Earlier this yr, retailer CB2, a subsidiary of Crate & Barrel geared toward younger, modern, urban consumers, launched a social marketing campaign showing its latest “Best of” collection. A video of product shots with a techno soundtrack and a shoppable QR link were posted on the corporate’s Instagram account, delivering greater than 81,000 views and greater than 200 likes.
With decent results like these — not to say the convenience of making content for social — the marketer has already been repurposing content for display ads. But, as consumer viewing time grows increasingly fragmented, could it also take the content to the quickly growing connected TV (CTV) space? Tobin Schiller, CB2’s vice chairman of promoting, decided to search out out.
“We actually need to be sure that we’ve got a various media mix to support our brand,” Schiller said. “We are all the time looking for latest ways to push interest and brand awareness, and that is something we were excited by testing.”
Living-room ready
The brand agreed to check a latest product from one in every of its vendors, Spaceback, which was already working with CB2 on robotically converting a few of its social media content into display promoting. The creative automation platform was on the brink of roll out an extension that may turn videos created for social media into ads for digital video channels.
“The barrier to entry to CTV has come down on the media side, but it surely’s still very expensive to create 15-second, 30-second 4K television spots,” said Casey Saran, co-founder and CEO of Spaceback. “Brands are creating a number of social media content that is basically strong, and it’s way too good to not be within the lounge.”
Spaceback’s latest product, Social CTV, can turn popular social media posts into video ads appropriate for connected TV. In addition to the video, the ads can highlight a brand’s social media messaging and near real-time updating of a post’s engagement. The video for CB2, for instance, included animated hearts to indicate people loving the brand.
“It’s really framed like a social post on a television screen, with the social data on it,” Saran said. “It’s authentically recreating an Instagram real as a 15-second television ad for CTV.”
A distinct relationship with ads
That may not sound like an enormous leap, but in the buyer’s mind, social media and TV are very different experiences. Many don’t consider branded content on social as promoting but more like their friends’ posts that they follow and have interaction with, Saran said.
“This is a approach to change the connection that folks have with promoting by bringing those elements that feel more like content [to a different channel] and generate engagement with brands,” Saran said. “It’s about taking that voice and tone and unique content and bringing it outside the walled garden of social media. We’re not attempting to make social media more like ads, we’re attempting to make ads more like social media content.”
Spaceback’s process is fully automated and uses a CPM-based pricing model, enabling brands to run multiple messages concurrently while capitalizing on viral posts and trending content. This might help marketers avoid content fatigue and frequency challenges, Saran said. CB2’s Schiller agreed.
“It allows us to be nimble and have something extra on the creative side that we are able to get to market really fast,” Schiller says. “We’re in a position to take proven winners on our social channels and get into a complete latest channel with zero extra effort on our team.”
While Schiller declined to debate specific metrics for the “Best of” campaign, the outcomes were strong enough to persuade the marketer to launch one other test in the autumn and possibly others in the longer term.
“We know that social is where people spend most of their time as of late,” Schiller said. “Anything that’s engaging and a serious brand moment for us looks like a probable candidate to translate into CTV. I’d imagine we are going to proceed to check and learn what works best in these formats.”
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