Welcome to Partner Perspectives, PubMatic’s series highlighting the industry leaders shaping the future of programmatic advertising. In each blog, we showcase innovative partners and customers delivering exceptional results across the industry.
In this edition, we’re featuring Philo, an innovator in the programmatic CTV space who has developed high-impact creative formats that bridge the gap between viewer experience and advertiser effectiveness.
We spoke with Aulden Kaye, Head of Advertising Partnerships, about Pause Ads, the advantages of user-initiated engagement, and how high impact formats are reshaping the future of CTV in an advertising ecosystem where quality consumer attention is scarce.
Pause ads sit at an interesting intersection because they are user-initiated moments, which is rare in advertising. Does Philo think that changes the creative contract between brand and viewer, and is the industry thinking seriously enough about that distinction?
Pause ads are incredibly well received by audiences. Rather than an interruption from programming, a pause ad is viewer-led. One fascinating data point from recent eMarketer research is that 60% + of audiences actually prefer pause ads to frozen program screens when they have paused content, and that percentage goes up with younger audiences.1
This represents an opportunity for the industry to rally around a format that is extremely impactful for brands and, with the recent advent of programmatic pause ad access, straightforward for advertisers to buy in an increasingly standardized and scalable way. The act of pausing and the nature of pause ad creative also open opportunities for user engagement, for example with QR codes, which has previously been challenging to achieve in a CTV video environment.
Pause ads make the CTV experience a two-way conversation, and initial campaign results show that there are a lot of exciting implications for advertisers across verticals and KPIs from awareness to outcomes.
There’s a version of CTV’s future where formats become much more contextually diverse — pause, homescreen, interactive, shoppable — and a version where the 30-second spot just wins by default because it’s what buyers know how to buy. Which future does Philo think we’re actually headed toward, and what would it take to shift that?
For what seems like decades, ad tech companies have pitched products that were going to change consumers’ relationship with television advertising. Interactive ads! Buy Jennifer Aniston’s sweater! Adoption has been slow. The biggest factor has been the constraint of the 30-second spot. It’s a shift in a viewer’s thinking to move from watching a video commercial, which is really a continuation of the content experience, to interacting with a commercial to request more information, go to a website, or purchase a movie ticket. It’s a cognitive shift.
When the viewer pauses a program, they are already reframing their perspective. The spell of the story they are watching is already broken. They have a minute to look at the message on screen, and if it’s appealing, they are more likely to engage with the brand’s message. Scalability is also a big factor here, and that is where the programmatic part comes in. Not only do pause ads create the right real estate within a CTV environment for increased engagement with ad creative, but standardization and extension across the programmatic ecosystem are crucial for advertisers to achieve sufficient reach through these experiences to make them worthwhile to execute.
The attention economy conversation has been loud in digital for years, but CTV feels like it’s just starting to engage with it seriously. Where does Philo think pause ads sit on the attention quality spectrum, and will they force a broader rethink of how CTV effectiveness is measured beyond completion rates?
Pause ads garner the highest form of attention on CTV. A study just released by WunderKIND Ads provides a first look into performance benchmarking and shows that pause ads deliver nearly double the attention of traditional CTV ads.2 There will always be a place for the baseline CTV metrics in any campaign, but there is definitely an opportunity here to focus on more meaningful KPIs across the marketing funnel, from brand favorability to consideration, intent and purchase.
The most exciting thing about these results is that right now we are in the early stages of exploring how to capitalize on this format. Most pause ad creatives are simply repurposed billboards with QR codes. Imagine what the future will look like as the format matures and marketers learn more about the best ways to leverage this prime real estate on the largest screen in the house. It’s like a personalized Out of Home experience, but the call is coming from inside the home.
How much does content genre matter for pause ad receptivity? A viewer pausing a tense drama is in a very different headspace than someone pausing a cooking show. Is the industry sophisticated enough in its targeting to account for that nuance yet?
As with all advertising, context matters. This can be taken to mean everything from seeking specific genres that feel relevant to a particular ad or product, to reaching people while they are watching the content they care about, whatever that content happens to be. From a simple implementation perspective, it’s possible to align pause ads with content genres in the same way that we currently do with CTV video ads.
Another framing that is interesting here is understanding the behaviors and receptivity of audiences that watch particular types of content to pause ads and other newer ad formats. Philo recently collaborated on a whitepaper with Parks Associates that found that “lifestyle programming in particular presents a natural alignment with new ad formats, with lifestyle viewers showing readiness for new forms of advertising. Products featured within lifestyle content can feel contextual rather than disruptive, as viewers already expect inspiration, illustrations, and recommendations.” 3
As pause ads become more mainstream, we’ll continue evolving the best practices for deploying them in front of audiences and in environments that create the best viewing experience and drive maximum impact for advertisers.
Pioneering an Engagement-Based Future
Pause Ads create a fundamentally different relationship between brands and audiences — one that prioritizes not only quality attention, but quality engagement as well. As Philo continues to innovate, moving the CTV industry beyond the 30-second spot, PubMatic is proud to pioneer the future alongside them by providing a unified, AI-powered platform for buyers to access and activate high impact CTV formats at scale.
Stay tuned for more Partner Perspectives as we highlight the buyers, publishers, and platforms who are driving growth and innovation with PubMatic.
About Philo
Philo is a San Francisco-based live TV streaming service offering 70+ top-rated entertainment channels, 75,000 on-demand titles, and an unlimited DVR that saves recordings for a year, with paid plans starting as low as $25/month. Philo also offers 150+ free channels available to watch anytime without an account. Learn more at philo.com.
1 https://www.emarketer.com/content/pause-ads-unlock-opportunities-reach-users-extended-periods-drive-action-3
2 https://www.emarketer.com/content/pause-ads-deliver-nearly-twice-attention-of-standard-ctv-formats–per-wunderkind
3 https://www.parksassociates.com/products/whitepapers/unified-streaming-unlocking-next-gen-advertising
