The key challenge at hand? Brands and marketers find it more and more difficult to reach their intended audiences at a time when more users are adopting filtering/blocking software to ensure greater privacy and provide a less cluttered digital experience. People are completely overwhelmed by the amount of advertising on the internet — there is so much waste — both on money and impressions — but there’s a way to optimize to prevent this.
Eyeo convened this conversation to explore how ad creatives and brands are responding to these needs while still providing user-centric digital experiences that speak to high-value audiences.
So, what is a potential way forward? Many marketers are adopting a “less is more” approach and realizing that low ad density environments yield better results in terms of ad recall, brand trust and conversion rates.
"If you light a match in an open field, you can see it from five to 10 miles away,” shared Frank Einecke, CEO of eyeo. “If you light a match in a football stadium, no one sees it and you burn the person next to you.”
Terence Kawaja, CEO of LUMA Partners, who served as one of the provocateurs at the session, added, “People, often referred to as ‘consumers,’ are the only other principals in the marketing equation — along with marketers — and need to be treated as such. The advertising ecosystem would be well-served to respect the user experience from clutter to privacy.”
The eyeo team follows that narrative, speaking about how advertisers can create tactics and formats that enable a fair and mutual value exchange online, while also ensuring they have a positive impact on our planet and society.
“Attention is, at the moment, replacing viewability as a core metric,” notes Felix Derkum, director, advertiser growth at eyeo. “We need to optimize for attention and make sure that publishers with great content benefit and can actually monetize their content.”
“There’s a real desire in the industry to clean up some of the clutter that we've created for consumers and people — to get back to basics and create an advertising experience that is focused on quality over quantity,” said Alison Weissbrot, editor of Campaign US, who also acted as a provocateur at the event. “There are tons of benefits to focusing on quality over quantity — from gaining consumer trust to being a more sustainable company.”
Calming fears
"Ad filtering" can seem like a scary term for advertisers. Derkum seeks to calm that fear by discussing eyeo's technology that can help brands eliminate waste while serving more high-quality advertising that resonates with people. This can reduce clutter and carbon emissions associated with ad waste along the way.
Meanwhile, a more streamlined approach not only delivers a better user experience, it also lowers the digital carbon footprint by eliminating ads that no one sees and reduces the risk of turning consumers off by barraging them with the same ad too frequently.
“Our advertising solutions make sure that the ratio between content and ads is reasonable,” he said. “That's a great way forward, [as is] a more balanced, fair and mutually beneficial value exchange on the internet — one that should definitely consider a user at the center.”
Kawaja added, “There’s tremendous waste in the bid stream and whether you’re motivated by enhanced profits or saving the planet, they're both green.”
In addition, Derkum noted that from an agency buy-side perspective eyeo’s ad-filtering solution is meeting the agency need to “find sustainable advertising options that meet clients’ performance and sustainability goals while also providing a good user experience.”
Once brands do the work of making their advertising more sustainable, they should communicate those efforts to consumers. However, efforts need to be meaningful to really have an impact with the audience.
“It needs to be visible, credible and impactful,” emphasizes Jan Wittek, eyeo’s chief revenue officer. “It may just be scratching the surface, but it has to be a meaningful change. Otherwise, users will just not care.”
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