Agency leaders are in a unique position to shape the media landscape. Here, Johan Boserup, CEO, global investment at OMG, and Paul Limbrey, VP, global agency & partners at Google, share their best practices for brands and partners when it comes to planning for the future of video buying.
It’s no secret that audiences have been fragmenting across screens, formats, and devices, as technology and viewer habits evolve. 2024 marks the start of a transformational shift in how we plan, buy, and measure video, with unified video at its heart. This integrated approach across channels, from linear to digital, is crucial to future-proofing video strategy. In the short term, it can help boost efficiency and ROI. Looking forward, it can prepare today’s organizational processes to meet tomorrow’s challenges.
Of course, unifying your video buying across channels involves challenging some long-held industry beliefs and biases. Even if you’re on board with the idea, you might be unsure of how to bring your organization along.
We’re quickly moving toward a shift to true cross-media planning and measurement. Once it arrives, getting your organization ready won’t be as easy as flipping a switch. Leading global agency Omnicom Media Group (OMG) has been at the forefront of this shift, partnering with Google for best-in-class global planning, process, and integration capabilities. That’s why OMG teamed up with Google and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) to build — and test — a video unification road map that would lead their clients to the future of video buying.
Through interviews and surveys with 190 advertisers and over 90 agency practitioners, we arrived at a set of best practices and tested our thesis by way of real-world pilot campaigns. Based on the results of that experiment, we’re sharing our step-by-step approach to kick-starting video unification and preparing your company for the future of video buying.
Keep your data evergreen
Getting a unified video approach off the ground requires iterative planning, measurement, and optimization — all of which starts with high-quality, relevant cross-media data that represents all key video channels. But, in reality, not all organizations are intentionally calibrating with fresh data from publishers, which poses the risk of teams using outdated data.
Calibrating planning tools with an evergreen feedback loop of publisher data and third-party inputs will keep refreshed, quality data at the center of planning practices. It’s the best way to allow your planning tools to keep up with a rapidly changing ad ecosystem, from new inventory to new ad formats.
OMG has a series of APIs integrated into its planning suite of tools, including YouTube Reach Curves, housed in Omni, the agency’s marketing orchestration platform. OMG uses billions of signals to understand more about audience behaviors, allowing its teams to build more relevant, distinct segments and high-confidence planning forecasts, leading to smarter and more effective investment decisions.
Swap subjective criteria for reportable metrics
The rise of creator-driven content has redefined what “quality” content means to audiences. Take “premium,” for example. Where advertisers used to equate premium content with “Hollywood studio produced,” today, 92% of advertisers agree that creator-produced content can be considered premium. In other words, premium is in the eye of the beholder.
And yet, many advertisers continue to apply these subjective definitions when making channel decisions, limiting the potential to reach the right audience. In particular, the prevalence of publisher scorecards, which rank publishers on subjective metrics like “premium,” impacts mix allocation during the planning process.
Try to avoid using subjective quality filters that ultimately stymie your reach. Objectivity is key here. Find criteria that you can apply consistently, such as whether the ad was viewed, played at an audible volume, or aligned with existing brand safety standards.
Drive stronger reach across channels with common audience definitions
Reaching the right audience is marketing 101. Unfortunately, since there’s no standard metric for breaking through to audiences across linear TV and digital, marketers have come to rely on different audience definitions across different channels, a tactic that can ultimately lead to misrepresented reach.
OMG’s connected video approach breaks down silos between teams that plan, activate, and measure video campaigns.
A unified video approach calls for using the same planning audience. For example, products like Insights Finder, which turns Google and YouTube data into actionable insights, can translate the strategic audience definition into attributes that can be used to find addressable segments across channels. Once you’ve identified a core strategic audience, you can optimize your campaign mix, inventory, and formats to reach that audience and deliver stronger ROI.
As an industry, there are a few steps we can take to achieve the elusive “common planning definition” across platforms and publishers. OMG’s connected video approach breaks down silos between teams that plan, activate, and measure video campaigns by using consistent language, democratized data integrations, and advanced measurement capabilities.
Commit to long-term investments to get the most out of unified video
Along with these short-term steps, video unification will require long-term investments and organizational shifts. Looking ahead, here are more steps that OMG is taking to prepare for the future of video planning, buying, and measurement.
As marketers, we know that integrating the ways teams work across channels is critical. That’s how insights are shared, better decisions are born, and more sophisticated optimization and measurement are unlocked. In BCG’s research, the majority of agency teams indicated it’s a priority to have an integrated video planning and process clearly defined across channels. But not all teams have those processes today.
There are even better ways to reach and meaningfully connect with today’s viewers. YouTube is one of them.
To prepare for the future of video buying, OMG has integrated ways of working and built functional teams across TV and digital, standing up unified measurement squads and investment leads overseeing cross-format activation and optimization. And OMG agencies’ client teams collaborate on ways-of-working guidelines, developing a video learning agenda that builds broad and deep next-generation video capabilities.
OMG is also working to challenge legacy mindsets, including the notion that TV is a better vehicle for awareness than digital. In reality, there are even better ways to reach and make meaningful connections with today’s viewers. YouTube, where billions of fans go every day to connect with millions of creators, is one of them. According to a survey by Kantar, if viewers could only watch one service for an entire year, the No. 1 platform they would choose is YouTube.
These massive shifts in consumer behavior and content consumption require that marketers value all kinds of video equally. Unified video might seem like an approach that agencies and customers have been using for a long time. However, we’ve found entrenched organizational structures and processes make achieving it easier said than done. These concrete steps are a quick way to identify the barriers and move closer to a unified solution today. When a cross-media planning and measurement industry solution is here, your organization will be ready.
For even more step-by-step recommendations and best practices, check out BCG’s guide to unified video buying.
