Marketers know that silos are to be avoided where possible, and this applies especially where two codependent disciplines such as media and creative are concerned. Creative and media agencies were united until the advent of digital but are now mostly separate business operations. This means that CMOs need to work with multiple agencies for their marketing needs, making it more difficult to make connected decisions. According to Kantar Media Reactions 2024, 40% of marketers globally are still not confident that their organization tailors content to contexts. And the same percentage of marketers either don’t test their advertising or test very little, making it very hard to achieve this connection and maximize effectiveness.
Top 10 drivers of advertising profitability
The importance of creative quality
Creative quality is a key ingredient of a successful campaign. In fact, it is the second most important element in advertising profitability behind brand size. And it’s the top element within the marketer’s control. Various media elements support creative quality, including multimedia campaigns, phasing and targeting, all adding up to a big part of profitable advertising. This means that high quality ads can make or break a campaign, especially when media budget is low. Likewise, brand health is directly influenced by where advertising is placed. Kantar Context Lab data shows us that ads placed in environments where consumers are receptive to seeing advertising have seven times the impact on their brand, compared to environments where ad receptivity is low. All in all, the multiplier effects from an integrated end-to-end effectiveness program that considers both creative and media are huge.
Multiplier effects from integrated end-to-end creative and media programs
The creative challenges of fragmented media channels
Ensuring that there is effective interplay between creative and media is especially hard in a fragmented marketing landscape. We need to consider more than the difference between channels, such as whether a TV ad can work as an online video ad. Online video ads themselves can be placed on many different media platforms, each with their own intrinsic benefits and watchouts. Do we need a static, audio or video ad to convey a certain message? If we choose audio, should it be on radio, podcasts or music streaming websites? There is no one recipe to success. Marketers need to allocate the time and budget to evaluating and optimizing an ad in its environment, and research agencies need to make this process easy for their clients.
There are many moving pieces to consider when you are planning media and creative together. For example, consumers are in different moods when they are exposed to different media. If we are considering Out-Of-Home (OOH) dwell time comes into play. Roadside billboards need to have instant meaning, as people are passing by at speed. Transport media has more time to land its message, with passengers looking to kill time. And those are only two examples of thinking about media mix decisions.
Mindset is important too. With the advancement of video advertising beyond TV and cinema in the last decade, the need to play into the strengths of a platform becomes even more prominent. For example, while watching live TV, people are looking to alleviate their boredom and relax, looking for entertainment. A fun story-telling ad can work well here. When people are using a computer, they are more goal-oriented and likely have much less tolerance for being interrupted. Advertising that is relevant to them will likely do a better job. On top of that, each media brand has its own strengths and weaknesses that need to be considered.
Context is Important – a case study
A LINK case study for a brand launch in Europe showcases the complications of placing an ad in multiple platforms unfit for purpose. The same video ad was tested across TV, Facebook and YouTube contexts, where engagement across the digital platforms was less positive than for the TV copy, with many viewers finding the ad dull. In the same campaign, branding was poor in the Facebook context where skipping is most prevalent and average skip time comes before the brand was introduced. So this ad that was built for TV worked the best on TV, and was especially unfit to be a skippable ad. The Facebook execution needed a strong hook to keep viewers watching and very early visual branding to ensure those who skip quickly still get exposed to the brand to create awareness. On the other hand, the YouTube execution needed to be entertaining enough to not put off viewers whose experience is interrupted. Overall, we know from our LINK database that 1 in 3 TV ads don’t perform well when placed in a digital context.
LINK+ case study for a brand launch
Recommendations for effective integration
The ads on each platform need to be made or edited to consider what that platform’s nature is, feeling authentic and belonging there, while still standing out from the clutter of ads online. But it is not only customization that matters. A creative’s nature also needs to be considered down to the phasing and laydown of a campaign. For example, the messaging of a campaign and whether these differ from ad to ad needs to be decided depending on the laydown, and vice versa. Different channels may communicate different ideas as long as messages tie to the same campaign idea and carry the same distinctive assets. This is the most flexible method of creative integration across channels and can work with different levels of exposure overlap between channels. When the activity is planned to have low levels of exposure overlap, it might be acceptable to use the same message communicated in the same way across channels.
Message integration across channels
It’s important to keep media and creative connected while making marketing decisions – and it is undeniably a complicated process. While there is industry talk on integrating the two areas, as long as the business structures don’t change, marketers need to create those connections themselves. The need to test and evaluate, test and learn, test and optimize is essential to make it easier. To plan together, marketers need to measure together. Here are the key points to ensuring media and creative go hand in hand:
Test your creatives throughout the process
- Optimize your ads according to context
- Evaluate your media plans holistically but also down to placement level
- For testing ad effectiveness at scale and at speed, use AI measurement tools
- Apply your media and creative learnings from previous campaigns to your future plans
To learn more about our Media & Creative solutions helping you optimize your advertising campaigns ROI, visit Media Effectiveness and Creative Testing and Optimisation