Author: Sierra Ducey

In today’s hyper-competitive, crowded marketplace, what attracts consumers to choose one brand over another? Of course, consumers consider several factors before making a purchase, however, nearly all purchases — 95%, to be exact — have an emotional component. 

These emotional decisions are impacted by a customer’s perception of your services, a connection they feel to your values and messaging, reviews they’ve read online or heard from peers, or your general place in a market. In short, attributes that make up the backbone of  your “brand health.”

Brands who consistently track and analyze their brand health are setting themselves up for success, both present and future. As such, it’s an essential addition to other metrics your organization may already be tracking, such as revenue or growth. It safeguards your position in the marketplace, while also supporting the bottom line. 

In this blog, we’ll cover all the background information you need to know about brand health tracking, such as: 

• The definition of brand health and its key components
• The advantages of monitoring brand health
• The measurement solutions you can implement into your digital advertising toolkit.

What is Brand Health?

Brand health is a collection of customer metrics and insights that indicate how your brand is performing in the marketplace. This doesn’t entail “the numbers” (i.e., sales) but rather your company’s perception among consumers and how you stack up against competitors. 

While there isn’t one single meaning of brand health, all definitions are based on the customer experience associated with your brand and the emotional connection they have to your products and services. “Unhealthy” brands spark little emotional connection with their consumers; as such, they can’t distinguish them from competitors or other similar products. In contrast, “healthy” brands consistently deliver experiences that align directly with their brand promises and create positive experiences for customers, employees, and stakeholders.

How is Brand Health Calculated? 

Just like there’s no clear-cut definition for brand health, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to calculating brand health. Based on specific goals and objectives, brands will identify various factors that impact consumers’ perception of their goods, services, and reputation. Brands can utilize customer feedback portals, employee engagement, and survey and focus groups to obtain direct feedback on their health. Additionally, they can measure performance across metrics such as share of voice, share of search, category entry points, competitors (both direct and indirect), and brand strengths and weaknesses. 

The collection of this data tracked over time paints an ongoing picture of how a brand performs in the market, what consumers think of it, and how they use it. In short: brand health.

Advantages of Brand Health Tracking

Understanding the health of your brand apart from traditional success metrics gives you a more thorough picture of your organization’s performance and how you stack up against market competition. As advertisers know, the more information you can obtain, the better data-driven decisions you can make. Brand health is no different, as the data obtained in these studies provide many advantages for ongoing success, four of which are outlined below.

Identify company strengths and weakness 

Consumer priorities are constantly shifting and brands that can’t keep up with these changing priorities will be disadvantaged. Ongoing brand health tracking ensures you understand where you align with these needs and where you may fall short. Additionally, as you grow and diversify as a company, brand health calculates how these changes are performing in the marketplace and either supporting or detracting from overall ROI. 

Yields better understanding of the competitive landscape

Is your brand the top choice among consumers? Are consumers easily swayed to try a competitor product after purchasing from your brand? Why are consumers drawn to make continued purchases from one brand versus another? 

Identifying key competitors and understanding how your brand stacks up using metrics like customer loyalty and retention paints a clear picture of where you stand in the marketplace. From an advertising perspective, this helps identify any lapses in your strategy or areas you can improve to connect with, draw in, and retain consumers.

Create benchmarks to better track impact over time

By regularly tracking brand health, you can easily compare how consumers view your brand over time. This helps better inform the impact of specific campaigns, news, or new product announcements. Additionally, regularly tracking your brand makes it easier to spot patterns or correct underperforming areas.  

Leverage insights for future business and campaign planning

As mentioned, regularly benchmarking brand health data helps businesses identify critical patterns and opportunities. Advertisers can leverage these insights for data-backed strategies and campaigns.

For example, if consumers are most receptive to your brand during the summer, advertisers can heavy up on media during these months. Alternatively, if Advanced TV is a significant trigger in your market, advertisers can use more strategic ad messaging across this channel to speak to consumers at this stage in the buying journey. 

With a robust understanding of your brand health, brands are poised with an entirely new data set to make more informed business decisions. Ideally, this yields better results and a more substantial return on investment. 

In Summary

In short, brand health tracking helps companies better understand how to attract and retain customers, make the most impact in their advertising strategies, and best compete and succeed in the marketplace. Beyond the tangible takeaways, it pushes organizations to look beyond revenue as a measure of success. It enables data-driven decisions, a strategic imperative for businesses looking to thrive in the long run.

Are you ready to better understand where you fall in the marketplace and improve your brand health? Learn more about our comprehensive Brand Health Solution here.

Today’s consumers are flooded with products and services to choose from. In response, advertisers are working overtime to stand out among the competition while simultaneously facing tighter budgets and more pressure to drive results. Faced with this mix of challenges, advertisers must find the most effective ways to efficiently move consumers down the funnel.

With the right combination of data, messaging, and targeting, you can help consumers learn more about why your brand, products, or services provide them with the best value. By using carefully crafted messaging, you can showcase unique selling points, product features, or brand attributes that set your brand apart from the competition and fulfill your consumers’ needs. 

Audience data is a powerful tool for finding, targeting, and driving consideration amongst existing and prospective brand customers. With targeted campaigns — fueled by audience data and insights — ensure you reach the right consumers with ads that speak to their respective needs and interests, driving them further down the funnel. Additionally, you’ll avoid wasting media dollars on uninterested, unsuitable consumers, or existing customers. 

Keep reading as we’ll outline exactly how you can get started using audience data to create powerful consideration campaigns. 

1. Dive Deep into Audience Data to Reach Your Ideal Customer

As audiences move through the customer journey, from awareness to consideration, each touchpoint should be more targeted and purposeful than the last. As such, ads should speak to specific interests and needs, which requires proper customer segmentation. This can be done in two steps.

Step One: Segment Your Core Audience with First-Party Data

The first step comes from utilizing advertisers’ most valuable resource: current consumers. First-party data provides valuable information such as consumer demographics, attributes, purchase history, and product interest that can be mirrored to create more memorable touchpoints with new customers. 

Let’s look at an example. 

A Los Angeles-based pizza restaurant is expanding with new shops throughout California. Using their loyalty rewards data, they are able to identify two unique consumer groups that make up the majority of purchases at their stores. 

The first is Gen Z-aged consumers who primarily make purchases on Friday and Saturday nights, dine in, and typically order one pizza and a drink. The second group is millennial-aged consumers who order online through the app for carry-out. They typically order a few pizzas and a side or dessert, seemingly an order for a family. This information will help shape the different audience segments the brand should focus on targeting in the areas they are expanding. 

Step Two: Enlist an Audience Analysis Tool for Better Personalization

In-depth audience analysis expands into areas that first-party data doesn’t cover such as media habits, and personal values, where audiences typically discover new brands and other psychographic data. These tools leverage global consumer data to gain insights into each audience’s characteristics and identify the most likely opportunities for your media to reach these consumers for the highest impact.  

Let’s look back at the pizza restaurant and what an audience analysis tool would uncover. 

Gen Z college students spend at least four hours a day on social media. They use TikTok as a primary source of product inspiration and finding new brands. When it comes time to decide where to eat, they prioritize price and finding “a good deal.”

The millennial-aged consumers are avid podcast listeners and subscribe to at least three TV streaming services. They value fresh, healthy ingredients and reliability when deciding where to eat. 

The restaurant can use this information to identify what channels and messages they can use to make a targeted impact on new customers.

2. Expand Your Customer Base with Lookalike Audiences

Using both first and third-party data, you’ve identified your most valuable customers. Now it’s time to find new ones. The audience attributes identified in the process outlined above can be used to build custom audiences to target consumers who look and act like your most valued customers. As the campaign runs, optimization tools prioritize consumers most engaged with your content, moving them further down the funnel. 

As mentioned, the key to driving consideration is to personalize the content toward each consumer. From audience analysis, brands know what these consumers prioritize. As the consumer learns more about your brand, serve even more personalized ad creative that speaks to their specific needs and interests.

One more look back at our pizza restaurant showcases how this can be put into practice. We know that the Gen Z consumer prioritizes a good deal and uses social media as their main form of media consumption. The pizza shop can geo-target college campuses near their new locations, offering customers 25% off their first in-store order. 

As for the millennial-aged consumer, ease of purchase is a priority. They can target these consumers by offering 10% off when they sign up for their app. Alternatively, data analysis revealed that most of these consumers are ordering for a family, so a mid-week promotion offering 10% off when ordering two or more pizzas would encourage orders outside of the typical weekend rush, for instance.

3. The Key to Successful Consideration Campaigns 

By focusing on building consideration, you can take consumers from simply being aware of your brand to understanding why your brand is the right choice for them. Ads must be relevant and interesting, offer value, and hopefully encourage action. To achieve this, you must understand your specific audience and how best to reach them across their media journey. If you haven’t already, consider how you can implement audience data into your consideration campaigns to more swiftly move consumers down the funnel. 

Digilant’s Full-Funnel Digital Media Solutions

At Digilant, data is at the core of everything we do. We provide in-depth audience analysis using proprietary modeling algorithms built from 18 million+ consumers across 40+ countries, with over 4,000 attributes. This empowers our clients to better understand their target group, focus media spend, identify what creative messaging will have the most impact, and optimize toward the most engaged audiences. Interested in learning more about opportunities for your media to reach your ideal consumers and make a higher impact? Contact us today to learn more. 

Many factors have contributed to the exorbitant growth of programmatic digital advertising: better technology, a need for better targeting, and the introduction of mobile phones, to name a few. Experts no longer question the validity of programmatic marketing or if advertisers use it. Instead, people now look to the future to see how they can work to combat any drawbacks people face to grow programmatic marketing and to help advertisers reach their audiences even better.

Before we dive into the different facets of programmatic, it’s helpful to look at the last decade or understand how programmatic quickly climbed up the ladder of digital advertising to become a preferred tactic amongst advertisers.

Check out our explainer of what you need to know about programmatic advertising here.

Basic Programmatic Glossary

Demand Side Platforms (DSPs)

A piece of bidding technology or ad servers with optimization and inventory links. They allow audience buying via RTB across multiple sources of inventory. Using algorithmic driven evaluation techniques, DSPs can determine which impressions to buy in real-time.

Demand Management Platforms (DMPs)

Used to manage cookie IDs and to generate audience segments, which are subsequently used to target specific users with online ads. Advertisers now buy media across a vast range of different sites. DMPs can help tie all that activity and resulting campaign and audience data together in one, centralized location and use it to help optimize future media buys and ad creative.

Supply Side Platform (SSP)

Supply refers to the seller of media – in most cases, the publisher. SSPs are vehicles for publishers to make their inventory available for programmatic buying via an exchange type marketplace. SSPs are sometimes referred to as yield-optimization platforms. 

Ad Exchange

An ad exchange is technology that enables advertisers and publishers to buy and sell digital ad inventory programmatically with real-time bidding.

A brief history of programmatic digital advertising

To understand programmatic advertising, we have to travel back to 1994 when the first banner ad was displayed. Hotwired.com made a deal with AT&T to display a banner ad on their site for three months. Over this period, the ad resulted in a rumored 40-50% click-through rate, which will astonish any current-day advertiser who is accustomed to industry-standard CTR rates of ~0.06%. 

And for the next few years, digital advertising mirrored this simple and straightforward process. Advertisers worked directly with publishers to negotiate pricing and placement. These ads were about reach, not relevance. 

Flash forward two years as the internet continued to gain more mainstream use and integration into society. At this point, advertisers had jumped on board, and they too wanted to advertise on these new websites. This led to creating the programmatic ecosystem’s first element: an ad server – DoubleClick to be specific (which would eventually be purchased by Google for  $3.1 billion in 2007).  

Right before the turn of the millennium, competition arose for DoubleClick as they couldn’t keep up with the demand. From 1998-2000, we saw a boom of ad servers that allowed advertisers to place their ads on various sites within the network. 

In this same time frame, Google launched AdWords, which allowed advertisers to run CPC-priced campaigns on the Google networks. This isn’t exactly the moment programmatic was born. This only allowed advertisers to run in the Google network; however, this would eventually lead Google down the path of more targeted advertising. 

In tandem with Google’s journey, the beginning stages of programmatic advertising were on the rise. At this time, ads were first-come, first-served (literally). Backed by name-brand recognition and power, Google launched AdSense, their display network, in 2003. Unlike other moments in the timeline of programmatic, this too had its ups and downs. AdSense quickly became synonymous with spam and ad fraud. And what did Google do to combat this? They launched the Panda update, which still affects how sites are ranked by reducing ranking for low-quality sites. 

Google was not the only player during this time working through the bumps and bruises of digital advertising; however, their journey indicates that no company had a linear line to what we know today as programmatic. And it only grows more complex. 

The Birth of Real-Time Bidding

The next decade of programmatic advertising history (the 2010s) cannot be easily outlined linearly. However, most simply put, in 2009, we saw the first use of real-time-bidding (RTB). RTB allowed for the first big wave of programmatic advertising, and the process is as follows:

1. A visitor lands on a page, and the publisher sends a bid request to the ad exchange.
2. The ad exchange makes the user’s profile available to all bidders.
3. The advertiser’s bids are automatically sent to the exchange by the bidding algorithm.
4. The highest bid wins the impression.
5. The high bidders’ creative is served, and the page is rendered.

This entire process happens within one-tenth of a second. This way of buying and selling ads in an open exchange allowed advertisers to bid on specific consumer personas, such as demographic or device type. And the seed was planted. Gone were the days of digital display ads simply used for reach; now, there was an era of relevance. 

But to be clear, because RTB gave people the first real glimpse into the world of programmatic, many people believe that this is the only way to purchase ads programmatically. However, programmatic digital advertising has grown much beyond the 2010-era. Check out our explainer to find out everything you need to know.

The Importance of an Effective Programmatic Partner

Realistically, you could launch a programmatic campaign, and go about your day, week, or however long the flight is running. The computers will work to target the audience parameters and targeting you have in place. However, with such great data available to advertisers, the days of “setting it and forgetting it” should be long gone. 

The element of the human touch remains priceless to programmatic – even if it is a technology-driven industry. Just as programmatic ads’ buying and selling happen in-real-time, so too should the optimizations and analysis. 

At Digilant, we understand that programmatic campaigns need fostering in order to reach their full potential. Our team of highly qualified campaign solutions analysts monitors our client’s programmatic campaigns every step of the way to ensure the audience is reached effectively. Where traditional agencies can be slow to react, overly complicated, and high-cost, we are proactive, agile, and readily available. As we monitor campaigns, we can quickly adapt to what is working while also shifting away from what is not. This also allows us to uncover new audience insights that can be established for use in current and future campaigns. 

Interested in learning more about how Digilant’s passion and industry expertise will ensure your programmatic digital advertising campaigns reach new heights? Let’s talk.

As digital advertising technology has continued to improve and innovate, it has yielded great benefits for advertisers: better consumer insights, better targeting capabilities, better measurement and a better understanding of attribution.

These innovations are essential as the consumer journey adapts and changes at extremely fast rates. It’s estimated it can take as many as 60 touchpoints with a consumer before you make a sale. So, as advertisers, it can feel impossible to keep up with what touchpoints are most essential. Where are consumers shopping? Online? In-store? Which social media platform is trending right now? Are consumers really watching more CTV than linear television? And, most likely the question at the very top of your list: how can I tie all these various touchpoints together to create one seamless shopping experience for my consumer? 

This is why omnichannel marketing is important. Omnichannel marketing allows advertisers to quickly adapt their advertising campaigns without losing any insights, data, or purchase points. It allows for a seamless purchase journey for consumers, every step of the way. As a top omnichannel marketing partner, our list of reasons why omnichannel marketing is important is nearly endless. But, we’ve narrowed that list down to the top five reasons, keep reading to learn more.

But first, what is omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is an approach to marketing that addresses the customer experience on each channel – desktop browser, mobile, retail, social media, podcast, and any others you might use – and how customers transition between each channel as they make purchases.

Why is omnichannel marketing is important?

1. Shopping is Omnichannel

“Omni” meaning “in all ways or places” could not more perfectly define the shopping experience consumers have now. Consumers are making purchases on the train while commuting to work, at the mall in-store, via their music streaming service. Anywhere they are able to, consumers are making purchases. 

A brand can cover all its bases with a multichannel marketing solution, however, the back-end integration needed to tie the entire experience together will be lost. 

So, although it may seem obvious, The number one reason why omnichannel marketing is important is that today’s shopping experience is omnichannel. As advertisers, it is our job to stay one step ahead of consumers to ensure we are meeting them with product offers and ads whenever appropriate. Our advertising process must mirror the way in which consumers are shopping in an effort to stay ahead of the competition and top of mind with consumers.

2. Better Data Collection & Analysis

As mentioned above, omnichannel marketing is important because it gives advertisers a robust full-picture analysis of their advertising campaigns. Gone are the days of analyzing each channel individually, organizing multiple spreadsheets and decks evaluating which tactics or campaigns were successful in driving ROI. 

An omnichannel marketing solution gives you a unified 360-degree view of consumers engaging with your brand – across every step of the customer journey. A single analytics tool, allows you to connect and visualize consumers’ behavior and interest across all campaigns, which allows for you to better adapt your campaigns in the future to meet their preferences. 

3. Provides Deeper Personalization

In a recent study, 90% of consumers say that messages from companies that are not personally relevant to them are “annoying.” And, as demographics skew younger, the necessity for personalized ads is even more important. In that same study, 67% of Millennials and Gen Zers stated that they expect offers from companies to always be personalized. 

With this information, it’s clear that having a personalized ad experience is no longer a luxury, but rather a necessity for brands. This is a rather lofty task for advertisers to take on. But, with a structured omnichannel marketing solution in place, serving personalized ads across a multitude of devices and channels is possible. 

4. Better Synergy Across Departments

There’s a historic division between sales and marketing teams within (most) organizations. No matter the reason for this, an omnichannel marketing solution can help propel synergy amongst members of your organization. 

When in place, omnichannel marketing ensures that every step of the customer journey mirrors the same messaging, product offering, and tone. If a consumer is speaking with a customer representative, they will know which products that consumer has already purchased. Sales teams can send more tailored emails as they’ll know which products or services the consumer is browsing. Whether it’s an email, customer representative call, advertisement, or billboard – the tone is the same. Overall, this unity across departments leads to a better customer service experience and better brand awareness for your company. 

5. More Cost-Effective

There’s nothing more frustrating to an advertiser than wasted ad impressions. Omnichannel marketing solutions take the guesswork out of where you should place your ad. The data and analytics tools ensure that you are reaching an engaged audience, on their preferred channels. And, as those consumer preferences and audiences change, so too will your ad placements. If one week your Facebook ads are out-performing SEM, shift budget quickly and easily to ensure you’re taking advantage of that active Facebook audience. 

You no longer have to wait for a pre-paid campaign cycle to end, with omnichannel marketing solutions, those dollars can easily be shifted to tactics or channels that are performing better. This ability to rapidly change and respond to your campaigns to meet consumers allows for a better overall ROI for your company – another reason why omnichannel marketing is important not just to advertisers but to the organization overall. 

How do I incorporate omnichannel marketing solutions into my digital advertising? 

Now that you’ve read about why omnichannel marketing is important you may be thinking about tools and resources you’ll need to make this a reality. Below we’ve outlined a few options to help get you started.

1. Adopt a Cross Device Solution

In order to tie your campaigns together across multiple devices, a cross-device solution is essential. A cross-device solution, uses deterministic data (such as a cookie or Mobile advertising ID) or individual (such as a customer ID), to link users across browsers and devices and build out a proprietary cross-device graph. Advertisers pass back a deterministic identifier so that associations can be built out for the advertiser’s customer base. This allows advertisers to create better targeted messaging, attribute conversions properly, and avoid flooding users with ads. All in all, a more personalized ad experience for consumers.  

2. Establish an Analytics & Attribution Dashboard

Analytics and attribution dashboards allow advertisers to explore and interact with data through engaging visualizations that offer the full picture of their campaigns. You no longer have to wait for someone else to calculate, analyze, and report on how digital dollars are being spent and optimized. 

3. Enlist a strategic omnichannel marketing partner

Many brands don’t have the in-house resources to build a full omnichannel marketing team within their organization. At Digilant, we understand what an omnichannel marketing solution requires, and we have a team of data-driven experts alongside purpose-built solutions ready to take your omnichannel campaigns from now to next. 

Where traditional agencies can be slow to react, overly complex, and high cost, we are proactive, nimble, and readily available. Our omnichannel marketing solutions span across the full suite of channels: social, programmatic, affiliate, influencer TV, radio, podcast. So, no matter where you are in your digital marketing journey, we know what it takes to scale media buying quickly and effectively. From planning and insights to buying and optimization, you can trust Digilant to manage all aspects of our omnichannel marketing strategy. Interested in learning more? Let’s talk. 

The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup is still a few weeks away but is already shaping into a history-making tournament. The games kick off July 20th as co-host nation New Zealand faces off against Norway. The month-long tournament will conclude on August 20th, with the final match played in Sydney. This will mark the first time Australia and New Zealand co-host matches and the first time the event will occur in the Southern Hemisphere. 

The firsts don’t end there, as it’s also the largest cohort of teams ever to compete. Thirty-two nations will compete over 64 matches. Eight teams – Haiti, Morocco, Panama, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Vietnam, and Zambia – will make their World Cup debut. Looking to secure a “three-peat,” the U.S. team enters the tournament as the favorite after taking home the trophy in 2015 and 2019. 

Advertisers have an excellent opportunity to reach and engage with fans in what’s sure to be a buzz-worthy and exciting tournament. With that in mind, we’ve put together a guide of what’s to come and how advertisers can best take advantage of captive audiences during games and across World Cup-related content.

Record-setting viewership

As the women’s tournament gains global popularity, it’s estimated the games will reach two billion viewers worldwide, an increase of approximately 79% from the previous World Cup. 

While an estimated 1.5 million people will watch the game in person, those of us at home can access the game through the tournament’s exclusive broadcaster, Fox, via its main cable broadcast network, its TV streaming service (FoxSports One) and its app (Fox Sports). This approach enables Fox — and its partner advertisers — to stay in step with viewership trends, driving reach amongst those who prefer broadcast television and cord cutters. Additionally, they will air Spanish-language games across Telemundo and Peacock. 

Media opportunities for advertisers

The 2023 games are poised to set records in terms of viewership. Naturally, as more people watch, reactions, interactions, and fanfare across all forms of media will also increase, providing even more opportunities for brands to interact with fans outside the 90 minutes of play. And if the past is any indication, 2023 will be rife with opportunities for advertisers everywhere; consider, for instance, that in 2019:

• There were 4.6 million interactions across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram during U.S. vs. Netherlands Match on July 7th, 2019
• Alex Morgan, the U.S. team superstar, garnered 1,425,000 social engagements
• The U.K.’s best-selling tabloid saw a record-breaking number of women’s football readers, up 500% from its previous peak
• The article ‘Megan Rapinoe Explains Shock Absence From USWNT’s Women’s World Cup Semi-Final Win Over England’ accumulated 35,000 views alone

Beyond the sheer increase in projected viewership, another trend will create more buzz and opportunity during this year’s games. As disparities in female and male sports media coverage remain prevalent, more fans and athletes are voicing their opinion encouraging media companies to shift their priorities. Among soccer fans on Twitter, 63% felt women’s football should receive equal coverage to men’s games, and they’re backing their sentiment with the most valuable currency they can offer: attention and engagement with content — as many as 60% of football fans on Twitter plan to watch the Women’s World Cup.

As consumers continue to voice their opinion and actively tune into more content, FIFA, broadcast networks, and media companies have taken note. They are spending more on giving the games the attention they deserve, creating more opportunities for advertisers to get their brand and messaging in front of captive fans.

Best Practices and Approaches for Engaging World Cup Fans  

Advertisers no longer solely rely on in-game TV ad placements to engage with World Cup fans. In 2023, the competition is truly an omnichannel experience sweeping nearly all forms of media and channels. Below, you’ll find four tactics advertisers can implement throughout the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup to make the most of the 30-day soccer spectacular. 

1. Leverage ACR Technology

In 2019, 14.3 million U.S. viewers tuned in to the final match on television. This data illustrates TV’s tremendous power today — even in a device and media-rich world. However, reaching audiences on television alone can be a costly endeavor. A 30-second spot during the 2019 championship averaged $506,665, a budget far from reach for most. 

Luckily, advertisers don’t have to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to get in front of fans while they tune into matches. Instead of relying solely on TV, advertisers can use automatic content recognition (ACR), a technology that captures viewership behaviors across linear and OTT. This data is then used to create verified audience sets that can be used and scaled to reach consumers who have tuned into matches and target them within the TV environment and across other connected devices, for a true omnichannel approach.

2. Don’t forget contextually targeted ads

Advertisers can lean on AI-powered contextually targeted ads to showcase their brand next to the most relevant and brand-safe news and coverage of the tournament. Whether a display ad within an article or a pre-roll video before game highlights, advertisers can target specific sites covering World Cup content. With contextually target ads, advertisers can advertise on:

• Match previews and team profiles for all of the countries competing for the World Cup
• Breaking news, opinion, and analysis of all the major storylines throughout the tournament
• Team training and press conference soundbites from players and coaches 

This approach allows advertisers to stay top of mind when audiences are engaged with World Cup content while cutting through competitor noise that might be more prevalent during primetime tournament hours.

3. Think about Paid Search

There will be an increase in searches related to the teams, players, scores, and highlights. However, it’s critical to consider what other terms or topics may be top of mind for fans beyond the gameplay. For example, in the lead-up to the Women’s Euros in 2022, search interest for the “sportswear” category was up 35% compared to the year average. 

Consider how your business correlates to some of these searches and take advantage of Google intent signals to connect with fans actively researching your products.

4. Engage impressionable audiences with Paid Social

FIFA has publicly acknowledged the importance of breaking into the coveted Gen Z audience during the 2023 World Cup. As many know, one of the best ways to do so is through social media, especially on their favorite platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This is the first women’s World Cup since the 2020 boom of short-form video powerhouse TikTok – it will be interesting to see how the app impacts social media usage and impressions throughout the tournament. 

While the exact impact is yet to be tallied, there’s no doubt social media will play an essential role throughout the competition. Take advantage of impressionable audiences through tailored strategies targeting World Cup content throughout social platforms. 

Reach World Cup Viewers and Fans with Digilant

Interested in creating a timely and targeted media plan leading up to the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup? Learn more about how we can kick your media plan into full gear ahead of the competition. Contact us here to get started.

In 2022, 92% of U.S households were reachable by CTV programmatic advertising (according to Statista). The amount of CTV users is growing with more than 110 million users among Gen Z and Millenials alone.  As such, more consumers are choosing streaming services than traditional television formats like cable and satellite.

What does this mean for advertisers? It’s time to make the switch to digital advertising formats like Connected TV (CTV).

And many already are. According to eMarketer, CTV ad spending projections are expecting it to hit $25.1 billion in 2023, $29.3 billion in 2024, and $33 billion in 2025. 

As with any up-and-coming ad format, brands and advertisers need to analyze the channel and decide if it is suitable to implement into their respective omnichannel marketing plans. Based on goals, you need to know how a channel will push your campaign in the right direction of achieving your desired KPIs.

So, to help guide you in making that decision, we’ve outlined seven of the top benefits advertisers see when choosing to implement connected TV and how it complements the other channels you may already be using. Let’s dive in.

What is Connected TV (CTV)?

Connected TV (CTV) is a smart device where users can access streaming television, live television, and the internet for apps/browsing. This includes both devices with a built-in internet connection with pre-installed apps, such as a smart TV, and separate devices that use an internet connection to access content through the television as the display mechanism, such as an Amazon Firestick. Some of the most popular are Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Xbox, and Playstation.

How is CTV different from OTT?

OTT (over-the-top) is content where users stream television content through networks or devices accessed on any device, including Smart TVs, mobile smartphones, tablets, & laptops. Popular OTT providers include Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Disney+, and HBO Now.

Although OTT and CTV are different functions of internet-accessed content, many times they are used interchangeably, and when buying ad placements, you can purchase them across both OTT and CTV, or separately. So, for the purposes of this blog, CTV is used to encompass both OTT and CTV.

7 Benefits of CTV Advertising 

1. Today’s consumers are streamers

The average American household has four streaming service subscriptions and by 2026, there will be 80 million cord-cutting US households. With these platforms, viewers have access to a plethora of shows and movies across networks as well as original content. And when viewing this content, consumers choose where they watch, whether that be a connected TV, desktop, tablet, etc. As consumers continue to flock these platforms (many with ad-supported tiers), a growing audience can be reached through CTV ads.

2. More cost-effective to reach premium networks than linear TV

Many advertisers aren’t able to meet the minimums with linear television. Rather than buying into a television network with CTV, there is flexibility in choosing a price structure: cost per metric (1,000 views) or cost per completed view (CPCV). basis, making it more affordable to reach your audience on the big screen. 

3. More Unique Opportunities with CTV than linear TV

In addition to flexible pricing, CTV reporting is more robust than you typically get across linear TV buys. Advertisers can see which segments are viewing their ads and make adjustments accordingly.

Another unique opportunity advertisers have is to run high-impact creative across CTV. For example, a QR code to drive users to convert, or a store locator to drive them to the nearest store to purchase the product. Television advertising is no longer just for awareness – and these creative formats in CTV advertising allow for measurable conversions. 

4. 100% fraud-free and brand-safe curated CTV marketplace.

One of the biggest concerns advertisers face when creating their omnichannel marketing plan is ad fraud. When incorporating CTV, you’re purchasing via Private-Marketplace (PMP) or an Open Auction, eliminating ad fraud and brand safety concerns.  

An open auction occurs on actively managed supply via major players such as SpotX, Samba TV, and Freewheel. A private marketplace buy is through a curated marketplace giving advertisers privileged access to premium publishers that are: 

• Negotiated
• High-quality
• Human-curated
• Marketing objective-optimized 
• 100% ads.txt verified

5. High completion rates, 100% viewable

Continuing in the realm of ad fraud, advertisers are understandably concerned about viewability. As we shift more and more to a digital world and advertisers and consumers are more accustomed to digital ads, advertisers want to ensure their message is received. CTV is the ideal format to justify these concerns. 

Unlike other digital video formats (which have tremendous benefits of their own), CTV is non-skippable; consumers have to watch the ad to the end to continue viewing their programming. This is why the industry-standard benchmarks sit at 94% video completion rate (VCR) and 100% viewability.

6. Precision Targeting Capabilities

For advertisers who have long relied on linear television advertisements, it’s essential to understand that CTV not only allows you to reach a growing audience but also allows you to target your desired consumers better. When investing in linear television ads, you’re paying for your ad to reach all viewers with different demographics and contextual attributes. Some may be interested in your product, some may be part of your audience, but some may be neither, and in turn, you’re wasting those critical ad dollars.

With CTV advertising, deliver ads to contextually relevant placements through pre-determined content categories, ensuring that you reach consumers interested in your brand or product. For example, at Digilant, we use device ID technology to reach households within your target audience that use CTV devices. 

7. Track online and offline sales with attribution partners to measure the campaign’s impact on performance

CTV has long been considered a channel suitable for the awareness and consideration stages of an omnichannel marketing plan. As most CTV ads aren’t clickable, advertisers have difficulty trying the ads to actual sales. 

However, with various measurement and attribution solutions available, advertisers now have access to this data, how the ad ties directly to sales (both online and offline), justifying this ad format for all stages of the buying journeys.

At Digilant, we use our partnerships with MediaMath, The Trade Desk, and more, which gives advertisers the ability to measure the impact of CTV on sales lift, track exposure across your CTV/OTT campaign, and tie it to offline sales with measurements including: 

• Viewer response and impact by weekday/daypart, device type, creative, campaign flight, app, etc.
• Audience overlap and deduplicated reach by publisher
• Key metrics such as frequency, conversion rates, and cost per visit
• Reach, frequency, and recency analytics along with impressions and responses by geo.

How CTV complements other channels in your omnichannel marketing plan

As mentioned above, CTV is a channel that can be used across every stage of the buying journey. With solutions such as cross-device and sequential messaging, advertisers can continue conversations with consumers once they view a CTV ad. For example: 

• CTV and display: Once a consumer watches a CTV ad, it is followed by strategic display ads with a timely call-to-action
• CTV and paid search: Once someone familiarizes themselves with (or is remind of) your brand with a CTV ad, they inevitably search for products or services to buy. A paid search campaign ensures that search benefits your brand.
• CTV and paid social: Just as consumers are streaming video more, they are also more active on social media. So as they browse their social feeds, you can follow up a CTV ad with either display or video ads. 

The benefits of CTV clearly outline why advertisers are making the switch to this digital-first channel. First and foremost, more consumers are tapping into this TV-viewing form. But beyond the growing viewership, the flexibility, pricing, and audience targeting abilities make it a clear winner.

The icing on the cake? Advertisers can track all marketing efforts in one place with robust measurement and attribution. With these tools, brands have a clear, overall picture of how all digital channels are working in conjunction to take their omnichannel marketing plan to success.

Digilant’s CTV solutions are built for your brand

With the ever-growing popularity of video watching, we recognize the importance (rather, necessity) of a solid digital video solution, CTV included. Our planning and insights strategists make informed decisions based on your goals (clicks or video completes, for example) and where your digital video will perform best. From there, our strategic partnerships with MediaMath, The Trade Desk, top publishers, and a robust curated marketplace ensure your ads are served across premium placements. And finally, we tie it all together with custom-built, automated, holistic analytics services to allow our clients to visualize their data, all in one tool. 

Are you interested in learning more about our CTV solutions? We’re eager to talk more about how we can help you reach your goals. Contact us today.

 Advanced TV in 2023

A Digilant Get Smart Series, Part 2: Align Ad Formats with Your Goals

In our newly released whitepaper, Advanced TV in 2023: The Trends, Technology, and Tools You Need to Succeed, we outline everything advertisers need to know about the rapidly expanding and evolving video advertising landscape. Over the next few weeks, we’ll dive deeper into these trends and solutions over a five-part blog series. If you missed part 1, outlining how to dig deep into data to reach your audience, check it out here.

Download the full whitepaper here.

—

Today’s consumers are opting for streaming services more often, continuing cord-cutting trends, and severing their ties to traditional cable TV. As advertising technology works to keep up with consumer habits, better targeting across these viewing preferences entices advertisers to shift their dollars toward video ad campaigns. This is where Advanced TV, the umbrella term encompassing any advertising that occurs before, during, or after a video stream on the internet campaigns, comes into play.

With traditional broadcasts, the goal is to reach as many consumers as possible. Those who use streaming services have a different experience. By using a streaming service, you connect your TV (or laptop, phone, or tablet) to the internet. This connectivity provides robust data that allow you to segment and target your audiences with more precision. To the average consumer, ads may seem the same as they’ve always been, but that is not the case; ads are now targeted to individual households, giving you more control over your reach, budget, and results.

Why is Video Advertising Effective?

The future of video advertising is bright. Why? Simply put, consumers love video. It is the preferred method for consumers to interact with media. Let’s look at the numbers. Every week in February 2021, consumers in America streamed 143.2 billion minutes of video content. In February 2022, that number went up to 169.4 billion minutes. Today, 85% of American households have at least one streaming service.

So why is video advertising effective? It’s not just because people love it; it’s because people have so much access to it. Consider the following benefits of video advertising:

• More device options and streaming services to choose from for precise audience targeting
• More cost-effective than linear TV advertisements
• Allows for more personalization and interaction with your target audience
• Creates entertaining and memorable brand sentiment
• Provides multiple avenues to advertise through
• Generates revenue from increased market demand

It makes sense then that marketers should put more resources toward streaming platforms, advanced TV, and CTV because that is where the market is. Advanced TV advertising offers more precise targeting, which results in a higher ROI and allows you to meet consumers where they are instead of trying to get them to meet you. With marketing campaigns being so specific to the individual (or individual household), it is crucial that marketers wisely use their budgets to reflect this.

How to Get Started with Video Advertising

In the grand scheme of things, streaming services haven’t been around that long. Even so, there have been several improvements that directly benefit advertisers. As data tracking evolves, budgets can be spent more wisely, and marketers can utilize programmatic video ad spend.

The following guidelines can help you set effective video advertising strategies in motion and ensure you appeal to audiences that are adopting advanced TV.

1.Use the right format for your goals.

Consumers have more choices now in where they want to consume content. Concurrently, major streaming providers are working to keep up with the competition by adding ad-supported tiers, as seen most recently from HBO, Disney+, and Netflix.

With these two things in mind, it’s imperative to ensure your campaign is set up for success from the start by establishing which platforms or services are right for your brand. Some ad formats work well with CTV, while others are more suited to advanced TV. It’s your job as an advertiser to establish which of these options is most suitable for your campaign, however as a general rule of thumb, we recommend the following ad formats based on your goals:

2. Determine if you want clicks or completes.

Are you trying to get people in the door or trying to get them to stay? With consumers having an average attention span of 8 seconds, it’s an important question to consider. Even an extra 15 seconds might be too much for a consumer to sit through.

When establishing an Advanced TV strategy, consider the following:

If you want to drive clicks, it’s best to include a call to action at the beginning of your advertisement. While the goal may not be for the completion of ads, you do want to bring consumers in the door.

Conversely, video completion-based goals don’t need a call to action — they need a strong hook. These should be shorter videos, and make sure you choose the format that meets your desired end goals.

3. Take advantage of non-skippable ads.

With high completion rates, advertisers can reach viewers when they are already engaged with the content they are watching. You then have the opportunity to retarget those who have viewed the ad through site retargeting, paid search, etc. You can even place CTAs like QR codes in the ad for consumers to take action from the first impression.

4. Ensure you invest in ad-supported platforms.

Price is a top consideration for consumers when choosing a streaming subscription, and as more viewers flock to these platforms, you have an even greater opportunity to reach your target audiences. Ad-supporting streaming is an advertiser’s goldmine.

5. Determine if you should run programmatic or direct advertising.

While choosing to purchase ad space directly with a publisher, you have the benefit of receiving premium inventory with guaranteed ad spots for specific programs. However, limitations include limited reach and more expensive buys.

On the flip side, when purchasing programmatically, you have a higher reach with a lower minimum spend. But you may not have as much control over where your ads are placed. This is where you should refer to your campaign goals to choose the best options for your needs.

How Digilant Can Help with Your Advanced TV Strategy

Digilant is an omnichannel media partner built to help companies navigate the often-confusing world of digital advertising. We execute omnichannel strategies that are data-driven, actionable, and effective. Digilant comprises 100+ data-driven media minds and advertising technologists that can help bring your advertising campaigns to life.

If you’re interested in learning more about the future of video advertising or how advanced TV options can work for your business’s needs, contact our team. We’d be happy to help!

For more about the best trends, strategies, and solutions across Advanced TV, download our full whitepaper here.

Looking for more information about setting up an Advanced TV strategy? Check out the third part of our blog series, “Implement Measurement Tools from the Start,” here.

 Advanced TV in 2023

A Digilant Get Smart Series, Part 1: Dig Deep into Data to Reach Your Audience

In our newly released whitepaper, Advanced TV in 2023: The Trends, Technology, and Tools You Need to Succeed, we outline everything advertisers need to know about the rapidly expanding and evolving video advertising landscape. Over a five-part blog series, we’ll dive even deeper into these trends and solutions. To start, we’ll outline the advantages of advanced audience targeting available through Advanced TV ad buys.

And, make sure to head to part two which dives into the different Advanced TV ad formats available to advertisers. Check it out here.

Download the full whitepaper here.

—

Major U.S. cable TV and satellite TV providers have lost more than tens of millions of subscribers in total since 2016. As a result, advertisers are left with lost dollars and fewer eyes on their Linear TV advertisements. Rather than losing out, advertisers are pivoting to Advanced TV –  the overarching term encompassing any advertising that occurs before, during, or after a video stream on the internet – as streaming services and general increases in video consumption take hold.

Despite the many benefits of Advanced TV, it is a very different animal when compared to the linear TV market. Some of the most common challenges we hear about the space include:

• Barrier to entry
• Lack of understanding of how the data works
• Gaps in data make it hard to understand success
• Difficulty attributing customer conversions to specific campaigns
• Siloed data leads to a reliance on demographic or content viewership information.

Digital advertising, after all, is still an emerging space which means advertisers are still figuring it out. While solutions enter the market to combat these common challenges, there is a widening amount of CTV inventory, creating prime opportunities for advertisers willing to work through some of the kinks and reap the benefits of Advanced TV advertising.

The Market Opportunity in Connected TV Advertising

In today’s advertising world, video is everything; it’s the preferred method for consuming content. So, tapping the potential to advertise across video is a huge opportunity.

Look at the numbers behind CTV and OTT opportunities alone. The potential audience reach is virtually endless as more people are streaming TV than ever before. ~85% of U.S. households having at least one streaming TV service, and each household has an average of four streaming service subscriptions. Plus, the number of platforms streaming content is growing. 

In terms of budget, more advertisers are now opting to invest in digital forms since the price point can often be less across Advanced TV advertising when compared to linear. Advertisers can save money in production costs because digital advertising allows you to repurpose video assets across different channels such as social, CTV, and in-stream.

How Advertisers Can Implement Data-Driven Targeting Access Advanced TV

Now that you understand the opportunities and future of Advanced TV advertising, it’s time to take action. Here are five ways to best maximize ad opportunities as CTV takes center stage.

1. Understand Your Audience Consumption Habits

The first step in any successful Advanced TV campaign (albeit digital advertising in general) is to understand your audience and the content they are looking at. 

If you’re accustomed to Linear TV buys, you know they took a broader approach to audience targeting – making purchases based on network or genre. This is where the benefits of Advanced TV come into play. You have the tools and data to dive deeper into your audience, their preferences, and habits to ensure you reach them exactly where they consume content. This is especially important as there are more channels and platforms than ever before.

Gone are the days of hoping you reach your audience; with Advanced TV audience analysis tools, you can see exactly which channels and even programs your audience is viewing. While this is helpful in general, it also provides peace of mind in the fast-paced environment we work and live in. If a new, trendy, enticing channel pops up in the market, these tools enable you to understand if your specific audience is even on these platforms and, as such, if they are worth the investment. 

2. Implement Top Tier Data Solutions

Once you know where your audience is spending time, it’s essential actually to get your ad in front of them. This is where top-tier Advanced TV data targeting and segmentation come into play. 

• Automatic Content Recognition (ACR): Extracting audio and still images from pictures and analyzing content with an algorithm to categorize / segment.
• First-Party Data: Targeting users from a CRM list to the household level.
• Demo or Interest: Mapping audiences available from providers to the household level.
• Contextual TV: Gathering content from publisher to target based on content language, rating, length, show name, etc.
• User Activity: Mapping audience activity (online or offline) to correct household.
• Unique Targeting: Targeting based on Real-Time Audience and Linear TV Capabilities.

3. Don’t get complacent, track your goals and continue to enhance your data

Advertising is often trial and error. Determine the best data to layer on, whether that be audience or content data — or both. Test out multiple data sets to see which ones perform the best. As with most advertising campaigns, experimentation will help you reach your goals more effectively as you learn from previous examples and find what works (and what doesn’t) with your target audiences.

Take time to set up parameters and KPIs that will enable you to see how well an ad is performing. You can also look at audience reception, time watched, and the number of clicks or completes. Ultimately, the goal is to gather enough data so that you can accurately create more effective advertising campaigns and put your programmatic video ad spend to the best use.

How Digilant Can Help with Your Advanced TV Strategy

Fortunately, this process is made easier when you rely on experts like Digilant. Contact us today to learn more about our omnichannel marketing strategies and see how CTV can be a viable next step in your marketing strategy.

For more about the best trends, strategies, and solutions across Advanced TV, download our full whitepaper here.

Looking for more information about setting up an Advanced TV strategy? Check out the second part of our blog series, “Align Ad Formats with Your Goals,” here.

The podcast industry is continuing to grow by leaps and bounds. The most recent numbers show that audiences are tuning in to more podcasts more often, and podcast advertising is even the most recalled type of ad, with 86% of respondents saying they remember seeing or hearing advertisements through a podcast.

 

Even though podcast advertising is here to stay, there are still some challenges advertisers face. For example, as podcast advertising grows, you might question just how effective podcast advertisements will be in the coming months. Will the market become too oversaturated? Is it too late to get started? How do you actually get started?

 

Here we will discuss potential barriers to podcast advertising, what you can expect with podcast advertising trends this year, and our tips to maximize podcast advertising tactics in your brand’s overall digital advertising strategy.

 

Podcast Advertising Trends

 

Podcast audiences are loyal. Whether they have listened since the first episode or binge-listened to every episode upon discovering it, podcast audiences are committed to keeping up with their favorite shows.

 

Even with loyal listeners, podcast monthly listener numbers have grown to approximately 116 million Americans. This data indicates that current listeners aren’t turning to other platforms and that new listeners are being drawn in as new high-value and unique shows enter the podcast market.

 

As this area continues to grow and diversify, there will be more opportunities to reach niche customers and more memorable ways to engage with them. The most important thing to note for podcast advertising is that this platform is almost entirely about quality rather than quantity. There is no need to invest in top-charting podcasts; instead, take the time to find the shows your target audience is listening to and invest there. Ultimately, now is the time to home in on an effective podcast advertising strategy for your target audience.

 

Challenges of Podcast Advertising

 

Such a fast-growing industry is bound to have challenges, especially as the world of digital advertising continues to adapt and evolve. With podcast advertising, the main challenges can be summed up into three categories: measurement, format, and production.

 

Measurement: Fragmented Measurement and Targeting

There continues to be some confusion and concern about how podcast ads are measured and accurately attributed to show success. It is a heavily siloed environment with consumers listening on phones, computers, smart speakers, and cars across different streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. As a result, it can be overwhelming to attribute, analyze, and apply analytics from different advertising buys to build an effective strategy.

 

Format: Balancing Host-Read Podcast Ads and Pre-Recorded Ads

The success of podcast advertising is most directly associated with host-read podcast ads. Consumers feel a personal connection to the host and trust their recommendations. However, host-read ads are more expensive and can date themselves quickly. For example, catching up on a favorite podcast could result in hearing an advertisement with a now-expired code. The solution that bridges this gap? Programmatic pre-recorded ads.

 

Pre-recorded ads offer more flexibility, control, and variety. But it is critical to balance those benefits with the authenticity and personalization of host-read podcast ads. As more podcasts work to successfully incorporate creative ad formats that also allow for dynamic insertion, the more easily advertisers can jump into programmatic podcast advertising.

 

Production: Establishing the Basics

Many advertisers face challenges when getting started. While most other forms of digital advertising rely on visual elements that can be repurposed for different sizes and ad placements, podcast advertisements come with a list of questions that are harder to answer, especially in an ever-changing environment. What are the minimums? How often are creative components switched out?

 

Figuring out the logistics of podcast advertising causes a halt in the creative process many advertisers are familiar with. As a result, advertisers might be hesitant to jump in because of the confusion around who to partner with to create an effective advertisement and where to do it.

 

Maximizing Your Podcast Advertising

 

Even with the challenges of implementing a new digital advertising tactic, the benefits of podcast advertising outweigh the challenges when done correctly. Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating your podcast advertising strategy:

 

1. Utilize measurement and attribution solutions to quantify your investment.

As with any digital advertising method, it is critical to accurately track and analyze the results of your ads to better strategize marketing efforts as a whole. The variety of streaming devices and podcast platforms make this process somewhat tricky but not impossible.

 

Whether you’re already investing in podcast advertising or just getting started, be sure to look into resources that can track conversions across multiple devices, measure the impact of ads across multiple devices, and gain a holistic view of the consumer journey and behavior.

 

Digilant tip: When deciding who to partner with for podcast advertising buys, consider their attribution capabilities and partnerships. At Digilant, we enable advertisers to track conversions across multiple devices and gain accurate insights into your campaigns’ performance — no matter the platform or device the ads are played on.

 

2. Lean into creative, entertaining, and memorable messaging.

Dynamic audio creates a more engaging experience for podcast listeners. Experiment with testing two or more audio spots and leveraging dynamic audio to learn what messaging resonates with the audience and create more messages tailored to them.

 

Digilant tip: For longer campaigns, consider swapping out audio every few months and featuring product releases or seasonal promotions.

 

3. Keep frequency in mind.

Digital audio advertising offers a focused one-to-one connection; therefore, the frequency at which your ad is heard is essential. The goal is to be memorable but not annoying. A good balance for this purpose is a frequency of three to five times a week. Opt for higher frequency if you’re promoting a new brand or a time-sensitive offer. Alternatively, long campaigns and well-established brands should aim for a lower frequency.

 

Digilant tip: Repurpose current traditional radio messaging for a more consistent message delivery across multiple media platforms.

 

Break Into Podcast Advertising With the Help of Digilant

 

Podcast advertising is going to continue picking up speed and traction. These trends mean that now is the perfect time to build a podcast advertising strategy that maximizes your brand’s impact and reaches your target audience where they are.

 

Ready to dive into the world of podcast advertising? Connect with our Digilant team today. We’d be happy to help!

We’re in the midst of a revolution in how we search for information. Rather than typing out a question, people are turning more and more to voice searches. This new trend stems from three primary sources:

• Voice search is faster than typing. Surprisingly, even voice search results might be faster than typed searches. A study by Backlinko revealed that a voice search takes a quick 4.6 seconds to load a results page, while a standard typed search comes in at a sluggish 8.8 seconds.
• The responses of voice assistants have vastly improved since the onset of voice search. PwC reports that with the development of voice search optimization, over 93% of users are satisfied with the accuracy and speed of their voice assistants.
• Voice assistants have expanded beyond phones. Microsoft reports that almost three-quarters of all U.S. households will eventually own at least one smart speaker.

For those looking to level up their SEO initiatives, incorporating and considering the trends behind voice search can be incredibly effective.

How to Optimize Content for Voice Search

The question here for brands is how to optimize content for voice search so that your listing is the answer offered to the consumer. When consumers ask a voice assistant a question, it uses rankings to select an answer. Elements like SEO, Google rankings, Yelp reviews, and proximity-based data are all utilized when the voice assistant searches for answers.

While working on your Yelp rankings is an excellent long-term strategy for your brand, it’s far more effective to optimize your content. A straightforward approach to increase SEO for voice search is by providing content that answers common questions consumers might ask their assistants.

Consider industry-specific questions consumers might ask, such as:

• What is the best cleaning product for carpet stains?
• Where is the best burger restaurant near me?
• Find a chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Answering specific questions in your content can help voice search more effectively find your solutions and boost your brand recognition.

As voice assistants continue to improve, shopping-enabled features will make SEO optimization for voice search even more important. Picture this: A voice assistant user has asked, “Where can I buy a hammer?” Not only does the search offer a location, but it also queries whether the user would like to purchase the product online or add it to their cart — effectively simplifying the entire shopping experience.

How Can You Integrate SEO Into Your Voice Search Campaigns?

Including voice search considerations in your SEO efforts increases the likelihood that your product or service will be offered up to the consumer. As such, there are several strategies that Digilant has developed for successful SEO. Consider the following tips to boost your voice search optimization efforts:

1. Think in topic clusters.

Most AI determines what questions it can answer by examining the main topics on a website, making topic clusters an effective tool when optimizing your content and information.

For example, a healthcare clinic could write an informative article about “how to choose the right doctor for me.” This blog post would provide high-level information that includes all potential patients. From there, the clinic could extend this topic cluster by providing specific information about different kinds of doctors and service lines.

2. Focus on featured snippets.

Featured snippets are lists of questions related to your initial search that appear at the top of a page in Google. Right now, featured snippets are an SEO goldmine. Not only are they the first result users see, but (if your content is good enough) the first part of your answer might also be displayed, linking the consumer directly to your site.

How does voice search come into play here? Voice searches tend to be longer than typed queries and use more natural question structures. By aligning your answers with those that Google uses for a question, your answer is more likely to be the featured snippet that’s read aloud by the voice assistant.

3. Prioritize simple technical adjustments.

There are a handful of more technical improvements and adjustments that can be made when streamlining your content toward voice search trends. Ensure you’re set up for success by accomplishing the following:

• Create a Google Business Profile.
• Ensure your site is mobile-friendly, as 20%of all mobile queries are made using voice search.
• Check your site’s load speed.
• Consider how you can incorporate videos into your strategy, as they are also apt to rank in voice searches.
• Tailor your content toward a multilingual audience if that applies to your business.

What Does the Future of Voice Search Look Like?

Simplifying the purchase process is the way of the future. Remember the example above? Some outlets and businesses already offer this service. Amazon devices, for instance, already use this feature.

Digilant has developed strategies and resources to bring clients the most current marketing tools, as we’ve been studying how voice search is changing SEO. At Digilant, we constantly evaluate our partnerships to ensure we have the best data and targeting options for our clients. This includes ensuring our campaign analysts and media strategists are up-to-date on the most successful strategies to win voice assistant selection.

Additionally, we have tangible solutions that advertisers can implement when voice search marketing is a top priority. For brands looking to use our digital marketing services, this includes:

• Advanced audio solutions to specifically target ads across smart speakers like Amazon Echo, Sonos, and Google Nest.
• SEO and SEM strategists who can tailor your content based on current trends.
• Strategic partnerships with the top providers of voice assistants: Google and Amazon.

If you’re ready to see how Digilant can take your voice search optimization to the next level, contact our team today. We’d be happy to help!