Advertising on television is a tricky endeavor. When you’re investing in commercial production and airtime, Kansas City business owners want proof of performance, not a guesstimate on results and return on investment. What’s a brand to do in order to reach TV viewers in an elusive, fluid and ever changing marketing “channel?” You might try a Ouija board, throwing darts at a programming schedule, or even Rock-Paper-Scissors – all of which have the same slim chance of predicting success.
Then the team from Viamedia arrived at our agency with tales of the magic of Google Fiber digital advertising. Our city was the first in the country to have Google Fiber. And now, Google is bringing the power and proof of performance of their targeted ads to television.
They had us at fiber.
Google Fiber is Google, Inc.’s fiber-to-the-premises service, bringing one gigabit per second Internet connection speed and cable television the KC metro area. As of March 2015, Google Fiber had 27,000 television subscribers in multiple cities throughout the country. Since 2011, Google has laid more than 8,000 miles of fiber through the Kansas City area and it’s estimated that within three to four years, Google Fiber will have over 60% penetration in Kansas City households. 60% of every house in the KC metro. Wow indeed.
Competing with the 5,000 ads per day that every adult is exposed to (and winning).
With potential customers viewing content on multiple devices, tapping into the vast reach and resources that Google Fiber has to offer makes our digital marketing experts feel like kids in a candy shop. Whether our target audiences watch live or DVR their programs, Google Fiber will allow a media buyer to better pinpoint dollars spent to highly targeted audiences, allowing more efficient market penetration.
Don’t guess. Impress.
Viamedia, the contracted vendor to market the advertising opportunities offered by Google Fiber, told us tales of targeting audiences based on their profiles and behaviors while viewing content, only serving our clients’ messages to those fitting specific profiles, and only paying for those ads that were actually viewed*.
We pinched ourselves.
Google Fiber’s dynamic ad insertion will actually allow a different ad to be served to different TVs within the same household, even if they are all watching the same program. Sounds like magic, right? Kids’ TVs get kid-targeted messages, man cave TVs get male-targeted messages, etc. We can also purchase ad time within specific episodes of TVs most valuable original series and sought-after live sporting events.
Network clusters are a new kind of candy.
An audience can also be extended further across multiple programming based on the targeted profile, giving us the ability to deliver more messages more efficiently.
With the simple use of keywords or programming genres, we can target audiences with the profiles that match the buying profiles of our clients. This is similar to how we manage retargeting ads and Facebook ads, which have been highly successful for our small business clients.
This makes for a more efficient campaign with few wasted impressions (otherwise known as money). Buying by way of network clusters, bundles of networks that closely fit the potential customer’s age, gender, affinity and program preference make for a better bang for our client’s buck. With custom tailoring, a 50K impressions campaign may only need a targeted 30K impression bang.
Just imagine what’s next…
Although nothing has been stated, it’s easy to conceive a second generation of Fiber TV where “smart ads” are delivered based on your browsing habits. Think of it as remarketing across media, not just across devices. Imagine visiting a website during your busy lunch break, and then seeing an ad for that same company later on TV when you get home. It’s certainly possible that smart targeting like that could be coming down the pike.
As more and more households become simultaneous multi-screen users (ie, using a smart phone while also watching TV, or using tablet while streaming content on a desktop), the ability to reach all these devices in roughly the same window could also be possible. Imagine browsing the web for dinner options and having one of those options magically appear during a commercial break.
We’re ready and able to share the goodies with our clients.
As the Viamedia duo presented their case for Google TV advertising, those of us in the room could see each other’s eyes light up. To say the potential for Google Fiber TV ads is tremendous is an understatement. While we’re excited, we’re only suggesting the idea to our clients for whom this could be a game changer. After all, we’re all about strategy and measurable proof of performance, not just the latest, greatest thing.
* Ad must be viewed for at least 2 seconds or more to be counted as a viewed ad.