The Digital Place Based Advertising Association [1]‘s annual survey of media planners identifies the disruption and decline of television, mobile opportunities and the rapidly growing focus on programmatic as key trends in the rapidly changing advertising landscape.
The study indicates these changes will fuel the growth of digital place-based media over the next several years.
More than two-thirds (68%) of media planners rated TV high in effectiveness today, but just under one-half (49%) believe TV will be as effective in three years.
While television is in decline, planners expect other screens’ shares of media budgets to rise over the next three years: mobile (+86%), online (+67%), DPB (+34%). These results suggest the DPAA’s ‘Video Everywhere’ strategy continues to align with planners’ outlooks. Sixty percent of those surveyed regard video everywhere, i.e., integrated multi-screen campaigns, as important in delivering advertising impressions, with 84% saying they will be important in three years. The planners said that DPB screens will more than double (56% vs 27%) in importance to the video everywhere strategy in three years’ time.
In addition, even though DPB and mobile are often thought to complement each other, there was a sharp drop in the percentage of planners who indicated they would fund a DPB buy out of mobile (12% this year vs 22% last year). This suggests that DPB networks have an opportunity to emphasize their potential synergy and compatible executions with mobile.
Nearly nine out of 10 planners (88%) said they are buying programmatically for all brands they work on today. Among this group, 28% of their total media spend is being bought programmatically. Three years from now, they expect this figure to grow to 48% of budgets. Only 23% of planners said they are aware that DPB can be bought programmatically, but 67% said they would be more likely to recommend Digital Place-based as part of media plans given its availability in programmatic buying systems.
Other Noteworthy Findings
- Slightly more than half (50.4%) of planners said their recommended media plans included Digital Place-based in the past 12 months, up from 45.9% in 201;
- National TV outpaced local TV as a potential source of budgets for Digital Place-based buys, by a margin of 20% to 15%, suggesting that a substantial number of planners regard Digital Place-based as more of a national medium than they do traditional outdoor;
- The three primary reasons planners gave for including Digital Place-based in their media plans were geotargeting (62%), reaching a specific audience (57%) and connecting with consumers on the path to purchase (50%). Notably, the sharpest increase for including Digital Place-based was for video everywhere/video agnostic planning, up to 20% from 9% in 2014.
Barry Frey, president & CEO, DPAA, said, “This study provides quantifiable verification of what we have been witnessing over the past couple of years; namely, that video agnostic/video everywhere planning and programmatic are where media plans are heading, and that digital place-based media stands to gain tremendously because of these trends. This is an exciting time for our sector.”
Results of the study will be presented at the DPAA’s eighth annual Video Everywhere Summit in New York on November 3.
A total of 310 planners employed at full-service, media services and digital ad agencies participated in an online survey conducted May 11-20, 2015.