Why (And How) Media Buyers Enhance Their Ad Creatives To Achieve Campaign Objectives And Smash Client KPI's

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The role a media buying agency plays in the success that a brand sees on Connected TV (CTV) cannot be overstated. You are responsible for planning, purchasing and optimizing your clients' campaigns with the sole objective of achieving two vital goals:

Ensuring your clients achieve their campaign goals, even if they change mid-flight.

Meeting or exceeding the key performance indicators (KPI's) that allow your client(s) to sleep at night knowing they have chosen the right agency for the job.

In this article, we will explain how success-orientated media buyers are enhancing the creatives they are handed in order to accomplish both of the above.

Let's begin by first laying out all of the key areas by which a media buyer does this:

• Strategy Development.
• Target Audience Identification.
• Media Planning and Buying.
• Creative Optimization.
• Budget Management.
• Campaign Tracking and Optimization.
• Reporting.

When it comes to the creative (the focus of this article), we will now dive into what has changed in terms of the tools media buyers now have available, and demonstrate how these new tools have fundamentally altered how you can 'use' the creative you have been given to bolster your ability to hit your goals in ways that have proven to move the dial more than ever before.

The easiest way to do this is to separate the discussion into three simple components:

1. The unique role that only the creative can play in accomplishing objectives.
2. Baking what can often be continually changing elements of your strategy (eg targeting, goals etc) into the creative.
3. Examples of how savvy media buyers have done this for their CTV campaigns, while also considering the broader KPI's that their success as a media buying agency are being evaluated against.

The unique role of the creative

Look at it like this - if the work you do to connect the right ad into the right home is the 'plumbing', then the ad itself is the 'poetry'. It's the single, final

and only true 'touchpoint' you have with the audience you have invested in targeting with your message to. No one sees what it took to get the ad there; all they see is the ad.

And like a shopfront, if you don't stop the viewer in their tracks then they will walk right on by.

How do you stop them in their tracks? Unlike in the old days when attention was all but guaranteed, it has become vital that the strategy you are deploying is complemented by a creative that sends a compelling and engaging message that is relevant to them, in that moment, on that day.

Baking flexible campaign strategies into the creative

This is where things get exciting. While brands are likely to have overarching benchmarks and ambitions that stretch across the year (which likely reflect the broader KPIs an agency is constantly paying attention to), it is often the case that on a campaign-

by-campaign basis their needs or priorities change. This might be caused by sudden changes in the economy, issues with production or even a mild shift in the environment around them.

Either way, in a world that is in constant motion, for a campaign to meet its objectives (be it consideration, favorability or even mere awareness) the ad must also be in constant motion.

Examples and use cases

Here are two real life examples of how media buying agencies chose to work with Origin to enhance the creative they had been handed and ensure they delivered on their client's wishes:

AUTO

At the height of the microchip shortage in 2020, a leading auto brand wanted to shift its marketing budgets from new vehicles to its pre-certified used vehicle program - and tasked their media agency with boosting purchase consideration.

• Challenge: The ad they had for the program was first rate, but the agency needed a way of doubling down on its ability to engage, educate and elevate purchase consideration for the program, without cutting a new ad.
• Solution: The agency leveraged the unique latitude that Origin's native ad extension solution, Slingshot, gave them to extend the existing ad by 15 seconds and used that extra time to present their target buyer with a different piece of relevant and valuable information every time the ad was served.
• Outcome: The media buying agency successfully raised consideration by 39.8% and intention to learn more about the program by 42.8% (vs the original ad that ran without the extension).

TRAVEL

For their fall 2024 campaign, a regional tourism brand tasked their media agency with delivering industry beating results when it came to raising awareness and education about their state over and above other nearby states who also enjoy major tourism during that time of the year.

• Challenge: With every surrounding state all actively fighting for visitors, the media buying team faced stiff competition when it came to making sure it was their client's ad that people remembered and the state they chose to visit.
• Solution: For this campaign, the media agency chose to leverage Origin's next generation of creative overlay solution, Aperture, to layer dynamic and constantly changing information into the brand's creative which engaged viewers through providing daily weather forecasts, localized flight/travel information and up to date foliage reports.
• Outcome: The media buying team successfully raised intent by 35.6% and consideration by 78.7% (vs the original ad that ran without the extension).

For a complete list of Origin case studies - click here.

In Conclusion

Smart planning, intelligent targeting and meticulous campaign tracking/reporting are all vital components of a successful CTV campaign. However, as perfect as a strategy might be, it will only ever be able to get you so far.

With creative technology opening up opportunities that were never previously available to you, savvy media buying teams have successfully demonstrated that if they use the latest tools at their disposal to apply their strategies to the creative itself, then they can not only deliver on their clients' most ambitious needs, but take the results to the next level and all but guarantee their satisfaction.

And that is why your client can sleep well tonight.

If you find this topic interesting and would like to know more, you can schedule a consultation with one of Origin's CTV specialists by clicking here.

ABOUT ORIGIN?

Origin is an award winning provider of creative solutions and services for brands, creative teams and media agencies who want to transform conventional CTV ad creatives into powerful, personal and provocative advertising experiences.

With unparalleled creative capabilities and proprietary ad serving technology, Origin’s unique suite of dynamic ad overlays and native CTV ad extensions allows advertisers to engage distracted audiences and achieve the results they want.

Founded by media veterans Stephen Strong and Fred Godfrey, Origin is driven by the belief that winning viewers today requires breaking free from how it was done yesterday.

Learn more at: originmedia.tv?