For Marketers, Getting Creative with Media Is Front and Center

An interview with:
Matthew Fanelli
Senior Vice President
MNI Targeted Media

Consumers continue to shift the way they view video, forcing marketers to get more inventive with their campaigns and placements. Matt Fanelli, senior vice president of MNI Targeted Media, spoke with eMarketer’s Danielle Drolet about what he thinks people will be buzzing about at the NewFronts, including social video and measurement.

eMarketer:

What can we expect from this year's NewFronts?

Matthew Fanelli:

We know about cord-cutting and the growth and proliferation of over-the-top [OTT] services. The story this year is how TV providers are going to take content that was delivered traditionally and start to disseminate that information in a different way. Essentially, another avenue of monetization.

Look at CBS’ “The Good Wife.” That was a great show. My wife and I recently got into its new spinoff series, “The Good Fight.” But it’s only accessible through CBS' All Access app. We’ll be seeing variations of this at the NewFronts.

eMarketer:

So another channel for marketers to scrutinize.

Matthew Fanelli:

Yes, for marketers, it's another choice, and that can be challenging. Right now, there are so many advertising channels. And marketers are asking themselves, "Where do I run my ads?"

Social and video collaboration is going to feed into this. Marketers need to really be thinking about how these two go together. When you look at Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Instagram, it's something like 90% of social media users are influenced to make a purchase after seeing content on social media, and 86% are influenced by videos alone. Original social video content is becoming more important.

eMarketer:

What kind of marketing spend are you seeing on social video?

Matthew Fanelli:

YouTube is doing really well. Facebook, too. Facebook marketers said they plan on increasing their spending by 63% for social video. Perhaps some of what happened a couple of weeks ago may impact that slightly, but overall, probably not. Also, 62% of marketers said they planned on increasing their spend on social videos through the Instagram platform. YouTube and Facebook are the cream of the crop in terms of numbers and where marketers are planning on spending their dollars.

The story this year is how TV providers are going to take content that was delivered traditionally and start to disseminate that information in a different way. Essentially, another avenue of monetization.

eMarketer:

I can’t let you get away without asking about measurement. What’s got brand marketers mixed up here?

Matthew Fanelli:

It boils down to two things—tracking and creative execution. The actual tracking mechanisms through ad servers and pixels is a challenge. To date, it is still somewhat fragmented and all over the place. In terms of creative, if you want to do 15 different executions, it’s a major creative undertaking. It sucks up such a large portion of the budget to be able to do all of these things.

For example, running an OTT spot is very different than running an in-banner video. If you're running a traditional TV spot, is that spot encoded or not? There's so many nuances to think about.

eMarketer:

Speaking of tracking, what’s going on with this pileup of gross rating points [GRPs] and key performance indicators?

Matthew Fanelli:

Honestly, I think it starts with what does success look like? If you're interested in market immersion, then maybe your GRPs are what's important to you. Maybe you’re doing an integrated buy between OTT and traditional. You’re just looking at GRPs, and that’s success. For instance, it's getting 15% or 20% market share.

In other cases, it may be that success looks like the clickthrough rate of this percentage. Success might also be the amount of ecommerce sales that have happened, or it’s amount of form downloads. I can't necessarily say that one is better than the other or one should be focused on more. It's about asking the marketer what does success look like for you, and what is your strategy and your goal for this.

Interview conducted on April 26, 2018

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