When OTT allows users to return to the big screen, how much do you know about its marketing value?

Nothing can stop OTT from becoming an indispensable screen

When factors such as broadband infrastructure, policy direction, technology and content accumulation have developed to a certain critical point, OTT-based Internet TV will undoubtedly usher in an inevitable explosion. According to the data provided by the "2016 China OTT Advertising Value Blue Book" (hereinafter referred to as the "Blue Book") released by AVIC Cloud Network on January 12, as of December 2016, the number of OTT terminals including smart TVs and OTT boxes has exceeded 200 million, covering 36% of Chinese households. Moreover, the daily power-on rate of smart TVs is 50%, and the average daily power-on time is 6.01 hours, which is significantly higher than that of traditional TVs.

The wild growth of Internet content once caused many users to abandon traditional television. Now, OTT has given the large-screen TV an opportunity to return to the user's attention and even become an indispensable "human-network interaction" terminal. The OTT large screen has the dual attributes of both the Internet and television. By connecting to the Internet, it has formed a fresh and unique content advantage and an interactive on-demand method, allowing the comfortable living room viewing experience that was once missing under the impact of the Internet to form a harmonious unity with the convenient interaction and personalized customization of the Internet era.

At this point, if we discuss whether it is the great abundance of Internet content that has driven users' preference for OTT, or users' early adoption of OTT has driven the accumulation of content, it is undoubtedly a dead end of which came first, the chicken or the egg. However, the reality is that in the first three quarters of 2016, OTT's coverage of the TOP30 high-quality TV drama resources and the TOP30 high-quality variety show resources was as high as 100%, and its coverage of the TOP30 high-quality movie resources was as high as 83%. According to data from Aowei Cloud Network, there are more than 8,000 TV series, more than 19,000 movies, more than 8,000 variety shows, and more than 5,000 animations on the entire OTT network. The scale of OTT large-screen content resources covers more than 85% of Internet content resources - for a considerable period of time, content will not become a bottleneck in the development of OTT, but will be the main driving force. Many Internet content providers, such as Tencent Video, iQiyi and Youku Tudou, have made great contributions to the promotion of OTT content.

OTT brings a new world of marketing under the Internet ecosystem

Zhao Gang, general manager of Tencent Video's living room product department, once stated that in 2016, Tencent Video TV will achieve a "three hundred million" breakthrough, that is, the cumulative number of users, membership income and advertising revenue will all exceed 100 million. As one of the most competitive companies in OTT, Tencent has frankly expressed its optimism about the marketing value of OTT and its confidence in making achievements. Of course, as a rapidly growing Internet portal with hundreds of millions of users, no one will question the marketing value of OTT. The Blue Book shows that the scale of OTT advertising in 2016 increased by 384% compared to 2015. Such a high increase could not have been achieved by relying on the generosity of individual “knowledgeable people”, but must have come from the combined efforts of many participants.

The blue book points out that OTT large screens are highly universal for advertising household consumer products. Household consumer products not only involve food, clothing, housing and transportation, but also include education, elderly care, financial management , mother and baby , entertainment, health and many other fields. Therefore, many industries are suitable for OTT advertising. Currently, the top three industries for OTT advertising are food and beverage, daily chemicals (cosmetics and bathroom products), and automobiles . Healthcare , maternal and child care, and real estate will also gradually join the ranks of major OTT advertising players. Although OTT advertising is still a new thing, internationally renowned advertisers including Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and Coca-Cola have begun to experiment with OTT advertising.

As an emerging marketing channel , many brand owners who have already invested in OTT have a trial-and-error mentality, and there are also many onlookers. In order to fully tap the marketing value of OTT and achieve the expected returns, we must also understand what is new about OTT as a marketing platform and how it differs from other Internet marketing platforms.

The most essential differentiation of OTT marketing lies in its realization of the spillover effect of " Internet advertising + TV advertising". This is determined by the fact that OTT combines the advantages of both traditional television and Internet content. At the same time, since OTT solves the problems of traditional TV advertising's lack of targeting and interaction, as well as Internet advertising's lack of impact and single marketing target, this combination has an obvious spillover effect of 1+1>2.

All of the more successful OTT marketing cases currently are based on an accurate grasp of the essential differences of OTT, and are the result of combining different marketing needs with the segmented advantages of OTT.

Currently, OTT advertising has the following features and advantages, which can be directly referenced by brand owners:

1. The “screen-filling” effect of OTT. New scenarios and ports bring more all-weather, multi-scenario marketing coverage, significantly improving marketing effectiveness

The popularity of OTT has brought large screens in living rooms and home entertainment within the reach of Internet advertising. This is also a platform that was difficult to reach for Internet advertising dominated by personal terminals in the past. It is clearly differentiated from Internet marketing carriers such as mobile phones and computers in terms of audience groups and viewing time periods. On the basis of mobile segment delivery, adding OTT delivery can achieve a significant "screen fill" effect.

Pulse is collaborating with Tencent Video's original variety show "Are You Normal?" 》's brand bundling campaign changed from PC and mobile dual-platform campaign in 2015 to PC, mobile and OTT multi-screen campaign in 2016, with an average increase of more than 50% in brand engagement, preference, pre-order and recommendation. Kotex uses staggered delivery on Tencent Video TV and PAD, choosing to deliver its content during the time period from 17:00 to 22:00 when OTT viewership significantly exceeds that of PAD, thus achieving staggered coverage.

2. OTT uses Internet big data to keep up with video content resources, giving large-screen content a directional capability

The important advantage of Internet advertising is that it can achieve accurate delivery of marketing content, optimize delivery efficiency, and increase return on investment through the use of big data analysis - the same is true for video marketing content. Since the essence of OTT content source is still Internet video, it can be directly grafted onto the operator 's user database to achieve active search for large-screen marketing.

In its collaboration with Lexus, Tencent selected a documentary channel with a relatively dense audience based on the brand's positioning as a "high-income male" audience. After big data analysis, the brand was fully covered in high-quality documentaries such as National Geographic and BBC. Ultimately, the channel reached 69% of male users, and the core consumer group aged 31-40 accounted for more than 80%.

In the advertising of American children's toy manufacturer Fisher-Price on Tencent Video TV, the latter targeted the audience's region, age, and even operating system through big data analysis, achieving precise coverage of families with parent-child consumption needs.

3. Multi-screen interaction improves display effects and enhances audiences’ motivation

Although traditional TV content has also begun to experiment with "visual network interaction" and "multi-screen interaction" in recent years, compared with OTT, traditional TV advertising has a multi-screen interaction capability that is far inferior to OTT due to its short residence time, strong immediacy, and information interference caused by concentrated advertising broadcasts. OTT advertising is exclusive within a certain period of time and can achieve real-time feedback across screens. The inheritance of this interactive nature of Internet advertising on the big screen also makes OTT a more interactive large-screen advertising carrier. In last year's Tencent Video TV campaign for Meizu MX6, Meizu was given the only ad spot on the startup splash screen with zero interference, as well as a triple progressive interactive page consisting of the splash screen page, details page, and content homepage. Users can participate in the interaction by scanning the QR code directly with their mobile phones on the advertising page. This campaign ultimately achieved a CTR of up to 4.2%.

4. Diversified delivery methods to fully explore the marketing value of high-quality content

OTT has the same characteristics as Internet video in terms of advertising: there are many presentation forms, rich optional locations, and it is not subject to strong policy restrictions like traditional TV advertising. Therefore, for some high-quality popular content that is like a "traffic black hole", its marketing value will be further amplified on the OTT side.

Moreover, whether compared with overall Internet users or traditional TV users, OTT users generally tend to be younger, have higher incomes, and are more educated. Blue Book data shows that people aged 26-30 account for the highest proportion of smart TV users, and users with a monthly income of more than 10,000 yuan are 8 percentage points higher than traditional TV users. Therefore, although the content is equally popular, the user quality on the OTT side is significantly different from that on other platforms, so the marketing value potential is also incomparable. Moreover, the combination of high-quality content and high-end groups is not an additive relationship, but a multiplicative one. Therefore, the marketing value of high-quality content on the OTT side includes more forms of expression, more exposure opportunities, and audiences with greater consumption potential.

OTT marketing trends: from emerging channels to conventional channels, towards maturity

It is foreseeable that the scale of OTT's marketing investment will definitely maintain rapid growth in the next few years. The Blue Book predicts that by 2019, OTT marketing investment will increase from 970 million yuan last year to 10 billion yuan. By then, OTT marketing will be transformed from the current emerging channel to a "conventional weapon" that exists stably in the brand marketing platform matrix. Perhaps by then the topicality of OTT will have diminished, just as smartphones are no longer a topical product today - because they have become a necessity that everyone already owns.

In this process, OTT will also cause the following changes:

First, with the growth of OTT, traffic from mobile phones, PADs, PCs and traditional TVs will be diverted to OTT. After all, the new living room entertainment scene created by OTT did not come out of thin air, but was built on the basis of replacing the old scene. This means that consumers will inevitably transfer the time originally allocated to other platforms to the OTT side. This will also result in a loss of marketing returns between OTT and other platforms, and require brand owners to pay attention to the impact of OTT on other platforms - even if they do not plan to invest in OTT, the chain reaction caused by OTT will also affect the value of other platforms.

Secondly, as more and more brand owners, especially heavyweight brand owners, pay attention to and invest in OTT marketing, it will promote the establishment of new rules for OTT marketing. Possible changes expected include: enrichment of OTT marketing theory, expansion of marketing forms, and formalization and systematization of evaluation methods. The OTT marketing ecosystem will become more mature, but it will also offset the first-mover advantage of those early players.

Finally, the OTT industry chain is becoming richer and more open. Currently, the main participants in the OTT industry chain are mainly companies such as Tencent that are strong in content at the software and service levels, and traditional TV manufacturers, box manufacturers, and licensees in hardware. As the OTT ecosystem matures, the industry chain will become more diversified. For example, the access of third-party data companies can provide valuable data for industry decision-making and establish a credible evaluation system for OTT marketing. In addition, the possibility of the emergence of new industry forms using OTT as an opportunity is not ruled out.

From all aspects, OTT is a typical blue ocean in the incremental market stage, with ample development opportunities in all aspects. Especially in terms of marketing value, since the number of players is far from saturated, there is a broad room for development. However, it is hard to say how long the blue ocean period of OTT marketing will last. In the future, new players are bound to pour in rapidly. Even though OTT, like Internet advertising, has an extremely high saturation threshold, latecomers will inevitably face more intense competition. As for when and with what attitude to enter OTT marketing, marketers need to understand the essence of OTT marketing and grasp it according to their own needs.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

The author of this article @魏家东 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!