Video advertisers overlooking traditional publishers on the open web risk missing out on high-value, long-term wins, says GumGum’s Jess Aylett.
The big media players and their walled gardens are undeniably the scene-stealers of the booming video advertising market. But while it’s easy to fall for the bells and whistles – and of course, they certainly have their place – advertisers ignore traditional publishers and the rich video inventory they offer at their peril.
In many ways, open web publishers offer video advertisers everything they could want. Brand-safe editorial environments bringing lasting engagement, with an audience not mindlessly scrolling? Tick. As well as swerving the pitfalls of data concerns and misaligned values? Double tick. For all their success, it’s something UGC-powered channels and their constantly proliferating content will always struggle to offer.
The big names – Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon – may draw the eye (as well as over half of global ad spend outside China), but there’s a slow and steady race to be won too, for arguably greater reward. Here’s why.
Traditional publishing offers access to relevant audiences with accuracy. GumGum’s Mars Pedigree campaign is the perfect example: a brand able to take advantage of carefully chosen, well-aligned content ‘moments’ going beyond the most obvious.
Using contextual intelligence and attention signals, the team mapped billions of data points across the open web to reach the most receptive audiences at the exact right time. This was boosted by real-time optimization – hitting not just ‘pet care’ but precisely identified areas within other categories. The result was an extremely high video completion rate (VTR) of 89%.
Additionally, Mars’ success served to highlight the limited crossover between open web video and social video viewers, and therefore the power in correctly identifying the best option for a brand. Overlap with YouTube audiences was minimal, at just 1%, but VTR and brand reach both outperformed: the careful placement paid off.
It’s clear that premium open web content can offer an accurate targeting strategy in a way that feels natural, helping to reach audiences that otherwise couldn’t be in walled gardens.
Over 40% of new ad dollars go to social media platforms, according to WARC, and the likes of Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have the undeniably shiny allure of influencers and addictive scrolling.
But in reality, there’s little curation or moderation on UGC channels: anyone can make a video and push the limits on fact and fiction, particularly with ever-improving AI tools. Whether distorting reality with misinformation, promoting political agendas, or simply poor quality, this content is churned out at a mile a minute, much faster than it can realistically be controlled. Brands run the risk of being attached to output that might not align with their values.
Journalistic content on the premium open web, meanwhile, still goes through editorial processes, promising a level of brand safety that sprawling social media cannot. It’s a more precise game, with lower risk and higher gains: there’s inherent value in its clear tone and invested audience, which ideally leads to reliable, lasting engagement.
It’s a link-up with positives for all parties. Where social media actively encourages the thought-free scroll, resulting in distractibility and brand content lost in fast-moving feeds, traditional publishing attracts audiences with a mindset primed for deeper brand engagement. They’re already interested and ready to engage: using contextual relevance brings them perfectly matched ads that could more likely be useful to them. It’s old-school thinking: the essentials of bringing together the right product with the right people, but driven by powerful, cutting-edge technology in an ever-changing landscape.
Which leads us to perhaps the most important benefit of all: supporting traditional publishing is a big win, both short- and long-term, for the whole digital advertising ecosystem. Publishers, from indie to mainstream, are fighting for survival, a chief concern cited being Google’s AI summaries, which steal online traffic because people have less need to click through.
Video advertisers need to invest in the digital media ecosystem, trusting publishers with their money and their brand if they want to reap the rewards of a safer environment with a strong audience connection. It’s a two-way street, and it’s vital to get behind publishers to keep this avenue open to all.
