Today’s Best Ads Cost $0 to Start

TODAY’S TV ADS ARE EASY, CHEAP, AND POTENTIALLY REALLY EFFECTIVE

The pinnacle of advertising creativity has always been the 30-second TV spot, partly because it has been available only to the advertisers with the deepest pockets. We  grew up watching Doritos, Nike, McDonald’s, and Apple build billions in brand value through a single media type. The new way that most of us watch shows today is opening up the medium to just about any marketer with an iPhone and a credit card (many platforms have $0 minimum spend).

TV that comes through your cable provider is still purchased in the old fashioned way, but this year the majority of time spent watching will be through something that the industry calls Connected TV. “CTV” is all of the other ways that people can watch their favourite shows through a direct connection to the service providers. Familiar examples include:

• Chromecast

• Roku

• Amazon Fire

• Netflix

• Hulu

• Pluto

• Playstation

Some of those may feel niche, but taken together, more people will watch shows from these sources this year than from traditional cable providers. And the ad industry is taking notice: This past June, Connected TV set a new all-time record with over $1 Billlion in ads purchased, and the industry is set to grow 21.2% overall this year.

This energy has been building for a while, and we may be at a tipping point. Almost exactly a year ago, we predicted that You Are About to Become a TV Advertiser, and at that time, the only thing holding most of us back was the fact it was hard to figure out exactly how this stuff works.

Today, that’s no longer an issue. Literally anyone with a video file and a few dollars to spend can go to a service like AdRoll, or MNTN (yes, that’s the one founded by Ryan Reynolds), upload their file, and start running real TV ads that use advanced targeting and retargeting to find the right audience.

The rates are roughly on the high end of what you’d expect to find elsewhere online, with CPMs in the $30 range. And remember: these aren’t skippable pre-rolls. They can be classic mid-show ads that are much more likely to get people’s undivided attention.

Plus, TV advertisers have long bragged about something that they call the “halo effect,” which is the idea that great advertising on a medium like TV can have a positive impact everywhere else that the brand shows up. Today, we can actually measure that effect, and it sure looks like the halo is real. In a recently study conducted by MNTN, they found the following:

• Conversion rates increased by 9% for paid social and 22% for paid search 

• Average website session duration increased by 49% for paid social and 19% for paid search 

• Email conversion rates increased 68% for B2B companies and 19% for B2C companies

There must be a downside to all of this, right? There is. By opening the floodgate of ad media to anyone capable of uploading a video file, you can be sure that the standard of quality will fluctuate wildly, with some truly awful advertising likely making it through. But then again, I think we can all agree that some of the ads from the traditional model are going to be tough to beat for the title of all-time worst.

If you think Connected TV could be worth exploring for your brand, here are a couple of good places to start digging in:

HOW IS THIS STILL HAPPENING TO SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGERS?

THE NBA IS THE LATEST TO GET CALLED OUT

This week, a social media manager who had been freshly let go from their role at the NBA was surprised to learn that they were still logged into the league’s social accounts. Then, in a moment of retribution, for the whole internet to see, they shared details of how they were treated by one of the world’s largest sports organizations.

The post claimed that social media managers at the NBA (for reference: IG = 83 million followers, Facebook = 47 million) earn less than $50k after tax, receive limited benefits, and often work 14+hr shifts.

Unfortunately, this type of disrespect for the role of social media manager has been going on since before Wendy’s posted its first Tweet. What’s shocking to me is that even one of the largest and most famous organizations clearly hasn’t learned that Social Media Manager is not an entry-level job. It is, in some cases quite literally, the face of the organization and responsible for communicating with the entire outside world.

Now, for most of us, it’s not realistic to offer six-figure compensation packages for our content marketers, but that’s also the point – for many brands, the work that a social media manager does represents many times more value than what they’re being paid. Compensation should scale with impact, and if that were the case, we’d see this wonderful trajectory of opportunities for people who do this very important work.

And the reason that I believe we should be paying these people well is not even (primarily) a labour-solidarity call for justice. It’s because the business results will be better. Professionals will develop, they’ll stick around longer, and the profession will evolve to become even more valuable and more strategic. And we will have fewer social media managers creating PR disasters with their final post as they attempt to burn it all down as they walk out the door.

Read about the NBA’s social media manager drama

YOU CAN NOW SEE WHO’S WORKING WITH WHO

META ADDS BRANDED CONTENT TO ITS TRANSPARENCY CENTER

For a few years now, we’ve been able to use the Meta Ads Transparency tool to check out the ads that other companies in our industry are running. Now they’ve added the ability to see which content creators they’re working with.

Meta has a tool called Branded Content that facilitates connections and transactions between brands and creators, but there has been no way to track those relationships, except to scroll through their feeds looking for the branded content tag. Now, you can search for any company that’s using Meta’s branded content and see not only who they’re working with, but also what they’ve posted together.

The feature appears to be in its very early stage, and a bit buggy right now, but will certainly be valuable for anyone doing competitive research, or in search of a bit of creative inspiration.

Read what we know so far

GOODBYE TIKTOK STOREFRONT, HELLO TIKTOK SHOP

THIS COULD BE AN E-COMMERCE MONSTER

This one is a bit of a tongue twister, and it took me more than a few re-reads to understand exactly what’s going on, but here’s what’s up:

• TikTok has been running a partnership with Shopify called TikTok Storefront that allows brands to sell to TikTok users directly from their Shopify inventory

• TikTok Storefront is being discontinued, as TikTok says it’s looking to build a more robust e-commerce platform of its own

• Meanwhile, TikTok Shop is launching, which will contain the entire checkout process within the TikTok app

• Shopify, along with other e-commerce platforms like BigCommerce, Lightspeed, and Square will be able to hook into TikTok Shop to connect their inventory and analytics

For shoppers, the only big difference here is that the checkout process should be a bit easier, and we’ll likely be able to use TikTok Coins for regular purchases soon.

For retailers, TikTok Shop will no doubt become a monster, and will present challenges similar to Amazon, but there will be huge opportunities for those who can figure out how to navigate it.

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