How creative agencies can make the most of the potential of online advertising

One of my fellow panelists, who shall remain nameless, complained about a lack of creativity in the online advertising industry, saying: "I actually think creativity has gone backwards. The big creative agencies are not interested in this stuff." We are seeing some interesting digital campaigns from creative agencies, however this work usually comes from agencies working collaboratively with their media agency.

I think this is because in most cases the media agency is better placed to understand the technology, especially from an advertising delivery point of view. A good media specialist understands both the front end requirements – how the ad server works, how best to use content distributors – and the back end of the campaign, ie all the analytics of the campaign.

Smart media agencies can use this knowledge to collaborate with the smarter creative shops on what to produce and smarter creative agencies can tap into that knowledge to help them create a better creative product. It is fair to say that we have seen too many creative agencies that make beautiful executions with incredible production values but miss the bigger opportunity of some of the capabilities of online advertising.

Online video advertising is a classic example of this. Increasing amounts of video content is being watched on mobile phones. But unfortunately, very few advertisers are editing their content for the smaller screen. They need to make adaptations such as more close-up shots of the products, rather than widescreen shots with images that are too small to see on handheld devices.

Another opportunity is the length of the content. Many digital creatives assume online video should stick to the TV-format of 30 seconds. We have run videos of two and three minutes in length, even up to five minutes long, driving tens of thousands of hours of viewing that people have actively chosen to watch. Had we restricted our efforts to 30 second videos we would have missed thousands of hours of opportunity for that brand – and yet there is no extra cost for the media space.

In this case, the creative and production teams we work with are able to respond to the forensic analysis we provide on the campaign, including metrics such as view rate, completed view rate, additional content viewed subsequently on the brand’s YouTube channel, site visits and even the resulting purchases of the products. As we provide these insights, the creative agency can revise existing executions and incorporate these learnings into future executions.

Fundamentally, this represents a change in the behaviour of creative agencies. Unusually, these creatives are as actively involved in the ongoing optimisation of the online campaign as the media agency is. This doesn’t happen as much as it should, but is much harder to do with ‘old media’, because the feedback loop is not as specific or accurate. Creative agencies who get this are better placed to benefit.

This new way of thinking does not only apply to video: increasingly any online content is being seen as a form of advertising and there are a growing number of technologies operating as ‘content distributors’. Media and creative agencies are on familiar ground, but with a twist: now an advert can become much ‘deeper and bigger’ – for example, the images from an apparel advertising campaign could be used in a book, which can also use SEO and digital asset optimisation techniques.

The content becomes multi-use and multi-platform and as such a client expects the media planning and the creative executive to be sensitive to the platform, environment and the time it is delivered. That means both the media agencies AND the creative agencies need to recognise and fully comprehend how these content ecosystems are developed.

Technology is bringing us greater opportunities to do things smarter and more effectively. Online advertising is more labour-intensive than ever before and the industry needs specialists to keep up with the pace of innovation. Active management of creative means agencies have to spend increased amount of time involved with the campaigns.

Simply put, digital media agencies can make the online creative product work better by helping creatives prioritise where to put the effort.