The next-gen opportunity: where should marketers invest their media bucks in 2024?

As investment in digital advertising continues to grow – predicted to exceed traditional ad spend in Western Europe to reach $88.42bn in 2024 – it’s clear that a multichannel strategy that leverages the power of both traditional and emerging media channels is key to connect with today’s ever fragmented audiences.

There’s no denying the rising popularity of next generation channels like connected TV (CTV), gaming, digital out-of-home (DOOH) and e-commerce – but why and how can you integrate these emerging channels into your plans to meet campaign goals when planning for the year ahead?

Bridging the gap with CTV

As more people consume video content on multiple devices and platforms, the video ecosystem is evolving rapidly. As one of the fastest growing channels in digital advertising, projected to grow +12.1% in 2024 to reach a total of $33bn in global ad spend, connected TV (CTV) enables advertisers to granularly target households and bridge their viewing patterns to other online and offline behaviors.

With customization and scalability as top priorities, digital marketing company Adpearance, for example, turned to StackAdapt to expand to new channels, using CTV as the main performance driver. Adpearance was looking for efficiency and effective campaign execution to bulk edit campaigns at scale, run multichannel campaigns, and maintain attribution transparency.

It was able to target its ideal audience with high-impact videos on CTV, while still being able to report on performance and attribution, by pairing CTV with display for retargeting and lower funnel strategies, and utilizing StackAdapt’s multichannel attribution features, to reach and report on performance and attribution in a way it wasn’t able to before.

“Our agency traditionally has been very heavy into Google and Facebook advertising, which are very busy channels with higher costs and more competition,” explains Jason Rosen, digital advertising manager, Adpearance. “Expanding our reach into other placements, whether it be CTV or display, really helped us be an omnichannel agency overnight, helping us access new inventory and new placements that previously have been completely untapped.”

For marketers looking to benefit from mass brand awareness and reach, the array of dynamic targeting and creative opportunities available with CTV through programmatic media buys offers a flexible and cost-efficient way to complement traditional media activity – combining the targeting and measurement of digital advertising with a lean back TV experience.

To get started, consider modifying your existing linear TV budget to include both channels to earn more ad placements and reach your audience more efficiently and start leveraging retargeting to individuals who saw a linear TV ad to bridge the gap between channels.

Leveling up with in-game ads

For marketers looking to engage younger audiences, in-game advertising offers an opportunity to develop relationships with a growing, influential and diverse audience. With revenue from in-game ads expected to reach $56bn in 2024 and over three billion active gamers, adding this to your media mix will help get ahead of the game as the channel continues to gain prominence.

As an emerging programmatic channel, advertisers have the unique opportunity to experiment with new strategies and unique ad formats exclusive to the gaming environment – such as blended in-game advertising – to reach new and engaged audiences. What’s more, ads can be optimized in order to maximize exposure and capture the attention of users, with creative messaging that fits within an in-game context, without disrupting the experience.

By leveraging this emerging channel, brands can build brand awareness and loyalty. The first step to get started is to optimize your ads for the gaming environment, with tailored creatives that fit seamlessly into gameplay and including a clear and actionable CTA.

Driving precision at scale with DOOH

As one of the fastest growing media channels – with ad spend projected to reach $45bn by the end of 2024 – DOOH is transforming one of the oldest media channels, through precision and location-based targeting and enhanced traffic data enabling marketers to reach audiences in a hyper-targeted way.

To generate awareness for the tourism board for Visit Isle of Man, UK agency Digital Willow ran its first DOOH campaign with StackAdapt to reach travelers in a contextually relevant state of mind on digital screens across multiple airport hubs in England, Ireland, and Scotland.

To supplement the DOOH activity, which paired personalized creatives with location-specific messaging depending on connection points. Mobile banners ran in targeted areas to reinforce the message to individuals exposed to the DOOH ad, resulting in an additional 3 million impressions served.

“By leveraging DOOH inventory, we were able to pinpoint the most appropriate locations for our campaign, integrating this activity as part of a holistic digital media buy to ensure maximum impact and reach with our target audience,” explains Amber Williamson, chief executive officer of Digital Willow.

By combining programmatic and DOOH, marketers can make more efficient and strategic out-of-home media buys, seamlessly integrating into a multichannel marketing strategy. Get started by understanding in which environment your ads will resonate best, and which format of DOOH will best help to meet your specific campaign objectives.

Winning e-commerce sales

E-commerce has become a vital part of consumer shopping habits; with global e-commerce sales expected to reach $6.91tn in 2024. Choosing the right e-commerce channel mix can boost conversions and enhance customer engagement, at the moment where it matters.

For an e-commerce conversion-focused campaign, the agency Maktagg typically turned to social media. But to reach users on new inventory for Spanish fashion brand Lonbali, it turned to new tactics with a multichannel campaign utilizing native and display ad formats with StackAdapt to drive low-funnel performance.

Dynamic retargeting ads used custom coding to pull in product images that a user had previously shown interest in (including elements such as product name, price, image, and a purchase CTA) to drive a CPA of €3, while pixel tracking allowed the agency to track the targeted user’s journey to conversion, reporting and monitoring which tactics, audiences and channels drove the most efficient ROAS to inform optimizations.

“We had been running social media campaigns as our main driver of conversions for a while, but given the competitive landscape within social media platforms, we needed a new approach that could grant us an incremental audience at an efficient rate,” says Alberto Saldivia, paid media manager at Maktagg.

For any e-commerce campaign, take the time to understand your audience’s journey, and leverage forecasting for your campaign’s planning stage. From there, choosing the right targeting tactics, using rich-media ads, dynamic retargeting, and taking a multichannel approach will drive e-commerce campaign performance.

Embracing the next-gen opportunity

With marketing trends constantly evolving, it’s vital to keep up to speed with what’s happening. As with anything that feels ‘new’, it’s easy to stick with what you know – but here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Consider a balanced approach to experimenting and testing new media channels, combining them with traditional channels as part of a multichannel strategy.
2. Be strategic in how you differentiate the ads being served based on the context of the environment. The key is to grab attention and engage, not turn people off.
3. Consistently test creative, targeting and measurement strategies to determine what is helping to hit your key performance indicators.

Want to learn how to get started with some of these next-gen media channels? Request a demo to learn more about StackAdapt.