Streaming Advertising

Streaming advertising refers to a type of digital marketing that makes use of streaming media or connected TV (CTV) platforms to deliver ads to end users. The most popular streaming advertising platforms today include YouTube, Spotify, Facebook Watch, and so on. Several major video streaming platforms Netflix and Disney Plus have also announced plans to release an ad-supported tier, opening up a huge new streaming audience to advertisers.

Unlike social media platforms where users are scrolling feeds, streaming advertising has the advantage of users often being more immersed in the experience than others. That said, advertisers need to be aware that their streaming ads interrupt watchers’ experience, so they need to keep them in line with the streaming content, for example by making them more entertaining or visually appealing than other platforms may require.

Streaming advertising is used by marketers in a number of ways and there are several different ad formats to be aware of. For example, pre-roll streaming ads play before a video starts, mid-roll ads play in the middle of a video or audio content, and post-roll ads play after the streaming content. Streaming advertising can also be used to overlay banners that occur during the video or audio content but don’t pause it entirely.

Just like advertising on social platforms, streaming advertising allows advertisers to make use of targeted delivery based on the user’s demographic, interests, behaviors, and so on. Similarly, streaming advertising can often be measured in near real-time, making it easy for marketers to make adjustments and optimize their campaigns based on performance.

Also, given the massive reach of major streaming platforms, streaming ads are relied on by many big brands for awareness campaigns as they offer such a large audience and scale that isn’t always available on other platforms. That said, with the rise of ad blocking software on YouTube and other streaming platforms, streaming advertising does have its challenges. 

Despite this, there is a key trend in consumer behavior towards an increase in ad-supported in recent years, as Forbes writes:

During TV streaming’s early years, the media focused on subscription video. Ads were  seen as a vestige of broadcast media, destined to play a bit part in the future of TV. But the last year has brought a big wake-up call for streaming ad skeptics, and the smart money is now on ad-supported streaming.

Regardless of which streaming ad platform marketers use, it’s essential to track, analyze, and optimize the results of streaming ad campaigns.

As a leader in marketing analytics and mobile attribution, Singular provides the tools for marketers to achieve the highest ROAS possible on all of their advertising, including ads on streaming video or audio. 

Specifically, as highlighted in our guide on OTT marketing:

It’s important for brands to know the audience demographics that their ads are reaching, the performance of their CTAs, and much more. A few key metrics for marketers to measure the performance of their OTT ads include brand reach, brand lift, and offline lift.

Within Singular, marketers gain unprecedented visibility into their streaming advertising campaigns, regardless of which platform or ad type is used. With these granular insights easily accessible, Singular provides marketers the tools they need to make data-driven decisions and increase the ROI of their streaming advertising efforts by optimizing ads at every level, including targeting, creative, and so on.