OTT Advertising : THE Digital Advertising New Hero !

Smart devices have gifted us numerous platforms that have revolutionized the way we interact, collect knowledge and entertain ourselves. Leaving behind traditional media for communication and entertainment, we now live in the digital scenario where we can video call for communication and surf endless apps for entertainment. Media consumption has drastically increased over the past few years across the world. Amidst the internet culture and smart devices, media services like OTT or Over -The-Top, was welcomed massively by young adults.

Over-The -Top media services facilitate users to stream their favorite content on the internet-enabled devices anytime, anywhere.  Through OTT media services the content is delivered directly to the consumers via the internet leaving the mid-channel like cable service, broadcast channel or satellite television behind. OTT services are being used heavily by young adults for entertainment purposes. OTT media services bring along an advertising opportunity that delivers a brand’s communication message to their target audience directly. OTT advertising is becoming popular for the fact that the advertising message is delivered to selective audience, thus saving wasteful advertising. 

What is OTT advertising?

Over-The-Top advertising refers to services that are provided on any device that is connected to the internet. OTT services are being used exclusively to offer custom entertainment services to the audience. Through the use OTT services the consumer can watch, download and live stream channels, movies and music of their choice on any smart device they have. With the acceptance of the OTT services and its relevance in the digital times, a new form of advertising was unlocked, the OTT advertising.

OTT advertising is the advertisements served on the OTT platforms in the form of videos or images. It is aimed at high brand engagement. As OTT services are delivered on request, the brands can make use of this data for having a better insight about the viewing habits, choices, age group, region, language preferred etc about the target audience. Most popular OTT platforms in India include entertainment platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney Hotstar, ALT Balaji, Zee 5, Voot, Sony LIV and many more. These platforms offer OTT services for music, online shopping, movies, original series, short videos, music videos, games and sports.

The advantages of OTT advertising includes:

• Deeper engagement with the target audience can be done through interactive activities like quizzes, surveys, voting, polls etc.
• Meaningful interaction leads to higher engagement and loyalty-building with the brand.
• OTT offers the opportunity of programmatic advertising where the brands have the control over when to display to the ad, to which the ad must be displayed, for how long etc. Programmatic advertising maximises the advertising potential in real-time.
• The brands can communicate directly to the young, wealthy, well-informed and decision making audience through OTT advertising.
• As the brands can track the audience on the basis of their viewing habits such as category of shows they prefer, language they prefer, duration for which they watch etc, they can captivate the right target audience instead of mass targeting. This gives goal oriented ROI and saves wasteful advertising.

With these benefits at hand, the advertisers can turn traditional TV advertising to more interactive and engaging advertising by shifting to OTT platforms. As more and more people are now turning to smart devices like smart television, smart phones and smart appliances, the Over-The -Top advertising is sure to bring higher brand reach and visibility than the traditional advertising platforms.