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A new consumer focus on data privacy and the move away from cookie-based tracking has advertising-reliant organizations scrambling to come up with a new paradigm for connecting sponsor content, products, and services with audiences.
It’s a daunting task. However, the worst-kept dirty secret in the marketing world is that digital advertising never really provided a compelling, effective experience for audiences or sponsors to begin with. So, the bar is low for coming up with something better.
The good news is that there is an emerging trend that is captivating audiences, creating deep connections with sponsors, and delivering actionable, zero-party data and insights: Interactive Advertising.
To Hell With ‘Show, Don’t Tell.’ Instead: “Converse, Learn, & Earn.”
Attention capture is a critical part of successful advertising; but it’s not an end unto itself. What are you doing with that attention? What value does it have if it’s only one-way and fleeting? What do you learn or know from having captured that attention?
‘Attention As Goal’ has been the fundamental flaw in digital advertising since Day 1.
To be successful in the post-cookie world, advertising engagement has to mean more than simply the sum of eyeballs and clicks. It has to include true interaction, data, and audience insights.
At CredSpark, we create immersive, question-based advertising experiences in the motif of a compelling conversation. Each back-and-forth interaction creates opportunities for establishing brand connections, learning, data, and insights. So beyond traditional attention metrics, you get data on consumer behavior, intent, lead qualification, audience knowledge of sponsor products and services, and much more. This new form moves beyond the sheer act of capturing attention; it actually provides value for publishers, audiences, and sponsors for having done so. And that leads to revenue.
5 Key Opportunities for Interactive Advertising Products
You’re only truly limited by your imagination. That said, we’ve seen CredSpark clients leverage interactive ads in a few key ways.
Product Personalization
Create sponsored experiences that surface audience needs, interests, and goals and then use that data to showcase specific sponsor products or services that address them.
Lead Generation
Savvy sponsors have become jaded by high-volume, low-quality lead gen campaigns. Create something truly valuable and actionable by incorporating lead qualifying questions into an interactive experience. Your audience feels they’re being listened to and your sponsors get sales-ready leads with rich qualification data all in one experience.
Research Products
Develop market research products that sponsors crave. Gather audience opinions, intent, and more with compelling, immersive experiences that put the old annual survey to shame. Sponsors will get improved engagement, as well as valuable insights and intelligence to better inform product development, marketing spend, and other critical business decisions.
Immersive Brand Experiences
Take your audience members on an immersive journey through sponsors’ content, products, and services. Have them engage with the brand in fun, interactive ways that surface data and create deeper connections with sponsor brands.
Contests, Games, & More
Go next-level and create interactive experiences that use proven engagement techniques from the world of gaming that drive engagement, increase take-rates of offers, collect lead info, and more. People enjoy comparing themselves to others and you and your sponsors will see engagement metrics go through the roof.
What Value Does Interactive Advertising Provide?
Interactive advertising has the potential to change digital marketing, providing value for all stakeholders: advertising-driven media, sponsors and advertisers, and audiences.
For media companies, it’s an opportunity to reset the scales between them and the giant ad platforms (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Tik Tok, etc.). You’ll be deepening your audience data while generating enormous engagement and providing tremendous value to advertisers for which you can charge a premium. Beyond eyeballs and clicks, you’ll be providing actionable intelligence. What’s that worth to sponsors? We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
For advertisers, interactive advertising programs offer unprecedented opportunity to better quantify the value that their marketing dollars are providing. You can put a price on an impression or click; but can you provide a measurable ROI? Can you name the value of that impression or click to a sponsor? Interactive advertising experiences deliver real, measurable value: Is a prospect interested in your product or service and ready to buy? Just ask.
For audiences, interactive advertising not only provides a more engaging experience, it’s an opportunity for audiences to finally get value (whether that value is entertainment, knowledge/learning, utility, or something else.) for the monetization of their attention.
Interactive content for the win.
Examples of Impactful Interactive Advertising
Here are a few examples of how CredSpark clients are reaping the benefits of interactive advertising.
Now that we have your attention…
Will you take the next step and leverage the advantages that interactive advertising can offer your organization? We’d be happy to help.
