Highway Billboards In Moscow Is Targeting Drivers Based On Which Cars They Drive

What Happened
Synaps Labs, a startup that focuses on dynamic digital out-of-home ads, has started testing its digital billboard along the highways in Moscow, enabling the billboards to change ads to target drivers passing by based on the models of their vehicles. By combining high-speed cameras and a proprietary machine-learning system that can recognize car models, its digital billboard is plugged into a bidding system then selects the appropriate ads to display as the targeted cars drive by. The company has planned tests for this digital highway billboards in the U.S. for this summer.

What Brands Need To Do
This digital billboard serves as the latest example of how AI-powered digital billboards may transform the OOH ads. Similarly, Smart data storage company Cloudian and Japanese advertising firm Dentsu has started testing similar billboards in Japan that can recognize the car models driving by and serve up targeted ads accordingly. According to a recent research from PQ Media, global OOH advertising revenue grew 6.2% in 2016 to $49.23 billion, with DOOH claiming most of the revenue growth. More brands should look for new ways to bring some interactivity and customizations to digital outdoor ads.

 


Source: MIT Tech Review

Pandora To Launch Dynamic Audio Ads and Sequential Messaging

What Happened
Pandora is planning to bring dynamic creatives to audio ads. The streaming service is teaming up with UK-based dynamic ad tech vendor A Million Ads to target consumers in real time with personalized messages. Brands looking to leverage dynamic audio can record a script with multiple message variations to address listeners based on a range of geographic locations, weather conditions, or calls to action.

Moreover, Pandora also announced it will add support for sequential and cross-platform messaging soon, offering brands more time to explain their products or services over several successive ad spots. These two new ad products will launch later this year in beta.

What Brands Need To Do
Dynamic creative is nothing new in display ads, but to execute it in audio ads on a streaming service is still quite new. Results from our media trial study with Yahoo indicates clear benefits of personalized ads, showing advertisers who utilized personalization saw significant increases in overall favorability and purchase intent. Pandora boasts over 78 million monthly active users, the vast majority of which uses the service on a free, ad-supported tier. Therefore, brand marketers looking to connect with music streamers on Pandora should consider these two upcoming new ad units to reach their target customers more effectively.

 


Source: AdWeek

 

Retargeting Ads Come To Instagram

What Happened
Advertisers on Instagram are now able to retarget users as the social network adds Dynamic Ads – a retargeting unit that Facebook launched last year – to its platform. This ad product enables data-driven ad customization so that users are served relevant ads based on their online activity and interests. Facebook is also rolling out two updates to its ad products: a Dynamic Ad unit specifically designed for travel brands and more control on its “lookalike” custom audiences so that advertisers can prioritize different types of users to focus on.

What Brands Need To Do
Instagram has been following the steps of its parent company Facebook in improving its ad products and making its platform more brand-friendly. The photo- and video-sharing network currently serves over 200,000 monthly active advertisers. This new addition should be helpful to brands, especially those in the travel sector, for reaching target consumers more effectively on Instagram.

 


Source: TechCrunch

Google Brings Dynamic Ads To TV

What Happened
Google is making another play for a piece of TV ad spending with the introduction of a new dynamic ad tool. With DoubleClick Dynamic Ad Insertion, TV broadcasters and content distributors will be able to customize the in-stream ads to deliver more relevant commercials. This new ad product is powered by Google’s cloud service and works for both live TV and on-demand content. Google tested it last year with the Rugby World Cup Finals on French network TF1 and during the Republican Presidential Debates on Fox News. The setup currently works with AMC Networks, MCN, Roku, and Cablevision in the US and Globo in South America. Along with this new dynamic ad tool, Google is also adding live TV listings to its search results to help media owners reach more people.

What Brands Need To Do
The announcement came at an interesting time as Google attacked TV ads earlier this week with a new study reporting that YouTube ads offer higher ROIs than TV in 77% of cases. By making TV ads dynamic and customizable, Google is offering brand advertisers a way to make TV commercials more like data-driven digital ads. For brands wishing to make their TV campaigns more effective and targeted, this new tool should be worth a try.

 


Source: Marketing Land

Next Gen Advertising: Could Consumer Excitement Make All the Difference?

Written by Lena Phalen, Research Analyst at Lab’s Research Department

 

Right Now, We Have a Problem.
These days, consumers are constantly inundated with ads. Trillions of ads are served to US consumers every year. In fact, the average person encounters approximately 1,200 ads per day, according to MAGNA GLOBAL’s estimates. It’s no wonder consumers consider marketing to be out of control. Our standard methods aren’t working – with this amount of volume, people must tune advertising out in order to simply function! This frustration has also resulted in the rise of ad blocking software, which PageFair/Adobe reports about 198 million people worldwide use (43 million in the US alone, according to their 2015 data), compounding issues of ad effectiveness further. The advertising community desperately needs to find better ways of engaging consumers that go beyond the archetypical and ineffective banner ad.

Although technology has amplified issues of ad inundation, it has simultaneously given us tools to better address how to make ad experiences more targeted and enjoyable for consumers. The key is using the tools that we have to improve the effectiveness of ads that are created. For one, we now have the ability to target consumers when they might be in different emotional states, depending on what they are doing or watching – or even to analyze their emotional response to content and creative on a large scale using facial recognition software, such as IPG Media Lab’s AttenTV product. These are powerful, underutilized tools – especially considering that all of the research the IPG Lab has done on the topic suggests that when consumers are in a heightened state of excitement, ads work much harder.

One Solution: Capitalizing on Exciting Content
One way to reach consumers when they are in a happier, more excited state is by pairing ads with content that is proven to do just that. When an earlier Lab study inadvertently revealed that there were significant differences in the perceptions of comparable news sites, we developed a new study to delve further into its effects. From this following research, we found that certain news sites that were more trusted and improved consumers’ emotional well-being in comparison to similar sites resulted in a substantial halo effect for ads on the site. All of the Lab’s studies are scientifically curated to control for demographic and other outside differences, so we were looking at the same ads on each different news site and comparing accordingly. As consumers reported greater amounts of positive feelings, including overall happiness, intrigue, and energy while reading content from the site, as compared to the other similar sites, the ads that were served next to the content also worked harder. They resulted in significantly higher brand metrics, including a 3% higher brand favorability and an impressive 11% higher purchase intent. Even with basic messaging, these ads were more effective.

We also have another study in the works partnering with ZEFR, a company with the ability to identify and target context in video, to investigate the effects of more diverse emotions. Early results are encouraging, indicating that emotional congruency (i.e. matching the tone of ad creatives with content placement) delivers similar benefits to ad effectiveness and improves ad experiences.

Another Solution: Capitalizing on Exciting Situations
We can also easily predict when excitement will rise based on a given situation occurring in different locations, and gear advertising to capitalize on the event. For instance, the Super Bowl. Naturally, consumers will have strong opinions about who they want to win, so we wondered what would happen if a brand aligned with the rooting interest of an audience. The Lab spent some time researching ads that rooted for the two participating teams across the country, and found that these “rooting ads” work far better than standard ads, since nearly everyone was rooting for an outcome and felt passionately. This passion and excitement translated to favorable brand opinions – enough to also significantly move consumers’ purchase intent by 6% compared to standard ads. We even found that the more passion for a team/outcome, the more likely people are to want to purchase the brand.

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Another opportunity to utilize exciting occasions has emerged from the mobile app/gaming realm. It is intuitive that during moments of achievement (i.e. reaching a goal, winning something, etc.), consumers are more excited (40% more, according to our research with Kiip), than at other points in the game or app. But, an innovative way of capitalizing on this emotion is to pair advertising with rewards given to consumers after they unlock an achievement, which Kiip has already built a successful ad model around. These rewards have a purpose – consumers can actually use them, and they congratulate consumers when happiness, attention, and engagement levels are at their highest. They were so effective, we noticed a 133% higher purchase intent across the board.

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So What Can We Do?
Well, for one: target situations and content that we already know will illicit passion, energy, and excitement from consumers. Whether or not the content is generating the excitement or the current outside situation, it seems that its effects on advertising are quite positive. The same ads will work harder in these situations than if positioned in less stimulating environments.

The data on what kinds of content makes consumers happier and more engaged is out there, whether it be certain news channels, games, or videos. However, we would have to look through the research to find better ad placements based on these emotional criteria. Sometimes finding exciting content is intuitive (with gaming, apps, etc.), but it is harder to predict exactly which news site or news content will raise happiness and engagement levels when compared to others. Just the same, not every brand or brand message needs be happy to emotionally engage audiences. Exciting content and exciting situations are about forming a connection with your audience and eliciting a response—cutting through the ad clutter to distinguish your brand.

This calls for a better database of information that connects research to practice. There is also certainly a great deal of work left to do on this topic, with many more situations left to investigate. The Lab is already looking into some of them, such as video advertising based on emotion. We have the technology: we now need to capitalize on it. It is technology like this, which helps make ads relatable and excitable to consumers, that is the future of next-gen advertising.

 

MillerCoors and IPG Media Lab Help You Discover The Music Of NYC Neighborhoods

What Happened
In an innovative new outdoor campaign created and coordinated by the Lab team, MillerCoors teamed up with Intersection, maker of the LinkNYC kiosks, and popular music recognition app Shazam to bring location-specific music discovery to New York City. In a month-long pilot program, select LinkNYC kiosks will display Coors Light-branded playlists of what people in several NYC neighborhoods have been listening to, generated based on real-time data from Shazam. Passersby near those branded kiosks can open the Shazam app and get those branded playlists on their phones.

What Brands Need To Do
Thanks to the proliferation of smartphones and advances in out-of-home ad tech, outdoor display ads are getting more and more interactive and engaging. Aiming to connect with consumers on the go via their mobile devices, this new Coors Light campaign provides them with the fun of local music discovery, therefore earning consumer attention by adding value to its outdoor display ads.

If you would like to discuss how your brand can leverage new technologies to create innovative, dynamic OOH ads like this, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Barrett ([email protected]) to get in touch with us and schedule a visit.

 


Source: AdWeek

 

New Ad Tech Is Swapping Out The Old Ads In Podcasts

What Happened
Panoply, the Slate Group’s podcasting arm, introduced a dynamic ad platform called Megaphone, which can swap out the ads in old podcast episodes with new ones at the time they are downloaded. The platform allows for one-click insertion of ads into podcasts, geo-targeting to reach specific regional podcast listeners, as well as A/B testing to compare ad performance. Megaphone will be available to all of Panoply’s partners, including major publishers such as New York Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and The Huffington Post, who have all been creating ad-supported podcasts.

What Brands Need To Do
Dynamic ads present a great tool for both podcast-makers and advertisers, increasing ad inventory while also making sure brand messaging stays fresh and up-to-date. Before Megaphone, Sweden-based podcast ad platforms Acast has worked with Buzzfeed and Financial Times to provide dynamic ad insertions in their podcasts. With dynamic ads slowly taking off in podcasting, brands will have more opportunities to reach targeted audiences with relevant new ads.

 


Source: AdAge