Gaining Exposure: How Quality Repetition Builds Reputation

If you’re anything like me, you probably need to hear about or see an idea a couple of times to fully grasp what it could mean to me. Repetition helps a lot. It probably took me a couple of times to remember the message of the Geico commercial with Europe playing its hit song ‘The Final Countdown.’ The first time I see it, I’m humming along because it’s a familiar tune from the past. The second time I see it, it becomes clear it’s for Geico. Third time, I get it.

Quality exposure in any media helps brands generate a rational or emotive response. In digital media, there are so many user factors we can measure, where marketers know intricate details about how they’ve reached individuals. Learning from this, it’s critical for marketers to understand what kind of delivery is most effective for different customers. Furthermore, once a marketer identifies a right situation where they have a great value proposition to offer to the right customer, they’d better hope that they have something creative and compelling to show. comScore proved that creative quality deserves four times the credit for driving conversions than the media plan itself.

Putting these multiple considerations together, a marketer can define quality exposure by:

• Determining whether or not ads are seen by humans (and not robots)
• Verifying viewability, as the ad needs an opportunity to be seen; we at Centro believe this is the future currency in digital media
• Evaluating reach -- what percentage of a brand’s audience is being reached and where – what sites, channels, ad units?
• Measuring the time spent by users with an ad and engaging it is to them
• Deciding how frequently to show the ad to a user, and what changes and adjustments should apply with each exposure
• Identifying what types of ad units to use and in what context (e.g. ad served alongside professional-grade content, during a mid-roll vs. post-roll)

What’s challenging is orchestrating exposure and precisely coordinating it with the sales/buying cycles. It’s pointless to re-target a user if they already purchased the item. Having a response message while the consumer is still on the top of the funnel is a wasted opportunity. An ad shown to someone just starting their automobile research should be different from an ad for someone way down the purchase funnel (where a weekend discount offer served with high frequency on every site the user goes on might be enough to affect a purchase).

Brands and agencies need to find effective ways to interpret marketing signals and apply it to their ad executions to maximize the value of their exposure to the user. In reality, this means integrating more analytics into ad buying decisions. More and more hours of digital media consumption is generated every day so there’s plenty of opportunity to reach a user. But that doesn’t mean it should be a free-for-all in ad exposures. First of all, it could get costly very quickly. Secondly, over-exposure could damage your brand’s reputation. Smart marketers evaluate when a conversion with a user is imminent, and when enough is enough.

Every brand should understand the optimal way they are building their reputation with customers. By timing exposures based on individual customer journeys, ensuring that ads can be seen, tailoring those messages, and choosing the most effective creative/executions, agencies and brands can maximize the possibilities of digital media to gain market share and build long-lasting customer bases.