New ad formats are enabling brands to move from one-way communication to back-and-forth communication using new forms such as Augmented Reality (AR), 360-degree video, and audio, as well as unique value exchange models that incentivize consumers to engage to get rewarded.
Getting in front of target audiences is becoming increasingly challenging these days. Consumer trends and changing behavior are driving a lot of the innovation in the advertising industry. Consumers don’t want to be sold to or inundated with salesy ads pushing products and services. Consumers frequently skip ads, use ad blockers, or pay for premium ad-free services – as a matter of fact, studies indicate that 82% of Gen Z skip or ignore ads completely. This means that passive ads are becoming less and less effective as time goes on.
Our blog post, 5 Ways to Win In-Game Advertising, discussed creating a more engaging experience beyond banner ads and videos in the gaming space. Just as in-game advertising allows brands to reach and generate conversions with gamers in the games they play without interrupting gameplay, so do interactive ads in everyday life.
Interactive ads invite consumers to take a specific action to discover something the ad will reveal or navigate to a brand’s website landing page or another point of conversion.
When done right, interactive ads maximize engagement by enticing and directly inviting consumers to physically engage with some part of the ad, making it more of an activity than a passive experience. Interactive ads are also an excellent way for brands to tell stories, enhance word-of-mouth marketing, and get personal in ways they haven’t been able to do before.
Overall, interactive marketing can be a more effective approach to adding personalization and creating a two-way communication pathway that gets consumers involved with your brand. You can make ads engaging, creative, stimulating, and fun, giving consumers a refreshing change from what’s often found online today. How your company approaches this new frontier could help you get a head start on the competition.
Let’s take a look at some effective examples of interactive advertising that you may want to integrate as you consider how your brand will show up in the Future of Advertising.
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1. First Party Data
Meet Jebbit
Jebbit creates interactive experiences that capture first-party data by creating personalized consumer journeys that generate leads and increase sales.
What this means for brands:
➜ The Company collects data from consumers—that they provide voluntarily—and allows brands to only show consumers the messaging, products, and offers brands are confident are relevant to them.
➜ It gives brands access to over 50 pre-built templates, from product recommendations and personality quizzes to interactive lookbooks and editorials, live polls and voting, and more.
➜ Brands can use these templates to build quizzes, surveys, and interactive experiences that achieve a brand’s business goals: create with speed and control, recommend best-fit products, better engage your audience, and capture highly accurate first-party data.
➜ With 35+ powerful apps and platform integrations, Jebbit can be leveraged as a part of any existing technology stack.
2. Augmented Reality
Meet eyecandylab
eyecandylab brings AR to video content to allow co-viewing, instant commerce, or interactive advertisements.
What this means for brands:
➜ eyecandylab enables content creators to build engaging and interactive AR experiences on video, driving user engagement and monetizing it by uniting all devices into one seamless experience.
➜ The company offers an AR solution for broadcasters and content producers to add an interactive component to their video content. The interaction layer overlaps the core content by pointing AR-enabled smartphones or tablets at any video screen, harmonizing them into a singular, seamless experience.
➜ The platform enables flexibility and broad reach by integrating into a brand’s existing application, using it as a stand-alone application, or implementing it as a web-based lightweight experience.
3. Interactive OTT Advertising
Meet Brightline
Brightline builds, serves, and delivers enhanced and interactive ads for Connected TV across the largest available footprint of media partners and OTT technologies.
What this means for brands:
➜ Audiences are served personalized spots tailored to their location, behavior, or interests.
➜ Viewers can then engage with brand creative in-stream during enhanced commercials. They can click from a spot to a full-screen immersive experience featuring long-form and other brand content.
➜ The platform enables flexibility and broad reach by integrating into a brand’s existing application.
➜ Brightline has partnerships with leading networks & OTT providers, including A&E Networks, AMC Networks, NBC Universal, CBS Interactive, Discovery Networks, Fox Corp, Hulu, and Roku, Samsung, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft Xbox, and Sony.
➜ They also developed BrightLine IQ™– a measurement platform built exclusively for Connected TV/OTT, enabling real-time monitoring and optimization by media vendors and devices.
4. Creators and Influencers
Meet Mammoth Media
Mammoth Media produces and delivers original short-form premier content that entertains and connects global audiences on their smartphones through modern digital experiences that push the boundaries of storytelling and virtual connectivity for Gen Z.
What this means for brands:
➜ Mammoth Media builds owns and operates several content-driven apps including Wishbone and Yarn, Snapchat Minis and Shows, and the TikTok creator marketing platform, Creatorly, collectively engaging over 100 million monthly active users across its properties.
➜ They currently operate the largest TikTok creators network, enabling brands to develop their presence on TikTok – where 2M transactions are driven monthly by 10K creators.
➜ The company launches brand-new products that allow creators to gift branded virtual goods on TikTok that can be collected to enable IRL experiences.
➜ Their Gen-Z-focused portfolio of apps empower creators through transaction-driven earning, quick social polling, and bringing together groups for interactive games.
➜ Mammoth Media is also making a big push into Web3 to connect brands, creators and users/fans in a Web3 native way beginning with its GenZ NFT marketplace called VTAGZ
5. Immersive Commerce and Next-Gen Loyalty
Meet Glow Labs
Glow Labs is a white-label loyalty rewards program that rewards a brand’s community for the most impactful engagement on or off the blockchain. They provide a no-code tool to web3 native companies allowing them to implement loyalty rewards programs into their businesses.
How it helps brands.
➜ Glow Labs provides a system for measuring the value provided by a user’s engagement and calculating the rewards they should receive as a result.
➜ By rewarding consumers with tokens that are built on web3, those who help promote a brand will effectively share in the financial value they create.
➜ Tokens within web3 can be used in the same way as “points” in classic loyalty rewards models, or serve more web3-enabled purposes such as being traded as NFTs on the blockchain, and more.
➜ Glow Labs has a fully functional system for deploying and funding web3 contracts that can payout rewards claims from brands’ customers.
➜ Additionally, Glow Labs has built a robust and flexible value measurement system that can connect platforms within your brand’s ecosystem to track and reward community activity both on-chain and off-chain.
Ready to keep prospects engaged with interactive ads (and stand out from the competition)?
Contact us to learn how Pilot44 can help you navigate the future of advertising.
