In its quest to engage younger generations, ABC revamped its marketing strategy this year to better attract frequent YouTube viewers.
In preparation for the fall television season (which began a few weeks ago),
ABC worked closely with Google (YouTube’s parent company) to create ads for
this new generation of TV watchers. Google hosted workshops for ABC to
formulate a digital strategy to reach YouTube viewers who are younger, often
have shorter attention spans, and are constantly on mobile devices. The result?
ABC now has a much more aggressive approach to customize content specifically
for YouTube. Ben Blatt, exec director-digital strategy at ABC Entertainment, explained
further, “Our overall digital strategy was to make things from scratch, not
reuse promos. It requires more money and more time, but we did this for every
show. Every piece of content was custom.”
One thing ABC was working against was time. The ability for
YouTube users to skip ads after five seconds (contrasted with not being able to
fast forward through commercials on Hulu or DVR) makes it hard to keep
consumers any longer than they’re interested. So ABC had to find ways to grab
viewers’ attention early and make them want to stay and watch the entire ad.
Essentially any ad created for an online network needs to get to the point.
ASAP.
ABC tried a few different things to hook viewers in the first
five seconds (and hopefully keep them longer). One of the things ABC did was to
reformat teasers – moving tune-in information to the beginning of the ad, so if
people did decide to hit the skip button, they would still know when the show
airs. Another strategy ABC tried was to tap relevant talent who broke the “fourth
wall” between the scene and the viewers.
Some examples: For its new comedy, “Black-ish,” ABC ran ads
on YouTube where the star character speaks directly to the viewers. “You should
not skip this video, because if you do you will be missing out on greatness,”
he says, before describing what’s to come and finally breaking to clips from
the series. For the new series “Selfie,” ABC partnered with six high-profile
YouTube stars to introduce the “Selfie Tag” video. The video featured the show’s
characters answering questions and the YouTube stars prompted viewers to post
videos of themselves responding to the same questions. To promote the drama, “Howto Get Away With Murder,” ABC created a YouTube-specific opening with a
voiceover that says, “In five seconds meet doucheface, overachiever, idealist,
the puppy, and the player.”
Now that the fall television seasons is a few weeks in, ABC
and Google are trying to measure the success of these campaigns on how they
translate to ratings. According to Ben Blatt: “Black-ish” had one of the strongest
comedy premieres, bowing to 11 million viewers and pulling a 3.3 rating in the
18-49 demographic. “How to Get Away With Murder” also had a big debut,
attracting 14 million viewers and a 3.8 rating. However “Selfie” didn’t fare as
well – it premiered to only 4.9 million viewers and pulled a 1.6 rating. Google’s
metrics show similar stats: “Black-ish” had a 200% lift in search from the
campaign, while the intent to tune in had a 61% lift and “How to Get Away With
Murder” had a 170% lift in ad recall. Google also stated that both campaigns
performed in the top 5% of all TV and movie campaigns on YouTube. Based on
these metrics, I expect that many other networks will follow in ABC’s footsteps
and leverage YouTube (and other digital platforms) to drive tune-in and
increase viewership.
Source: ABC, Adage, Google, TechCrunch
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