2016 TV Year in Review: Ryan Griffin, SVP of Strategy, AdColony
The below post is part of Found Remote's 2016 Year in Review guest post series and is written by Ryan Griffin the Senior Vice President of Strategy at AdColony.
We are Entering an Era of Mobile-Only Creative
We’ve already seen significant declines in viewership within primetime TV, primarily in legacy “tentpole” live events, and driven by a lack of participation from younger demographics. If the Olympics, the Emmys and the NFL are any indication of where things are going, advertisers will increasingly realize the inherent challenges of reaching anyone under the age of 30 with a linear TV buy.
So how do these advertisers adapt? They may very well have to truly fork their media budgets, and focus on creating entirely separate experiences for those audiences, imagined and designed for their chosen platform or “network” equivalents – Snapchat, Instagram, Musical.ly, and popular mobile games.
Alternatively, can traditional media companies and networks re-imagine their owned and operated content experiences and distribution models, in a way that can re-engage younger demographics?
We are beginning to see both both publishers and brands develop custom content not just for mobile, but for specific app environments — Turner, for instance, is now creating original shows for Snapchat’s Discover platform. During the 2016 holiday season, Armani sponsored an Esquire pop-up shop that was also imagined and designed just for Snapchat.
But while these appear to be completely separate experiences imagined and designed for a single audience – in this case, millennials – many advertisers are thinking far beyond one audience and one platform. They are building these experiences as one component of a larger campaign that extends beyond, say, just Snapchat, and encompasses a strategic array of channels.
They’re doing this by starting with a strong campaign theme that can translate across all mediums and format, and they are cleverly adapting their creative assets for multiple platforms in ways that capitalize on those platforms’ strengths. In mobile, for instance, there are ways you can leverage the native hardware of the device, such as haptics, gyroscope and camera integration (e.g., selfie ad units) that are simply not available anywhere else. The level of interactivity that mobile software offers, too, is unparalleled.
By creating not just mobile-first but mobile-only components of national campaigns, and combining them holistically with their executions in other environments, brands can successfully create a unified experience that leaves their audience with strong, consistent brand impressions across all touchpoints, not just mobile.”
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