A new study from TubeMogul suggests that digital marketers who are “always on” – buying media and running ads on a continuous basis throughout the year – have better-performing and more cost-effective media than marketers that plan on a campaign-by-campaign basis.
TubeMogul looked at 6,000 video campaigns and 6.3 billion impressions over the course of the past year, only 3% of which (about 200 campaigns) ran for more than 200 days continuously, which the company defined as “always on.”
The most significant finding was that continuous campaigns had an 87% lower average cost-per-viewable-impression than campaigns that ran for 90 days or fewer. Always on marketing paid on average $0.08 for each viewable impression, while short campaigns paid $0.15.
The most likely reason, according to TubeMogul CMO Keith Eadie, is that “always on” marketing collects more performance data and has more time to sort out the most cost-effective inventory. Cost-effectiveness in programmatic buying is largely driven by optimization, which alters buying algorithms based on which audiences and media suppliers have performed in the past. Because optimization relies on past results, the longer it runs, the better it gets.
Always on marketing performed slightly better on birds-eye view metrics such as average completion rate. Users finished watching a 30 second spot 73.8% of the time for always on marketing, versus 72.2% of the time for short campaigns.
Eadie said completion rate was also likely improved by optimization, as buying algorithms learned to choose suppliers with the highest completion rates.
Brand awareness was also significantly higher for always on marketing – 6.1% lift versus 1.7% for shorter campaigns – but that’s not surprising since always on campaigns have higher volume and thus higher reach and frequency.
“We looked at those three [completion rate, brand awareness and cost-per-viewable-impression] specifically, but in our experience, the longer they run, the better they perform, regardless of KPIs,” Eadie said.
He stressed that always on marketing doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning the campaign model. Marketers can swap new creative in and out to match what’s running on other channels like TV. The key is to keep whatever programmatic platform they’re using running semi-continuously, so it keeps collecting data and optimizing.
“There will always be short-burst, high-frequency campaigns for new TV shows, new car models, product launches, et cetera,” he said.
