By: Manish Sinha, Business Development Head - Media, Entertainment & Information Services

Advertising has traditionally been one of the biggest revenue generators for cable network operators and television broadcasters like you. However, your customers today are no longer relying on the TV alone, for their content. Many of them are turning to different online video streaming channels, on various mobile devices, to watch their favorite shows on demand.

Recent advancements in digital technologies have dramatically transformed the way viewers consume Media & Entertainment (M&E) content. Internet, mobile, wearable devices, social media, games, streaming services, and a host of other options have opened up as platforms for integrated entertainment, with TV and cable no longer being the primary or preferred channels.

As a content distribution platform, how do you then enable marketers to deliver significant ROI in reaching out to their target audience? How can you help brands choose an effective avenue of advertising from the plethora of choices consumers are adopting to source their content from, including traditional TV and radio?

Clearly, for you to reach out to different viewer segments effectively, you have to first figure out who they are, what they like and dislike, and so on. And, the very digital technologies that are driving a transformative change in customer behavior, with regard to content consumption, can actually be your silver lining in cracking the consumer engagement code.

Unlike traditional channels where ads are pushed unilaterally in the hope of reaching the target customers, new-age digital channels offer extraordinary scope to exactly pinpoint where your next customer might be. Advanced digital tools can facilitate far greater engagement between brands and their customers, thereby ensuring marketers generate improved ROI on their spend. This vital difference between advertising on traditional TV versus doing so on emerging online channels, can primarily be attributed to the immense potential of customer intelligence management.

In other words, even as digital technologies have triggered a massive disruption in traditional advertising-driven M&E business models, they are also enabling a quantum leap in the way you and your marketing partners can reach your target audience–through targeted advertising.

So, how exactly can you take advantage of targeted advertising, and make it work for you? Let us explore.

Advanced Customer Analytics

The many digital distribution channels used by consumers now mean there is lot more data available about them. The first step to harness this data and make it useful for you is to invest in an advanced customer analytics system. This system should be capable of handling Big Data, and integrating user information aggregated from multiple sources to build an individual profile that you can leverage to take informed business decisions.

It should generate a 360-degree view of every customer across different channels and devices they consume content on. By using this information, you will be able to roll out personalized and targeted ads that are more relevant for your customers.

Do ensure your analytics captures and uses data pertaining to social media, device usage, socio psychographics and location, amongst others. By incorporating advanced information mining features such as predictive analytics and sentiment analytics, you can render better targeted ads that match the best of your ad inventory with the ideal audience profile.

Here are four major aspects of targeted advertising that you need to focus on, as you design and implement a customer analytics platform:

• Behavioral targeting: Under this model, ads are served to a customer based on his/her behavior elsewhere on the Web. By using a combination of data concerning browsing patterns, user actions on portals, and demographic profiles, customers are segmented into multiple brackets. Advertisers can harness this very powerful information set to micro-segment customers, and run event- or time-based promotional campaigns for increased engagement. In short, behavioral targeting lets marketers build greater brand relevance through ad personalization.
• Content and contextual marketing: Another form of targeted advertising is contextual marketing, wherein you can serve ads based on the video or content your customers are consuming currently. By showcasing a directly relevant product or service that the customer has already evinced interest in, your ads can again be made more personalized and relevant. You also have the ability to roll out multiple ads, and position different brands in the same time or space frame, based on the individual user response.
• Social media targeting: You can also use an individual user’s social media profile and behavior to render relevant ads through their preferred content channels. By building a social profile of your users and using analytics to track their sentiments, you can also place time-specific and real-time ads that can elicit better click-through rates and higher conversions.
• Socio demographic and location-based targeting: Unlike in traditional TV, digital media offers better ability to micro-segment users, based on their social demographics and location data. This enables you to even sign up smaller brands that are specific to particular geographies or specific user groups, and serve localized and customized ad content.

Ultimately, though digital technologies have enabled a wide range of advertising options, many across the M&E industry believe the quality of ad content will continue to play an important role in its effectiveness.

What do you think?