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Opportunities and challenges of video ad serving during live events

Live events such as sport broadcasts, music concerts, game streaming, seminars and conferences provide great opportunities for ad serving. They attract and retain large audiences for a sustainable long period of time without many interruptions, which is a very rare thing nowadays. This special characteristic presents advertisers with a chance to reach a captive audience with their video ads. However, these opportunities also come with their own challenges.

Enhanced brand awareness

Super Bowl commercials are very popular and expensive for good reasons. Associating a brand with popular live events can significantly boost brand awareness and recognition. Video ads can effectively communicate a brand's message and positioning to a large audience during live events. Viewers often are more engaged during live events, making them more likely to pay attention to ads. When viewers are more engaged, they experience a wider range of emotions, creating an environment where viewers are more receptive to emotional advertising. Advertisers can leverage this emotional context to tell a story via memorable and impactful video ads.

However, producing an interesting, emotional or viral video ad for the targeted live event is easier said than done. There is no guarantee but there are factors that increase the ad effectiveness in promoting your brand. You need to understand the viewers, their motivations and needs. The advertised product or service must be highly relevant to the specific event and connect with the viewers. The video must look polished and professional. It is a good idea to create different versions of the same ad campaign optimized for different platforms and formats such as short-form videos versus long-form content.

Measurable results

Video ad serving platforms provide detailed metrics to track the performance of video ads during live events. You can see the number of people viewing your ad and how interested they are with the ads based on the progress events. You can even see how many people Mute or Skip the ad. These event reports allow advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions to optimize their targeting settings and ad spend. For example, if the number of Skip events are lower than average and Complete events are higher than average then it means your ad is connecting with the audience and they want to view it until the end.

However, measuring the effectiveness of video ads during live events can be complicated because advertisers need to employ a combination of metrics to assess the true impact of their ad campaigns. Doing this requires both technical and business abilities to compile, process and analyze data from multiple sources. Different vendors might use different adservers and have their own report formats. Some vendors support API or automated data export while others require more manual operations. Offline activities and indirect conversions are also a challenge because they are not tightly integrated within a single platform. Data integration is not a trivial skill and might present a challenge for some advertisers. Additionally, short-term impact is easy to see and measure but long-term result is more complicated to observe.

Part 2 - Ad spacing, real-time targeting and technical complexity

Posted in Video Ad Server Ad Strategies by Watson F February 29, 2024

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