The proliferation of channels, devices, formats and platforms have made reaching the right consumers with the right messages at the right time increasingly complex for today’s video advertisers.
Which is why it’s more important than ever to have an informed media strategy (and strategist) behind every campaign.
What’s the difference between a campaign that succeeds and one that falls flat? The answer is more nuanced than you might think. We asked Rachael Galperin, the director of media strategy here at Sightly, to share her expertise in the below Q&A.
Tell us about your role at Sightly.
My team works to come up with the strategic media approach that will help most clients achieve the desired outcome or outcomes of a specific campaign. In other words, determining which relevant messages will resonate best with the ideal consumers.
For example, we were working with one client that wanted to drive people in-store in order to learn more about a specific product offering. In order to achieve this outcome we’d need a strategic combination of different ad formats and campaign optimization features to work in tandem. We layered different contextual filters like people viewing sporting events vs. people viewing makeup tutorials with factors like search behavior and location. This allowed us to pinpoint consumers with relevant interests and in specific locations who were most likely to be interested in the client’s product offering. Once we found those customers, we were able to deliver messages that encouraged viewers to go in-store to learn more.
Additionally, my team also works on the analytical side, which means after the campaign has run, we look at the data to tell the story of our successes. To use the above example, we focus on where we drove the most in-store visits and what resonated best with the consumers to drive them to take action.
There are so many ways to segment audiences. Where do you start and have you found a specific attribute that tends to be especially effective in reaching a desired group of consumers?
I think being able to create strategies for clients that are looking for knowledgable partners to help guide and teach them in the video space allows us to utilize approaches that really showcase our true capabilities. A major point of differentiation for Sightly is that we’re able to target the people who are most likely to take interest in, and action on, an advertiser’s message at any given time with extreme precision. We are able to do this through our custom audience personas using Google’s first-party data segments that layers targeting information such as location, behavior, contextual targeting, search keywords and more, to reach an advertiser’s audience with the most relevant messages at the right times.
One of the more interesting things to me about Sightly upon joining was its location-based approach to segmenting and targeting. Drilling down into address and zip code variables really increases the relevancy of a message. Of course, this is most applicable for advertisers with a brick-and-mortar presence, but I think that as the number of ways we can slice and dice data for targeting multiplies, accurate location-based targeting will become increasingly important.
You mentioned the ability to create audience personas using Google’s first-party data segments layered with search keywords. Can you tell us more about that?
Absolutely. Another key aspect of my role at Sightly is understanding the latest product innovations coming out of Google for their video advertisers; how to use these new tools; and how they will work best for each client on an individual level.
One of the latest products we’ve tested is Custom Intent, which allows advertisers to incorporate a Google search keyword list into YouTube to retarget those individuals with videos. For example, let’s focus on a person who is actively searching Google for specific ingredients. If our client is a CPG that produces one of those ingredients, we’re able to target that user with a high-degree of certainty that our ad will be relevant to them, in that moment.
Lastly, what’s a fun fact that your colleagues might not know about you?
I love movies and I’m regularly quoting them in the office. A favorite of mine is Billy Madison. “So sorry to interrupt!”
