How to Build Personalized Ad Experiences

How much can the personalization of advertising experiences increase user engagement and ultimately help to reduce churn from ad-supported streaming tiers?

“I want to talk about contextualization and personalization,” says Evan Shapiro, CEO, ESHAP. “I think one of the keys is the more specific the content and the environment is to the person enjoying it, the better that experience is. Doesn't really matter how many ads there are, they're just having fun inside the space.” He asks Darcy Lorincz, Chief Technology Officer, Barrett-Jackson Auction Company, about the present viability of hyper-tailoring advertising to users, especially in live streaming. “Is that a thing? Can we pump different ad loads to different people?”

“Certainly,” Lorincz says. “I mean, you’ve got to know your customer and they have to be able to opt-in and give you more information. We have a fantasy bid platform that sits beside our streaming platform. And if you want to win a Dodge Challenger, you're going to give us a lot more information than you normally would just [with watching] programming. So we know your affinity -- we don't necessarily know you like Dodge yet, but you tell us what cars you like, you tell us what brands in automotive are important to you, all these checkboxes. But if you don't check those boxes, you don't get to be in the fantasy bid platform. So those people: absolutely what you're saying…we can target [them] all day long, especially in streaming.”

“And isn't that the answer to a lot of these conundrums?” Shapiro says. “If the experience can be catered -- which is not a food reference -- can't we improve the effectiveness of the ads? Can't we improve the experience itself and keep churn down? Isn't that where we're headed?”

“Let me jump into some crazy stuff right now,” Lorincz says. “So we're developing the automotive metaverse and that is where you're going to jump right into the experience and it's all branded, you know, you can sim race in there, you can own a home, you can collect virtual cars, and buy NFTs and do all that crazy stuff. So ultimately that is the far extreme of immersive experience and brand engagement. You're actually creating your own experience through this.”

Shapiro says, “Since Darcy pulled us into Mark Zuckerberg's neighborhood, the Web3…”

“He doesn’t own the metaverse,” Lorincz says.

“He thinks he does!” Shapiro says. “The Web3 premise of community and skin in the game of the consumer…forgetting kind of the jingles and jangles of NFTs in the last couple of months, but intellectual property where we can actually sell fractional pieces of it…” He highlights how the artist Banksy released a painting for $40 million and then “fractionalized it.” “To me,” Shapiro says, “That's the proper use of blockchain smart contracts and Web3…you look at Patreon as these bespoke subscriptions for podcasters and musicians…I'm going to sell pieces of my intellectual property to my audience, my most passionate fans.” He asks Dina Ibrahim, Professor of Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts, San Francisco State University, about her thoughts on these developments. “Is that going to be a thing? Do we see an opportunity to monetize differently in Web3 than what has happened in Web2?”

“Yes,” Ibrahim says. “For independent content creators for sure. And then they're also in charge of generating their own advertising. Someone mentioned thoughts on Discord. Discord is a fantastic community for marketing individual content creator platforms, and then ownership of monetizing without having to deal with any other companies…basically individuals as LLCs, fractionalizing, and monetizing content. It’s all about the micro and the meta, and Discord as an enormous community.”

Learn more about personalized streaming advertising at Streaming Media West 2022.

Watch full-session videos from Streaming Media Connect 2022.

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