By Greg Wester, SVP at Digital Turbine
Predicting behavior is never an exact science, but to sports bettors’ delight, advancements in analytics are bringing us closer. Just as next-gen stats in sports uncover game-changing insights about team performance, next-gen media stats are redefining how brands approach advertising. By diving deeper into consumer patterns and behaviors, brands can create strategies that are not only data-driven but are also highly effective in today’s competitive landscape.
Why Next-Gen Media Stats Matter
Traditional metrics like clicks, impressions, and even a media channel’s reach provide surface-level insights related to volume, but fail to tell the whole story. While it’s nice to see these basic stats, they lack insights on both actual user behavior or potential opportunities afforded to brands.
Next-gen media stats dive deeper into behavioral patterns and help advertisers understand how consumers might engage with different media, ultimately creating better opportunities to catch attention and increase ROI on ads. These stats analyze patterns like time spent, frequency of engagement, cross-app or cross-category usage, as well as in-app interactions with content, shopping carts and even ad exposure. For example, while traditional stats might show that a brand’s campaigns had an on target percent reach of 80%, next-gen metrics might reveal that the brand’s definition of the target actually missed 30 million consumers shopping for its or its competitors’ brands. This deeper understanding allows brands to develop better informed, impactful advertising.
This data-driven approach is crucial in addressing inefficiencies and incrementality in the advertising landscape, such as the gaps seen in mobile gaming advertising. Games not only rank high for apps downloaded, but also hold rank for where consumers spend their time. Mobile gaming apps reach audiences as often, and frequently more often, than traditional social media campaigns, and more importantly for media planners, they were found to be four times as effective at reaching light social users—a key segment advertisers often miss. This gap represents a missed opportunity where advertisers could tap into highly engaged audiences just by better understanding their users’ behaviors. By leveraging these next-gen stats, advertisers can identify and capitalize on these underutilized channels.
Diversifying Your Media Mix
In an evolving and overcrowded advertising landscape, diversification is key to standing out and amplifying visibility to a wider array of audience segments. Next-gen stats enable brands to confidently build a multi-channel approach, optimizing their media mix across platforms. Understanding consumer behavior at a granular level enables brands to stay ahead of the competition and build long-term success.
Diversifying media mixes is especially important when it comes to reaching users who don’t use social media frequently. Traditional media stats will tell you that these light social users are included in the reachable audience, however studies have found that they are significantly less likely to see or engage with a brand’s ad on social media (up to nearly 80% less likely) due to their lack of presence on those channels.
Using next-gen stats to understand how different users spend time on their mobile devices may lead advertisers to shift ad spend into a different channel like gaming in addition to social media, where gaming ads perform better among light social users. In fact, incorporating mobile gaming into media strategies could result in 40–200% incremental reach, highlighting its potential to bridge gaps left by traditional social platforms.
Turning Insights into Action with Real-World Applications
Consumer behavior offers a goldmine of insights, as long as advertisers know where to look. That said, when next-gen stats are sourced and used to create smarter strategies, the brand impact can be significant. From consumer goods to quick serve restaurants and retail, next-gen media stats are already transforming advertising strategies for leading brands:
- Procter & Gamble (P&G): According to an analysis done by Digiday, P&G used advanced insights to optimize ad placements, reducing wasted spend and maximizing ROI.
- McDonald’s: A recent case study from Dynamic Yield illustrated how McDonald’s leveraged location-based behavioral data to serve personalized ads, significantly boosting customer experiences and engagement rates.
- Walmart: Insights from Marketing Dive show explore Walmart analyzed cross-channel behaviors to create more precise, audience-specific campaigns that drove measurable results.
The successes of today’s biggest brands illustrate how next-gen stats can inform smarter, more effective advertising strategies. The lesson is clear: brands that embrace these insights gain a competitive edge in today’s crowded media landscape.
Building a Game Winning Advertising Strategy
Relying solely on traditional platforms like social media or Connected TV (CTV) is no longer enough in today’s ad landscape. Just as next-gen stats have revolutionized sports analytics, they are poised to transform advertising. By leveraging advanced data insights, diversifying media mixes, and focusing on behavior-driven strategies, brands can unlock the full potential of their campaigns.
About the Author
Greg Wester, SVP at Digital Turbine, leads Consumer Research, PR, Content Marketing and Digital Marketing functions at Digital Turbine. Greg has worked in mobile and digital/interactive media for +30 years, bringing a penchant for numerical storytelling to sales enablement and market awareness building efforts.