watching that channel. Out of 100 people who watch your TV advertisement, assume only five people are the ones who might be interested in your product. So you are wasting your ad budget by targeting 95% of people who do not fall in your buyer persona.  

On the other hand, you get to target your advertisement to specific people on the OTT platform based on their interests, the shows they watch and other demographics. These days the marketing demographics are something more than the basic information like age, gender, location. When you target your ad to your buyer personas, the rate of conversion increases, and you get a better return on your advertising spends.  

3.ACCESS TO CONSUMER ANALYTICS 

With the conventional TV commercials, advertisers and brands used to target their ad to the TV channel and TV show that garnered higher TRPs or were popular among the audience. However, you could only guess the number of people who watched your ad based on the viewership of the TV show, and there were no real-time audience data. The lack of sufficient audience analytics failed to give an exact report of the number of people who viewed the advertisement.   

OTT advertising combines the analytics features of digital advertising and gives you detailed audience analytics of what shows people watch, what time they watch, how long they watch, etc. With the help of these data, you can target your advertisement only to the audience who might be interested in your product. After advertising, you also get to view the analytics and reframe your marketing campaigns based on the analytics to reach a more niche-targeted audience.  

4.OTT ADS ARE MORE ENGAGING 

If you remember, traditional TV shows would have a 5-6 minutes commercial break loaded with tens of advertisements. A viewer resented the long gap between the immersive viewing experience and would either switch to other TV channels or engage in other activities to only return after the ad break gets over.   

OTT shows do not run lengthy ad breaks in between. Either the ads are a few seconds long, or sometimes people get a premium subscription to skip watching ads. However, it is also true that people love to watch ads from brands they love, ads of products they wish to buy. With geo-targeting and niche-targeting, when you advertise your product to your buyer persona, they watch the ad and engage with it. And again, analytics serve a great purpose to target your ad to the ideal consumers.  

Another factor that makes OTT ads interesting is the engagement factor. These ads are short of only a few seconds or a minute and have stunning visuals that capture the audience’s attention, being highly engaging with clear messaging. This clearly explains how visual designing is crucial for branding. 

With the great advantages comes greater responsibility, and it’s the responsibility of brands to create high-quality content that people love to watch rather than look for options to skip or report an ad. With the rise of automation and extensive analytics, programmatic OTT advertising is also evolving and could be a game-changer in near future. When impressive visuals can escalate your ad performance, for it may be on OTT advertising or digital advertising, connect with Entitledarts to create highly interactive advertisements and market to the right audience via efficient marketing strategies.