Viewership fragmentation continues to accelerate across premium TV and video as consumers demand greater flexibility in how, when, and where they are able to consume content.
This fragmentation creates challenges for automotive advertisers trying to target specific in-market or near-market audiences. Many advertisers leverage multiple vendors to drive reach, frequency, and business outcomes against these specific audiences. Oftentimes, solutions are stitched together in an attempt to maximize coverage, but this can create an excessive overlap in some areas, and gaps in others.
So how should automotive advertisers navigate this complex landscape?
You can address common challenges by being thoughtful about your ad strategy and working with the right media provider to:
1. Engage potential customers at every stage
2. Reach across platforms and devices
3. Minimize ad waste and ad fraud
First, make sure you are partnering with a media provider that has access to insights from first-party data and clear optics into what automotive audiences are watching, when they are watching, and across what platforms and devices. This foundational step is critical in ensuring that audiences can be accurately targeted across each stage of the shopper journey, and performance can be measured and optimized.
Second, develop an understanding of how that media provider plans and executes buys across the three primary mediums – live linear TV, video on demand, and OTT. What are the targeting options for each? What differentiates that provider’s inventory, targetability, and measurement from others? How will the campaigns be optimized to align with the defined goals and objectives of the buy?
Third, it’s important to have a solid understanding of ad waste, ad fraud, and brand-safe content. Ad fraud and waste can be difficult to detect and challenging to stop. Brand safety matters and consumers pay attention to the content your ads appear alongside. Make sure your advertising partner has the correct policies in place to care for each.
Yes, video fragmentation is accelerating, but navigating the changing landscape doesn’t need to be another time-consuming responsibility. With the right media provider, video advertising can help automotive advertisers effectively and efficiently reach their target audiences across platforms and devices.
