Yahoo Platforms NZ head of sales Arnaud Calonne writes for M+AD, about celebrating strong NZ content, and the important role distribution plays: During my time working in advertising sales in London and Paris, the industry was always full of praise for the Kiwis who had, and still have, a strong reputation for developing the best creative ideas and delivering award winning campaigns. The number awards won by New Zealand creative agencies at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is just one testimony to their lustre.
But we as an industry cannot take this creativity to the masses without strong distribution tactics to support an integrated marketing campaign. Yes, strong content can make a campaign go viral. The modern Internet is social; it is all aboutfeeds, likes and sharing. It’s never been easier to relay and promote content that wenlike but from a marketer’s point of view, even with the best creative team and resources, it is almost impossible to predict it.
We know ads need to be entertaining and engaging to truly capture the attention of audience, because today we’re essentially asking our audiences to shift through the ‘content-overload.’ As an audience member myself I tend to suffer from ad blindness with a number of brands competing for my attention. This is where distribution comes into play – it’s about getting the content from A to B and helping the consumer weave through the distractions.
Having called New Zealand home for over 5 years, for me it’s all about championing the small but creative local industry. We create authentic and localised content that captures an audience not just on our shores, but cross borders as well. The “Blazed” ad for the New Zealand Transport Agency is one of my favourites – it is entertaining, witty and address drink driving in unconventional ways.
Mr Frosty and the BMX Kid whose task was to capture the spirit of NZ is also one of my favorites. This 3-minute short film was written and directed by a New Zealander and was a finalist in the Your Big Break competition whose aim was to identify the best talents for the next generation of filmmaker. Not a small task when you have Sir
Peter Jackson as a member of the Jury. Both truly deserved a place in the Pantheon of ads! More recently Air New Zealand have successfully captured the attention and imagination of consumers with their Air Safety videos or #AirNZXmas ads.
Here in New Zealand, brands have a number of sophisticated options available to deliver their messages – and we do this well. We deliver content in creative ways using our verified and inferred data through BrightRoll, our DSP and Gemini, our global Native marketplace. Both solutions allow marketers to target specific audiences with relevant messages on a large scale with exchange-agnostic first party data – a Brightroll DSP key offering.
Programmatic advertising is one method where the availability of data allows advertisers to reach a desired niche audience through Display but this year, Native Advertising will continue to be a key content distribution strategy for savvy marketers.
Connecting consumers through content has often proven to be more effective than display advertising as it generally drives more impactful engagement with consumers and ultimately a greater return on investment (ROI) on media spend. As a result, in the next few years, we are likely to see a shift towards Native Advertising with investments moving away from Display. Marketers will also focus their attention on the content we consume post click and not just on the creative or ad placements.
At Yahoo Platforms, we have seen a huge growth with the number of brands using Native Advertising and we are forecasting a double-digit growth over the next three years.
You can already buy Native advertising through Programmatic in NZ but the supply is very limited. Publishers have not made their inventory available through exchanges and yet even though marketers are more audience centric than ever, the environment which they target consumers is still very important.
Marketers use Yahoo Gemini two-fold; the first as a content driver and second as a performance solution because the technology allows them to deliver campaigns using their first party data, finding new consumers with the same attributes.
Industry stakeholders (marketers, publishers and agencies) will have to continue to present consumers with credible, relevant and valuable content and use increasingly sophisticated technology to produce ROI and value to their clients or they will run the risk of losing them.
Yahoo Platforms is committed to delivering the best in breed in term of technology in market in NZ with Gemini and BrightRoll. Coupled with the data that we have available; we believe that we can really make a difference to advertisers wishing to target a specific audience.
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