Unlocking the Secrets of Effective Video Advertising: Insights from Industry Leaders
In this episode of the Six Sells Podcast, host Mike Nicholson engages in a compelling discussion with Nikhil Jain, VP of Insights & Marketing Solutions here at Dailymotion Advertising, and Mike Follett, CEO of Lumen Research. Together, they delve into the intricacies of video advertising, focusing on strategies to capture audience attention and drive meaningful engagement.
Key Takeaways:
· Understanding Attention as a Strategy: Discover why attention isn't merely a metric but a crucial strategy for enhancing brand recall and engagement.
· The Critical First 3-5 Seconds: Learn how the initial moments of a video ad can make or break viewer engagement and what tactics can hook the audience instantly.
· Impact of Interactive and Enriched Formats: Explore how incorporating interactive elements can transform passive viewers into active participants, boosting brand recall by 12% and consideration by 20%.
· Role of Context and Creative Strategy: Understand the significance of aligning ad content with relevant contexts to maximize attention and effectiveness.
About the Guests:
· Nikhil Jain: As the VP of Insights & Marketing Solutions at Dailymotion Advertising, Nikhil brings a wealth of experience in developing data-driven advertising strategies that resonate with audiences.
· Mike Follett: Leading Lumen Research as CEO, Mike specializes in understanding visual attention and its impact on advertising effectiveness through cutting-edge eye-tracking studies.
Tune in to gain actionable insights into creating video ads that not only capture attention but also drive meaningful outcomes for your brand.
Connect with Us:
Lumen Research:
· Website: https://lumen-research.com/
· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lumen-research
Six Sells:
· Website: https://sixsells.co.uk/
· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sixsellsuk/
Dailymotion Advertising:
· Website: https://www.dailymotion.com/advertising
· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/dailymotionadvertising/
Subscribe to Dailymotion Advertising for more expert insights into the evolving world of digital video advertising!
In this episode of the Six Sells Podcast, host Mike Nicholson engages in a compelling discussion with Nikhil Jain, VP of Insights & Marketing Solutions here at Dailymotion Advertising, and Mike Follett, CEO of Lumen Research. Together, they delve into the intricacies of video advertising, focusing on strategies to capture audience attention and drive meaningful engagement.
Key Takeaways:
· Understanding Attention as a Strategy: Discover why attention isn't merely a metric but a crucial strategy for enhancing brand recall and engagement.
· The Critical First 3-5 Seconds: Learn how the initial moments of a video ad can make or break viewer engagement and what tactics can hook the audience instantly.
· Impact of Interactive and Enriched Formats: Explore how incorporating interactive elements can transform passive viewers into active participants, boosting brand recall by 12% and consideration by 20%.
· Role of Context and Creative Strategy: Understand the significance of aligning ad content with relevant contexts to maximize attention and effectiveness.
About the Guests:
· Nikhil Jain: As the VP of Insights & Marketing Solutions at Dailymotion Advertising, Nikhil brings a wealth of experience in developing data-driven advertising strategies that resonate with audiences.
· Mike Follett: Leading Lumen Research as CEO, Mike specializes in understanding visual attention and its impact on advertising effectiveness through cutting-edge eye-tracking studies.
Tune in to gain actionable insights into creating video ads that not only capture attention but also drive meaningful outcomes for your brand.
Connect with Us:
Lumen Research:
· Website: https://lumen-research.com/
· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lumen-research
Six Sells:
· Website: https://sixsells.co.uk/
· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sixsellsuk/
Dailymotion Advertising:
· Website: https://www.dailymotion.com/advertising
· LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/dailymotionadvertising/
Subscribe to Dailymotion Advertising for more expert insights into the evolving world of digital video advertising!
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TechnologieTranscription
00:00Hello and welcome to the 6Cells podcast.
00:09My name is Mike Nicholson from 6Cells.
00:12Today I'm going to be speaking to Nicole Jane from Dailymotion and Mike Follett from Lumen
00:15Research, talking of which, big thanks to Lumen Research for sponsoring the 6Cells podcast.
00:22For those that don't know, Lumen Research are an eye-tracking technology company that
00:25are helping brands to plan, buy, optimize, and measure towards real human attention.
00:30So thank you to Lumen for sponsoring the podcast and welcome Mike and Nicole.
00:35How are you doing?
00:36All good.
00:37Thanks a lot for inviting me.
00:39Pleasure to have you here.
00:40Thank you very much for making the time.
00:41You've been a bit of a jet setter recently.
00:42Yes.
00:43You've been all over the place.
00:44Yes.
00:45I have been.
00:46I was in Australia and New Zealand for the past two weeks, helping us expand our business
00:50in the APAC region.
00:52And now I'm back to London.
00:54I'm in London this week to meet you guys and work with Lumen.
00:59Perfect.
01:00So for those that don't know, could you give us a bit of an introduction to who Dailymotion
01:03are, please?
01:04Yes, of course.
01:05So Dailymotion is a video streaming platform, but it is also a player that is present across
01:095,000 plus publishers worldwide.
01:12Additionally, on the advertising front, we have our own SSP that's called DMX, Dailymotion
01:17Exchange, and that's how we are connected with our platform, with the player, enabling
01:23advertisers to deliver in-stream ads and making ads that people love.
01:29My name is Nikhil.
01:30I lead the insights and marketing solutions team there, mainly helping advertisers on
01:35the planning, optimization, and measurement stages of their campaigns.
01:39Okay.
01:40Fabulous.
01:41Thank you very much.
01:42Mike, I gave a brief introduction to Lumen just now, but maybe from the horse's mouth,
01:44you could tell us who Lumen Research are, please?
01:46Like you said, we're an attention technology company.
01:48We use eye tracking to work out if people are looking at the ads or frequently if they're
01:53ignoring them.
01:54People are very good at ignoring ads, and this is important because it's important for
01:58the buy side, advertisers and agencies, trying to help understand which ads get looked at,
02:05which ads get ignored, how that relates to memory and to sort of money and how much you
02:11make out of this.
02:12But it's also very important on the sell side, so working with platforms and publishers,
02:16but also format owners like Dailymotion to help understand which bits of their inventory
02:22are working hardest, suggesting ways in which they could work even harder, but also telling
02:27stories to the market about what's working and why it's working.
02:32Fabulous.
02:33Thank you very much.
02:34So, Nicole, you were saying that you've been working with Lumen for a couple of years.
02:38Today we wanted to talk about video advertising.
02:39I don't think we've done that on the show for a little while, so that's really good
02:42news and it's something very close to my heart.
02:44My nickname in the industry was Mike TV because it seemed that every company that I went to
02:48had a TV at the end of it, Web TV, Blink TV, Telegraph TV.
02:52So I got this Mike TV, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory character, so I got a very neat name.
02:58So I love video.
03:00So can you tell us what we've learned about video advertising generally and then more
03:04specifically what we've learned about attention and video advertising, please?
03:07Sure.
03:08So I think modern day video advertising is fragmented, but that's the exciting part of it.
03:14The first set of advertisers or the advertising spaces are everything that we call the walled
03:19gardens.
03:20So your Facebook, your social media platforms, the advantages are you get your users where
03:26you want to be.
03:27You know a lot about them as well as they are engaged over there.
03:30The second is what we call the open web.
03:33So there you have your articles, your publishers, where people come to watch specific things,
03:38deeper interest, and that's where they engage into these type of content.
03:42And lastly, what you have are the big screens.
03:45So initially it was a linear TVs and everyone where people are watching shows and then you
03:50were putting ads on them.
03:51Modern day it is transforming to connected TVs and different variants of ads.
03:55So people could watch things on demand, what they like, wherever they want to like.
04:00And I think I think that's the exciting part of it, because it's a fact that more and more
04:04people these days are watching videos.
04:06There are a lot of studies and numbers to back this fact up.
04:10And that's where it becomes exciting for advertisers as well.
04:14One more thing that has been happening is everything that's around influencer marketing
04:19and social media.
04:20And with the arrival of that, everyone started pushing branded content and social media ads
04:25that were present everywhere, making video advertising even more exciting.
04:30Now how we work at Dailymotion is what we want to focus on is we want to play ads that
04:35people love.
04:36That's something we believe in and that's something we want to be a part of it.
04:40We have done studies where we have understood that if you just simply put TV ads on online
04:46video ad spaces, users find that boring.
04:50That was a questionnaire that we did last year where we tried to understand that effect.
04:54And that's where one of the mottos that we try to work with is how can we make video
04:59ads which are more like experiences for the audiences so that they don't try to skip it.
05:05They try to they try to enjoy that experience while they are watching the content that they
05:09came from.
05:11Can you give us an example of what one of those experiences might look like?
05:14Yes, of course.
05:15So let us say you are an automotive advertiser and you have a classic video ad copy that's
05:20playing on the television that you are using everywhere.
05:24Thanks to our player and our in-house technologies, what we could do is we can add layers of interactivity
05:30or engagement that as a user, when you're watching it and on the frame, you have the
05:35steering wheel.
05:36The moment you use scroll or hover over the steering wheel, it can start giving you features
05:41about that steering wheel that could apply in a lot of exciting spaces.
05:45So if you are a retailer, whatever products you are showing, we could just add those products
05:50on the right hand side.
05:52And that's where when you click on it, you get automatically redirected to the product
05:56page.
05:57That's like making a two way communication with the video rather than a one way communication
06:01where the video talks to you.
06:04Very good.
06:05And that's helping people in the experience.
06:07Yes, that has been the idea.
06:09And that's where Lumen has been very helpful in us taking these decisions which are not
06:14field driven, but data driven so that we as a company that promotes advertising, as a
06:22company that promotes video, we don't want to take decisions that are based on feel.
06:26We want to know and that it creates value for our users as well as for the advertisers
06:31who are investing with us.
06:33And that's where we have been working with Lumen for the past two years, tracking attention
06:37across different types of inventories, be it on our website or on our publisher's network,
06:43as well as trying and testing different ad formats across brands to do eye tracking test,
06:48measuring the amount of attentive seconds that ads are driving, and then what outcomes
06:53we could expect from these, be it in terms of brand recall, awareness, or going till
06:58consideration.
06:59So yeah, it has been a long journey with Lumen.
07:01It's really interesting, isn't it?
07:03Another thing that I think video does quite well, if we look at it versus display, is
07:08it tends to be on the content or in the content, whereas display is around the content.
07:12So from an attention point of view, what learnings have you had at Lumen over the last 11 years
07:17relating to video and attention versus display?
07:20Is it more?
07:21Oh, absolutely.
07:22I mean, well, the first thing is, when we talk about video, it's not just TV on your
07:29phone.
07:30There are radical different shapes of attention out there.
07:36And we find time and again, what Nicola said, is simply putting TV ads into Facebook slots
07:44or into open web slots is a bad decision.
07:49The second thing is that even within open web displays, some things are these sort of
07:56passive experiences, a bit like mini TV ads, perhaps not quite as attentive as that.
08:02And others are these more interactive and engaging experiences.
08:07And the first thing we tell advertisers to do is to say, what type of box does your advertising
08:14fit into?
08:15Is this a TV ad, or is it like a moving poster, or is it a far more interactive sort of experience?
08:23What do you want to achieve here?
08:25Because that's going to make a really big difference about which type of inventory you
08:29go out and buy, because not all video players are the same.
08:33Some are much, much more highly specced than others.
08:39The second big thing that we've learned is that understanding that there are different
08:45shapes of these video players and different sort of attention budgets that they have has
08:51a really big impact on the creative that you put in there.
08:57Very short form video can be effective, so long as you design it like a poster.
09:04You can't, anyway, don't just put your TV ad in there, you have to make it native to
09:08that format.
09:09And that sounds hard work and tedious, but at least it works then, doesn't it?
09:15It is a bit of an effort, but it's a lot more effective than spending the money on these
09:20formats and them just not working at all.
09:22So you can adapt your video to sort of simplify it, or with other sort of shapes of inventory,
09:33you can take this video and amplify it, and make it more engaging and more interactive.
09:40And both strategies are good, you just have to know that you have to pick one or the other.
09:46And that sort of level of understanding is crucial, because otherwise you'll put the
09:52wrong creative in the wrong box and the results will be suboptimal.
09:56Yeah, I mean, I think we've moved on a little bit, but maybe not as much as we need to.
09:59I mean, many years ago, 2007, I think it was, I worked on the commercial launch of Telegraph
10:04TV, which was essentially the news in video format and some cooking and sport and stuff
10:09like that.
10:10And at the time, because video on demand was quite new, people were sending me 30-second
10:15TV adverts to go in front of a 30-second clip, and I was like, that's not going to work that well.
10:20Imagine sitting through a 30-second ad and only getting a 30-second clip.
10:23And so things have come on, and we see in gaming, don't we?
10:26We see that interactivity and how it really sort of increases the engagement that people
10:32are willing to do.
10:32If you give them a reason to engage, then they will engage.
10:35Like a click isn't really an engagement, is it?
10:37And it's a nonsensical engagement in many ways to expect somebody to click on a video to go
10:41somewhere else, and they haven't even got to the video that they came for yet.
10:44So that's really interesting.
10:45So you guys have been working together for a few years on the patterns and shapes of
10:51attention around video.
10:53You've just released, I think, a brand new piece of research.
10:57So could you tell us a little bit about the reason for that research?
11:01What were you looking to specifically find?
11:04Yep, sure.
11:04So I think one of the first things that when we started working with Lumen, one of the
11:09first things we wanted to assess was what is the impact that our interactive slash enriched,
11:15as we call them, because you can have interactivity, but you can add layers of messaging, which
11:20are static.
11:21And what is the value that they create for an advertiser?
11:24That is where we started working together.
11:28Our first use cases, which were around the automotive sector, they helped us understand
11:33that interactive ads are good because people find them engaging and it helps them with
11:39recall and delivering secondary messages.
11:41However, you don't need to get lost in the interactivity part that you forget the video
11:46itself.
11:47And that's where mixing these things helped us create full funnel ad formats and experiences
11:52where we would learn from, okay, we tested an interactive ad as well as an engaging ad
11:57and a classic video ad.
11:59And our design team was then able to mix these learnings to come up with an ad format, which
12:03we call autopath, where you can have different layers of engagement.
12:06But if someone just wants to see the video, they have the flexibility to do that.
12:12Over time, when we started working across other industries, what we realized is the
12:16same pieces of learning don't actually fall into place.
12:20Meaning when we tried using interactive ads for FMCG clients, we realized that they prefer
12:26watching the original videos because the experience of eating something, the emotions which are
12:32associated with the fact of eating or consuming something, it helps a lot in actually increasing
12:41recall or just giving a higher layer of understanding.
12:43And that's where we realized like, hey, one size doesn't fit all and we need to have a
12:48industry-based approach.
12:50A few general learnings that we have had thanks to these research are whenever we are adding
12:54more layers of developing messages, which are either static or interactivity, we are
13:00able to increase brand recall as well as brand attribution.
13:03And this is an important learning because we are talking about the seconds of attention
13:08that we give and that is one important piece.
13:10However, it cannot be infinite.
13:13You have just 10, 15 seconds and not your audiences are going to give maybe lesser time
13:19on those pieces of video.
13:21And that's where when we start adding these layers for those three seconds, for those
13:26five seconds of attention, how do you maximize the impact that you are creating?
13:29And this is how enriched ad formats are going to help advertisers across them.
13:34And this is something that we have observed across all industries.
13:37So that's the first learning that we had.
13:40The second learning was more about consideration.
13:43When we are talking about increasing consideration, the first few seconds actually matter a lot
13:48because if our audiences are gazing on the right places on the first few seconds of attention,
13:53we see those ads and those creatives generating a lot more consideration compared to other
13:59ones.
14:01The last learning that I had is more focused on, the last learning is more focused on how
14:07we can adapt our ad copies to take better decisions.
14:11Meaning based on eye tracking data and what we are seeing, this technology helps us figure
14:16out where the call to action should go.
14:18Or maybe if your ad has a drop in attention after five seconds, that's when the element
14:24of surprise needs to come.
14:25When you're enriching the ad copy, thus you're retaining the users for a longer time and
14:30thus differentiating your ad copy even more than what they have already seen.
14:34I think these would be the three main learnings that I will derive from the research last
14:39consolidation that we have done with Lumen.
14:41Okay, cool.
14:42So this sounds like a lot of questions and a lot of answers in there.
14:44Yeah, and what's interesting from taking a more top line, looking at how other agencies
14:54and other format owners are doing it, is to see that how Dailymotion are using this data
15:03to make more engaging format.
15:06It isn't just proving, hey, our format is good, it's what can we learn to make it better
15:12and make it better for automotive versus CPG versus luxury versus beauty.
15:18I think that this sort of evidence-led approach and the sort of attempt to be always improving
15:25is really exciting.
15:26I mean, we often in the industry talk about MFA websites, made for advertising websites,
15:31but in an odd sort of way, Dailymotion is an MFA format.
15:36It's a made for attention format.
15:39It gets better and better and better over time.
15:42This is really cool because what you see then is having made the improvements to the format,
15:47things go live, and then the results are better in market.
15:53Our tracking suggests that these ads are getting more attention, and it looks like click-through
15:59rates and recall rates and brand list studies and things like that, those results are getting
16:05better and better and better as the formats are optimized and improved.
16:11It's fascinating to see.
16:13Yeah, that's interesting.
16:15Anything to add to that, Nikhil?
16:16The other thing that we have worked on is also testing these ads across different contexts.
16:21So for example, we tested them on our website, but also across other different types of
16:26integrations that you would have, meaning different types of player being present across
16:30articles, because that's also a part of a big chunk of our advertising inventories.
16:37What we have realized is, thanks to these learnings, of course, your attentive seconds
16:41would differ, but then how can we actually optimize the experiences that adapt to these
16:46contexts?
16:47That's something we have been working on.
16:49One of the other things that we tested was the impact of context itself on the ad copy,
16:56meaning if you put an ad about a FMCG brand, a food brand, on an article that is about
17:03cooking recipes, and then we took the same article and we put an ad that is just coming
17:09from hygiene products, you had huge differences, like half the attentive seconds, even when
17:15you're keeping the same type of inventory, but it's just the knowledge of contextual
17:20targeting or understanding, seeing attention from the notion of context as well.
17:25So you have that element of ad, you have that element of the quality of inventory, but then
17:32is it the right combination?
17:33Is it being targeted to the right set of people?
17:35And I think that's where new interesting attention learnings come into play.
17:40Do you think you'll be able to apply that in your SSP?
17:43I mean, you're not just a format owner, but you're also a sort of aggregator of all these
17:49content providers.
17:51Do you think that'll be something that advertisers can make use of?
17:55So that's a great point.
17:57That is something that is part of our plans for the year.
18:00We are already doing a lot of contextual targeting, given that we understand we are a video platform.
18:06We precisely understand the content of a video, not only at a category level, we have more
18:12than 200, 300 IAB categories, but in our database, we have more than 700,000 precise topics associated
18:19with a video that help us do precise contextual targeting.
18:23What we also do is we try to understand what type of users like what type of content and
18:28map these type of content across different industries.
18:31So for example, high tech ads have a high affinity for tech related content, but they
18:36work on gaming related content as well.
18:39Sometimes they work on finance related content as well, when you think of a of a modern younger
18:43audiences.
18:45And these are the elements that we are already using today in our targeting approaches.
18:49What you said is adapting ad copies or these type of things directly in our SSPs is something
18:54that's part of the plans for the next year in order to see how we can take more attention
18:59driven, informed targeting decisions that go just beyond mixing a creative and an inventory
19:06but taking audience planning or like campaign planning and using attention at the core of it.
19:12Very good.
19:13Very good.
19:13It felt like you looked into the future there.
19:17Yeah.
19:18Is your roadmap showing?
19:21All Lumen's best ideas just come from our clients.
19:24So it's always this way.
19:26Chats like this is so important that sort of melding of different people's sort of experience
19:32and their observations.
19:34I mean, just as I think Lumen has helped Dailymotion learn about how to make better formats.
19:39We have learned from the process ourselves about what makes a better format.
19:43And something for me that I just wanted to reiterate there is that the best formats are
19:48not always the longest format.
19:50You know, more attention is a good idea.
19:52But ultimately, people want to watch the videos that they want to watch or get on.
19:57So it's not just about having a roadblock and forcing people,
20:02interrupting their lives and forcing them to, you know, stare at the ads.
20:07It's about seducing people into spending.
20:10And then also knowing when to get the hell out.
20:13And so we've learned a great deal from all of the projects that we're doing.
20:19And I hope to learn a bit more in the coming year.
20:22Sounds good.
20:23I wanted to come back to something you said there, Nikhil, about the first few seconds.
20:26If you're looking for consideration, if the campaign objectives is around consideration,
20:32then the first few seconds are key.
20:34Now, if I've remembered correctly, the Havas brand metrics and Lumen study that came out
20:39early this year would support that, right?
20:41Saying that if you wanted, if it was a brand awareness campaign,
20:45then lots of little slivers of attention might be good enough with enough frequency.
20:49But if you wanted to move from awareness to consideration, then you needed longer periods.
20:53So what would you say is going on there?
20:57Why do you think that is that those first few seconds are so critical with consideration
21:02objectives?
21:03That's a great question.
21:04So my hypothesis around that question is I think people are a lot more attentive in the
21:10first few seconds.
21:11And I think that plays a key role.
21:14When you're talking about something like awareness, whenever the brand name or the
21:18product piece comes in, they would try to recall it and they would be kind of aware
21:22of it.
21:22But I think the highest seconds of attention are in the first few seconds.
21:27And that's where if it creates an impact, audiences are like that's something we would
21:31like to consider.
21:33The second thing that we have seen based on when we just analyze creatives and try to
21:38map it with consideration, the presence of clarity of messages.
21:43And the fact that messages are present, direct and speaking to the audiences that actually
21:49has an impact on consideration.
21:51And that's where if the first few seconds are attentive, people stay to watch these
21:57messages and they resonate with them.
21:59And I think, Mike, you also have something around messages and the clarity of messages
22:05and the number of messages in some of the human analysis that we have read as well.
22:10Yeah, I think I agree with all of that.
22:13You have to remember that attention is usually sort of path dependent.
22:18You can't get to second eight or nine unless you've been paying attention to second two
22:25or three or so.
22:26And even on the Daily Motion formats, there is a skip button.
22:31You don't have to engage with it.
22:33So that's why you have to earn people's attention quickly at the start to go, hang
22:37on, don't skip.
22:39You know, this is going to be worth it.
22:41You know, and entertain people there.
22:46What happens with video players like Daily Motion is that you do have some sort of guaranteed
22:52viewable time as an advertiser.
22:56And that's often five or seven or 10 seconds.
23:01People don't have to look then.
23:02They can just sort of look away from the phone and people, you see people doing it, you know,
23:06scrolling around, seeing anything but the advertising.
23:10People are in charge of their own advertising, their own attention, rather.
23:14So it's really important to make sure that you give people a reason to watch, you literally
23:21earn their attention.
23:22So that's why I think the first three or four seconds are so important, because then you
23:27might have a hope of getting on.
23:31That's different from, say, TV advertising.
23:34TV advertising is sort of in the corner there.
23:38And you can't skip the ads.
23:40I suppose you can get up and walk away.
23:41That's a lot of effort.
23:44And so there, what you have is you have slightly distracted, you know, on-off attention across
23:50the whole 30 seconds.
23:53Whereas for video formats like Daily Motion, it's sort of as a curve that goes down.
23:57It starts high, and then the aim is to try and keep it as high as possible.
24:02A different, what you might call a shape, different shape of attention.
24:05So that's why it's so important to get that right so much.
24:09And what makes things stick out in the first three seconds?
24:14Well, one message you could take away from this is that you could make an ad of 20 seconds,
24:22but it's only the first three or five that people are going to look at.
24:24So therefore, stick everything into the first five seconds.
24:29And that would be a mistake.
24:30That would be a terrible mistake.
24:31Because what we find time and again is that less is more.
24:36You know, you have to hone your message down to one thing, and you can have two things,
24:43but you have to have one thing and then another thing.
24:45Yeah.
24:46You know, sequencing it rather than having to say one thing, say it simply, say it quickly,
24:50and say it often.
24:51Yeah.
24:51I think that's the way, isn't it?
24:53And that is a good rule of thumb for any communication, but definitely for video advertising.
24:59So you've got to, and that can be very hard work.
25:04You know, advertisers might have 10 things they want to say.
25:07They love all 10 messages.
25:09You know, which one of my babies am I going to kill?
25:13But you can only, you have to be quite harsh about this.
25:16What's the one thing you want to say?
25:18Focus on that, because that's clarity and simplicity is what's going to get people to
25:23stay on with you and perhaps even give you a chance later in a video to say a few more things.
25:28As Sachi said, it's easier to complicate than simplify, right?
25:31So to deliver just one message for an ultimate, like for a car, let's say, like they go,
25:36oh yeah, well it's got power steering and it's got alloys and it's got really good boot space.
25:40Yeah, yeah, that's all, that's great.
25:41You know, but what is the key thing that's going to make me want this?
25:45And it's very hard to sort of hone that down and simplify into one story.
25:48The essence of strategy is choice.
25:51And you say, well, what's the best thing?
25:53Prioritizing what it is that you're going to say.
25:55But strategy is nothing unless you make that choice.
25:59And it's very hard work.
26:00I mean, it's emotionally hard to say, I'm going to take a risk on this one message
26:05rather than hedging my bets and having five.
26:07But by having five, you don't get anything.
26:10You have to have that sort of laser-like focus on simplification and clarification.
26:18That's where, like when we work on complex clients, or if I come back to the example
26:22that you said, an automotive brand might have different messages because a car has
26:28lots of features that you want to put in front.
26:30One of the things that we do is, and that's an in-house solution that we have,
26:34we try to do a lot of consumer behavior studies on our audiences using questionnaires
26:40to try to segment audiences based on the things that matter to them.
26:43So if you want to buy a car, what are the key features that you are actually looking for?
26:48What are your motivations?
26:50Maybe your prime feature is like you want to buy a car because you want to switch to
26:54an electric vehicle because it's good for the planet versus you want to buy an electric
26:59vehicle because it is what represents modern day innovation and technology.
27:04And then we understand these learnings on our own audiences, on our own ecosystem to
27:10segment them across these different behavioral themes and then activate them.
27:15This makes the choice of like you start attention as a strategy.
27:18So you understand what is going to matter for them.
27:21And this way you can personalize the messages that you are actually going to deliver to
27:25them thus making the choice across different messages or like finding your primary message
27:31that you want to highlight across different audiences.
27:36Because what I love about your formats and going back to something you said before is
27:41that say for the auto brands that we were talking about, there are five messages.
27:46But what we were able to do is to show that you have to lead with one and then create
27:51interactivity to allow other people to engage with number two, three, four, and five if
27:57they want.
27:58It puts the power in the hands of the user.
28:03So you have that clarity of messaging.
28:05And if someone is really engaged, they can get all five messages, but it's on their own
28:09terms.
28:10Yeah.
28:11And I think that's one of the sort of next level understandings that I think the guys
28:17at Daymotion have about that sort of sequencing of messaging.
28:23You have to have clarity and you have to create formats that allow for the sequencing of the
28:29messaging.
28:30So you can have multiple messages, but one at a time, always one at a time.
28:34There's a famous Volkswagen campaign in the UK that I always remember.
28:38They started off saying how sporty it was, but they just said it.
28:41That's all they said time and time again.
28:43And then if only everything was as reliable as a Volkswagen, they just said that for ages.
28:47And then they went to a price-based model.
28:50Isn't it quite cheap?
28:51And they showed people surprised by the price.
28:53But they did it in three, like one campaign for one, one campaign for the next thing,
28:57one campaign for the next thing.
28:58And then together, they come into your little Volkswagen brand room and you think, oh, they're
29:02quite reliable, sporty cars.
29:03And they're very, very good value.
29:05I was at BNP when they had a big shift away from reliability to price.
29:13And people got addicted to the clarity of that one reliability message and the ructions
29:20that went on up in Milton Keynes, where Volkswagen were, about, oh, can we shift our message?
29:27Now, of course, people are much less sophisticated in their thinking and have this sort of potpourri
29:33of messages.
29:34If only people could go back to that clarity that Volkswagen needs.
29:37Yeah.
29:38And that clarity is interesting, isn't it?
29:39Because apparently, if you look at what car at the time, and you looked at the reliability
29:43of cars, Volkswagen were only about halfway down.
29:46But if you ask anybody of that age, what do you think about Volkswagens?
29:49They say, oh, they're quite reliable.
29:50So the advertising does work, right?
29:53That's good news for us all.
29:54Yeah, yeah, yeah.
29:56So could you give me either a case study of a campaign that you've run or your dream case
30:03study on how a brand would best work with you with this new insight?
30:06Yeah, I do have a case study.
30:08Because what we try to work on is attention as a strategy.
30:12So you don't want to optimize just one KPI.
30:15Or there's no secret sauce to optimizing on attention.
30:18Everything starts with what you want to achieve.
30:21Try to incorporate attention across different stages.
30:24And then experiment and work around it.
30:27We recently worked with Denon, the FMCG yogurt brand.
30:31And it was for their campaign for advertising on Olympics.
30:36They were an official sponsor of Olympics.
30:39And this is where we used our entire attention program for them.
30:43We started off by testing different ad copies, because they had a 20-second creative.
30:48The fact that they had two primary messages.
30:51The first one, they had a lot of children playing, having fun, and consuming Denon products.
30:57And the second one being they were official sponsor of the Olympic Games.
31:01And lastly, they wanted to put in front of them different variants of their yogurt.
31:07So you have their skier and everything.
31:10This is where our team came up with the idea that, hey, why don't we put enriched ad copies?
31:15Where you can have in a carousel, you could see all the three different products
31:19rolling on the entire time when the ad is live.
31:23As well as it just amplifies the branding.
31:26Because when we are talking about Olympics, we are talking about high ad pressure.
31:30You're talking about audiences who have seen Denon everywhere,
31:33but you want to be in front of them.
31:35This time, with the fact that they have different products.
31:38And lastly, the switch that we wanted to do was the highlight was around that it's a healthy brand.
31:45That you have a lot of its natural source of calcium and proteins.
31:49Like that was the messaging that we had put in the enriched ad copy.
31:53So not the fact that they are official sponsor of the Olympics,
31:56but that these products are healthy for you, which aligns everything.
32:00That's where when we used a pre-campaign eye tracking test,
32:04when we use the normal ad copy.
32:06And then when we use the enriched ad copy, we had an eight point lift
32:09coming from Lumen's research that told us like, hey, like this is the message.
32:14With this version, it is actually going to get delivered
32:16because audiences, when we are testing them, are retaining this.
32:21Secondly, thanks to the heat map analysis that we had,
32:24we saw after the first, it was a 20 second.
32:26So after the first 10 seconds, audiences were fading out.
32:30But in the enriched version, you see a clear deviation from the heat maps from video
32:36to the different carousel of products that we had put in.
32:38Meaning there is something else that they want to focus on.
32:42And this eventually, when this campaign was activated,
32:46in-house we optimize on attention at a pre-bid level.
32:49Meaning we know exactly what inventories are going to work,
32:52what inventories are not going to work in terms of attention.
32:55We call it our attention marketplace.
32:57And then when this campaign was delivered, when we did the brand lift study,
33:02it was in the top 5% of brand lift studies measured by our partner.
33:08And that helped us showcase the value of everything that we did.
33:11Why I talk about brand lift studies for measurement?
33:14Because if I am optimizing for attention,
33:16I will get good attentive seconds by default.
33:18Like that is something that we take for given.
33:21However, the fact that there was positive brand lift in terms of recall,
33:25but also in terms of brand perception and the audience didn't feel the fatigue.
33:29If not, they start rating the ad as boring or not convincing.
33:33You see it in the brand lifts that you have a high recall,
33:36but a very negative perception and none of that happened.
33:39So eventually created an impact that we call a full funnel impact.
33:43You are also increasing the purchase intent of these
33:45thanks to the brand lifts that we measured.
33:47And yeah, for me, it's an ideal campaign because you start with a hypothesis,
33:52you tested it and you had solid proof that it's going to work.
33:56In terms of optimization, there were real optimizations done by the machine.
34:00And eventually when we look at the impact, we try to go beyond media KPIs.
34:05We know we are going to get good completion rates.
34:08Everything that Mike just mentioned, like you're going to get good completions.
34:12You said people are going to click, but at times that doesn't mean anything.
34:15But eventually when you look at the long-term KPIs of the brand,
34:19that's where we are able to create an impact.
34:21Amazing.
34:23And so were you contextually targeting that as well around Olympics content
34:26or around healthy content?
34:28Is that way?
34:29Was that how the campaign was targeted?
34:31I know towards intensive seconds, but it was,
34:33was it also towards Olympic related content or
34:36healthy content to support that they're sort of brand messages?
34:39Yes.
34:40A certain part of the campaign was diffused around
34:44categories that were about sports, categories that were about,
34:48that was about food and drinks.
34:50And the other was, was optimized on attention.
34:53At a post campaign level, we did an analysis of different types of audiences
34:58who eventually were engaging or watching the ads.
35:01The first one that came up naturally was families.
35:04So parents with children, and that was a given.
35:07The second one, which was interesting for us was sports lovers.
35:11And that's where we were able to see that sometimes contextual targeting
35:16goes beyond just video ads or like the link between,
35:20I'm going to show food ads next to food content,
35:22but context also means the seasonality and everything else that's happening around you.
35:28Okay.
35:29I just want to go back to something you said earlier.
35:31I think if I remember rightly,
35:33you said you have 5,000 publishers that your players on, right?
35:36Do you do any work with those publishers to help them understand how
35:39their content is or your content is performing on their sites?
35:44Oh, that's a great question.
35:45So yeah, of course, what we try to do is we try to work with our publishers very closely.
35:50We try to share them with them, the insights that are coming around
35:54and our player team actually creates new features for them.
35:58So now they have a feature where as a publisher,
36:01you have a video and you have an article.
36:03And let's say your article is about sports or football or basketball.
36:08It will automatically find the videos that align with the same content categories
36:14in order to make sure it's contextually similar,
36:17thus saving you efforts from finding from your catalog the different sets of videos.
36:21We do share with them performances across context and things like that.
36:25We also work with them on the concept of attention
36:28because since they are the ones who are actually giving us inventories,
36:32what we try to do is we try to audit their performances across different placements
36:37to see what changes they can actually make in order to improve their attention seconds
36:43and be a bit more present in the attention economy.
36:46We tried doing this, we started doing it this year
36:49and it's something that we want to focus on more next year as well.
36:53Yeah, I think you guys helping publishers understand that they need to have fewer ads,
37:00but better ads is the crucial thing.
37:04And the great thing about social media, from an advertiser point of view,
37:09is you have one ad at a time.
37:12There are many bad things about social media for democracy
37:15and the mental health of teenagers and stuff, I'm sure,
37:17but from an advertiser point of view, you have one ad at a time.
37:22When you go on a newspaper website, sometimes you have 10 ads at the time
37:26and within those 10 ads, all firing at the same time,
37:30you might have a video player from Dailymotion, a very good ad,
37:36but with loads of clutter around it.
37:38And this is a fool's paradise for the publishers
37:44because they think, well, that's fantastic, I've sold 10 ads
37:52and even sold a really good one in Dailymotion.
37:57I've got 10 times the money.
38:00But of course, we don't have 10 times the money
38:03because just because you've got 10 ads on the screen
38:05doesn't mean you have 10 times the attention.
38:07Usually, it means you have one tenth of the attention
38:10because people are not going to sit and watch or look at all of them.
38:14Now, that's terrible news for the advertiser
38:18because they've paid good money,
38:19but they're only getting a fraction of the attention.
38:22It's terrible news for the user
38:25because they have to fight their way through all of these ads
38:28and to get to the content that they really, really want.
38:32And it's actually, ultimately, terrible news for the publisher
38:36because they find it really hard
38:38to prove that this advertising is doing anything.
38:40And ultimately, they're only going to get repeat business
38:43by delivering business results for their clients.
38:47So one of the messages that we have is
38:50just as you have to have clarity on your messaging within the ad,
38:57I think you have to have clarity...
38:59Space for it to breathe.
39:01Space for it to breathe.
39:02And what that means for quality publishers is, I think,
39:06that you have to start having fewer but better ads.
39:11I think that's happening in some of the top publishers now, isn't it?
39:13But the site that you suggest there,
39:16I can see which site you might be talking about when you get there.
39:20And there are ads everywhere.
39:21There are many cities.
39:22Yes, there are, there are.
39:23But I think it was Nick Hewitt when he was at The Guardian
39:27that said, we need fewer but better ads.
39:30And I always, whenever I see him, I always remind him of that.
39:32It really stuck with me.
39:33It felt like a Jerry Maguire moment.
39:34I don't know if you've seen the film Jerry Maguire.
39:37Fewer clients, more personal service.
39:38And he ended up getting fired for it.
39:41But Nick didn't get fired.
39:42Well, he used to use Pinterest.
39:44Yes.
39:45But I think from an advertiser,
39:49it's obvious, but from a publisher point of view,
39:50what does fewer and better mean?
39:53Well, that means I personally,
39:55and there's an advert for Dailymotion here,
39:58which I think solace positions of Dailymotion stuff,
40:01which will cost a fortune.
40:02CPMs for that one ad unit should go up.
40:07But then again, the attention is going to be enormous.
40:09And so everyone's going to benefit from this.
40:13Publishers have to get themselves off the sort of
40:19high volumes of low grade advertising
40:22and move their model towards fewer better ads
40:25with partners like Dailymotion.
40:27Yeah.
40:28And the Telegraph are doing quite a good job of that,
40:31where there's one ad per page now,
40:33and they're trying to work with certain partners,
40:35the brands that just feel like they should be on the Telegraph.
40:38But I think programmatic led us down that road
40:41of lots of ads everywhere,
40:43trying to chase the same eyeballs.
40:44And we've seen the horror stories.
40:46I remember a client sent me a picture of a mobile webpage,
40:49a screen grab of a mobile webpage,
40:51and there was a video player at the top.
40:52It wasn't Dailymotion.
40:53Don't worry.
40:54And then a video MPU immediately underneath it.
40:57And then two videos stuck to the bottom
40:59all playing at the same time.
41:00And you're like, wow.
41:02Yeah.
41:04And quite apart from how irritating that is for users,
41:07and quite apart how irritating that is for advertisers,
41:10just think of the electricity that that's using up
41:14mindlessly, uselessly,
41:17all the drain on the battery.
41:18And of course, we have to burn a lot of coal,
41:21or the wind has to blow very, very hard to replenish that.
41:26I mean, the carbon footprint
41:28of all of these ignored advertising,
41:32or the carbon footprint of the clutter is criminal, really.
41:36Yeah.
41:36It's quite literally a waste of space in all of its forms.
41:40So Mike's already guessed some of your roadmap
41:42for 2025 earlier on in the conversation.
41:46What else is coming as it relates to your products,
41:48and how advertisers are going to use them,
41:50and how you're going to integrate attention
41:52into your offering?
41:53What does that look like for 2025 and beyond?
41:56Yeah, no.
41:56So I think when we started working on attention,
42:00we went ahead with the thing like attention is a strategy.
42:03And that's where we want to focus on.
42:05Mike did crack the code about our predictive audiences,
42:08but that's something we are working on.
42:10And we would continue to work on
42:12where we try to optimize ads and messaging deliveries,
42:16not only around video content and context,
42:19but also trying to take the approach of moments of the day,
42:22because we don't consume videos in the same way,
42:26shape, and form throughout the day.
42:28And the same thing applies across devices.
42:30That's where like what you might be consuming
42:33on a larger screen might not be the same at all
42:35what you are consuming on mobile screens,
42:37and how we can integrate everything,
42:39like understanding user attention
42:41in terms of videos that they are watching
42:44and trying to develop targeting solutions based on them.
42:47Bits and pieces of it are already live
42:49that we have already tested,
42:50and we are going to be more robust around it in the year.
42:54The second thing is we'll continue to innovate
42:57on our creatives part,
42:58but then using attention as something
43:01that kind of dynamically optimizes the creative.
43:05So for example,
43:06we cannot always change each and every inventory that we have.
43:11It is still inventory,
43:12and we do believe that it's part of us
43:15to try to maximize the attention that inventory can generate.
43:18So if we see it's going to be
43:19a good high attention driving inventory,
43:22maybe the normal ad could go.
43:24But if you feel like it's an inventory
43:25that's not on a higher attention grabbing,
43:28see maybe a creative that actually stands out
43:31in some way, shape, and form,
43:32and like tries to create a more urge from the user
43:36in order to grab their attention.
43:37That's something that we are working
43:39on the creative piece itself.
43:41I think the last part relies more on the measurement
43:44and finding the outcomes.
43:47Yes, we are doing a lot of brand lift studies.
43:49This year, we did do a couple of search lift
43:52and conversion lifts in order to see
43:54whether the ads that we are serving
43:56actually do people try to go
43:58and search about them across different platforms.
44:01And is the search actually a lift
44:03rather than just a normal search that could happen
44:05because of the advertising that's happening?
44:07I think these are the areas that we want to focus on.
44:11Trying to see if we can crack the last mile
44:13for video in some way, shape, or form
44:15because we don't have an e-commerce branch
44:18associated with it.
44:20So it's a bit difficult for us to justify
44:22the ads that we are delivering
44:24actually are resulting in more than intent.
44:26Intent we can measure using brand lifts or other things,
44:29but doing this last piece of sales lift
44:31and things like that is where we are trying to focus on
44:34and looking for partners who could help us measure this.
44:37Fabulous. So, closing question then.
44:41Out of the research that you've been doing
44:43over the last few years and what you're planning,
44:45what was the one key takeaway
44:46that you would leave with people
44:48as it relates to your attention strategy?
44:51What should people be thinking about?
44:54We're having a big, long chat there,
44:56but you've got one thing.
44:57What would you like to leave people with?
45:00I would suggest don't try everything.
45:03Start with the objective that you have for the campaign,
45:06for your brand, and what you want to optimize.
45:09And then see where attention actually fits in
45:12as an input for the strategy,
45:14whether it's audience-centric,
45:16whether it's messaging-centric,
45:17whether it's inventory-centric,
45:19or whether it's measurement-centric.
45:20And then based on this input,
45:23define the outcomes that you want to achieve
45:25and then work towards it
45:27rather than blindly optimizing for a KPI,
45:29which in a way is not that difficult
45:32or would become easier and easier as we progress.
45:36The other thing that I would say is,
45:38and that's something I say most often,
45:40like a view is a view,
45:43an impression is an impression.
45:44But what differentiates a good impression
45:47or a conversion-driving impression
45:49is the knowledge that comes along with that,
45:52be it around attention,
45:53be it around audiences.
45:54And I think that's where we need to take these inputs
45:57and drive the conversation forward
45:59and the campaigns forward.
46:01Lovely.
46:01And Mike, one key takeaway from you, please.
46:04I've got two, if that's right.
46:05One is, I think...
46:07One to say is,
46:09just to reinforce exactly what Nico was saying,
46:11about really we need a new word,
46:14which is not attention on its own,
46:15but attention plus outcomes.
46:17I'm sure in German,
46:18there is just this one portmanteau word that you can...
46:21But I think you should always think about
46:23what's the right level of attention
46:26to get your job done.
46:28And for those auto brands,
46:29sometimes it's just people just remember a brand.
46:33Other times it's really important
46:35that they understand the quality of the build
46:40or the engine power or something like that.
46:42Both of those are good objectives to have.
46:45What's your objective?
46:47Because that will radically affect
46:49the ads you buy and how you buy them.
46:51I think that's...
46:52So that's just sort of echoing what Nico said.
46:54But also I'd like to echo
46:57the process that Dailymotion have gone through.
47:00This sort of test and learn
47:02and improve and optimize process.
47:06Lots of people,
47:06when they start with a new metric or new insight,
47:09like attention is one of them,
47:11their main thing is just to try and say,
47:13am I okay?
47:15Is my stuff good?
47:18And that's the natural response,
47:21I suppose, just to work out,
47:22oh, look,
47:24our stuff stacks up very well
47:26versus other people's stuff.
47:27And that's the same on the buy side
47:28and on the sell side.
47:29On the buy side,
47:30lots of advertisers just want to say,
47:33how does my ad compare to everyone else's ads?
47:36Am I good at my job making the ads
47:38in the same way that Nicol is good at his job
47:41and making the formats that do that?
47:43But that really should just be the first step.
47:45We should get over that to go,
47:47okay, so I am pretty good at this.
47:50How can we be even better?
47:52How can I learn something that means
47:54that I'm not just good next time,
47:56but I'm excellent?
47:58Or what are the principles that I've learned here
48:02that can help me inform other decisions?
48:05And I think what's such a pleasure
48:07working with Dailymotion
48:09is that they're never keen
48:11to just sit on their laurels
48:13and just to say,
48:14oh, we've got a fantastic format,
48:15thank you very much.
48:17How can I make this even better?
48:18And that's certainly an attitude
48:20that we can all adopt.
48:21Absolutely, like that.
48:22Life in beta, always improving,
48:24always improving, lovely.
48:26Gentlemen, thank you very much
48:27for being on the podcast.
48:28It's been a very interesting conversation.
48:29I very much appreciate your time.
48:31Thanks a lot.