Top 7 Benefits of OTT Advertising

Unlike traditional television advertising, over-the-top (OTT) advertising is trackable, highly-targeted, and cost effective. It’s easier than ever to define an audience and engage them directly with a multitouch strategy that ties in with your existing marketing efforts. Modern advertising methods allow customers to see marketing content from a single, unified campaign in multiple environments around the web and visit your website by clicking on your ads directly. 

What Is OTT Advertising?

Over-the-top advertising (OTT) is an increasingly popular way for brands to reach specific audiences on the platforms they are accessing today. Through streaming services such as Youtube, Hulu, Spotify, Pandora, etc., OTT uses video and audio advertisements to reach a set audience while they are streaming through their favorites services on a variety of devices. Whether it is on a smartphone, tablet, computer, smart tv, or any other streaming capable device, advertisements are optimized and adapted to fit the platforms and devices users are streaming on. Through strategic placement, OTT advertisements reach the audiences you want at the right time throughout their streaming experience. 

“Through strategic placement, OTT advertisements reach the audiences you want at the right time!”

The Top 7 Benefits of OTT vs. Traditional Advertising

Over-the-Top Advertising Is Trackable

With OTT media, your advertising campaigns can be tied to a Google UTM tag so that you can watch traffic and conversions happen in real time inside Google Analytics or your analytics platform of choice. You can track metrics such as impressions, cost per completed view, click through rate, cost per conversion, and much more. These metrics allow you to see exactly how your ad spend is performing and who is engaging with your content.

OTT Advertising Can Be Targeted

Traditional advertising is sometimes ineffective because it lands in front of the wrong people. The rise of streaming video, radio apps, social media, and online news platforms presents the opportunity to target a specific audience. For example, Modern Radio Apps can target customers using a variety of tactics including Search Retargeting, HyperLocal, and other custom audiences. This increases their effectiveness and thus reduces marketing costs.

Which brings us to the next point…

OTT Advertising ROI: Very Cost Effective!

OTT advertising not only delivers a strong return on investment, but makes it easier to calculate and track your ROI directly. 

How much does OTT advertising cost?

OTT advertising has a lower average cost per view than traditional TV and Radio, which allows you to make your budget stretch further. For example, Video platforms like YouTube can see a view-rate as low as 0.02 cents per completed view.

Why is there a better ROI on OTT?

For the reasons stated above, traditional advertising is often referred to as “shotgun advertising”. There is a better ROI on OTT due to the built-in analytics that allow you to track user behavior and the comparative effectiveness of your campaigns from start to finish. You can see how many ads were served, who they were targeted to, how many times the video was viewed, the click through rate to the website, then how many turned into an opportunity. This allows you to know when your efforts are over- or under-performing and adjust your strategy accordingly. Best of all, OTT media is compatible with existing ad strategies so there’s no need to make an enormous pivot in your messaging.

Customers Can Click Directly Into Your Website

This simple concept is revolutionary. Until television advertisements can teleport products to customers in their home like Willy Wonka, they’ll be unable to compete with the convenient experience of leading consumers directly to landing pages on your website. This is more enjoyable for the customer, but also provides opportunities for advertisers to convert leads into customers.

Cord Cutters Are Making Streaming More Popular

At this point, YouTube has become the world’s most popular TV network. Approximately 182.5 million people will subscribe to a streaming service this year and people will spend an average of 100 minutes a day watching online videos in 2021. It’s not just streaming video, either. Digital radio services like Spotify have seen a double-digit percentage growth in streaming year-over-year. This tremendous growth presents exciting opportunities for advertisers like you and OTT advertising platforms allow you to capitalize on the growing potential.

OTT Advertising Works: Why It’s More Effective

Over-the-top (OTT) advertising is more effective because unlike traditional television advertising, it is trackable, highly-targeted, and produces a strong return on investment. It’s possible to create an audience profile or buyer persona and target the online environments like Facebook, YouTube, or online news websites where your customers exist. Customers will be exposed to advertising creative that exists in a single, unified campaign and can be tracked all the way into your website. This can be much more effective than a scattershot television advertising approach that reaches everyone at once, with no targeting tactics.

What Are The Best OTT Advertising Platforms?

When it comes to OTT advertising there are tons of platforms to choose from. The two primary kinds of OTT advertising are audio and video. Some platforms integrate directly with large platforms like YouTube, while others are laser-focused on one particular medium. 

One of the best new over-the-top advertising platforms is WAVE. 

WAVE is a fresh new alternative to the un-trackable traditional advertising such as local TV and Radio. Our studio engineers create multiple effective and brand-right audio spots every month to compliment your flagship marketing campaigns, and deliver them to targeted customers on platforms like Spotify, Pandora, and iHeartRadio. Our video content creators can write modern and compelling video commercials with variations to be used on Social Media, YouTube Pre-Roll, and OTT (Streaming video like Hulu, and your local news apps) to ensure all media is part of an overarching campaign, ultimately reducing cost and increasing marketing effectiveness.

Why WAVE Is The Best OTT Advertising Platform:

• WAVE strategies plug in to your existing flagship strategies and marketing campaigns creating consistency across all platforms
• The WAVE platform allows you to reach a better audience by targeting near market users with cutting-edge targeting tactics
• More effective than traditional because of targeting, tracking, and it gives customers a click path directly from the ad
• Lower average cost per view than traditional TV and Radio – Make your budget stretch further.
• Unlike traditional television advertising, over-the-top (OTT) advertising is trackable, highly-targeted, and cost effective. It’s easier than ever to define an audience and engage them directly with a multitouch strategy. Modern advertising methods allow customers to see marketing content from a single, unified campaign in multiple environments around the web and to visit your website by clicking on your ads directly.

Gray Clark
Marketing Manager, Luminary 2