For a long time, marketing managers have understood the importance of aligning the timing of their campaign broadcasts. But today’s technological advancements allow for much more precise synchronization. We’re not just talking about broadcasting during the same period, but at the exact same moment. The result? A true omnipresence of your brand across all consumer touchpoints.
A Response to the Proliferation of Screens
What do you do during the commercial break, waiting for your TV show to resume? Chances are, you’ll be looking at your phone screen.
Another example: when you take the metro, you walk past advertising panels, and once on the platform you would be scrolling on your phone.
We spend our time juggling between screens. And each one plays a unique role:
- Digital Out of Home (DOOH) screens: These digital advertising panels are the heroes of public spaces. They capture the attention of consumers on the move with large and bold visuals.
- Television: It continues to reign, capable of reaching massive audiences with narrative and engaging content.
- Mobile devices: They offer a direct and personal gateway, entering the consumer’s living space and allowing for targeted and immediate interactions.
The goal of advertising synchronization is to reach the consumer through these different screens in a totally synchronized manner.
How Does Advertising Synchronization Work?
Let’s return to our metro station: you leave work and as you enter the station, you pass by a digital screen displaying an advertisement for Delhaize. When you wait for your subway, you open the Soir app and see another advertisement, still for Delhaize. When you get off the metro and think about dinner, Delhaize will certainly not be indifferent to you!
How does this synchronisation work? Thanks to the geolocation of your phone, and knowing the broadcast time of the Delhaize advertisement on the screen, it can be deduced that you must have seen the advertisement in question. This then triggers a new Delhaize advertisement, this time on mobile.
For TV-mobile synchronization, the principle is similar: the advertiser bases it on the following:
- The technology takes into account the broadcast of the advertisement on your television, if your Box allows recording and sending this information
- Otherwise, synchronised ads work based on your demographic profile and the probability that you watch a certain program.
The advertiser then broadcasts the mobile version of its advertisement at the same moment.
The Goals of Advertising Synchronization
Advertising synchronization builds a consistent message across all touchpoints. It responds to the fragmentation of supports with a smooth experience. By accompanying the consumer on their journey, it increases the chances of conversion and loyalty.
This advertising strategy aims to:
- Reinforce engagement by creating a unified and memorable experience.
- Expand the reach of your communication, by touching consumers at different times of their day, whether they are on the move, in front of the television, or on their phone.
- Establish emotional resonance, thus reinforcing recognition and affinity for the brand.
Challenges of Advertising Synchronization
Despite its advantages, this multi-platform synchronization strategy presents various challenges:
- Complexity: Synchronization requires precise orchestration. The key lies in sophisticated planning tools and collaboration between marketing teams and agencies to ensure consistent execution.
- Measuring Effectiveness: Measuring the impact of each channel can be tricky. This requires advanced analytical tools, such as Marketing Mix Modeling, which can break down the consumer journey and attribute successes appropriately.
- Data Fragmentation: To obtain a holistic view of performance, it is essential to integrate data from all channels into a unified management platform. Marketing Mix Modeling offers a particularly comprehensive and advanced response for such analysis, as it also allows the integration of offline parameters.
Strategies for Successful Synchronization
Successful synchronization of campaigns involves a few essential elements. Among these must-haves:
- Precise audience segmentation. The goal being to personalize messages according to channels and audience, to improve engagement and receptivity.
- Sharp management of timing. Choosing and targeting opportune moments to broadcast the ads is, of course, essential to fully benefit from this strategy.
- Close data analysis. Advanced analytical tools like Marketing Mix Modelling allow tracking campaign performance on each channel. Using this data, advertisers can make instant adjustments to ongoing ads, thus optimizing the campaign for better responsiveness and more significant results.
An Opportunity in the Face of Competition
Synchronization can also be used to counter competing campaigns. How? By positioning itself complementarily on different channels, simultaneously.
This “counter-positioning” strategy aims to counter competing ads by capturing consumer attention on another channel while maintaining temporal synchronization.
If we go back to our metro journey: if Delhaize knows that its competitor Carrefour is broadcasting a digital advertisement on Monday at 7:30 pm within a certain radius, the company can decide to counter the visibility of its competitor. In this case, Delhaize would offer a mobile advertisement to all commuters likely to have seen the Carrefour advertisement: for example, interactive content or a special offer to stimulate engagement.
In conclusion, synchronizing your advertisements across all channels could well prove to be indispensable in the advertising landscape. Adopting this strategy allows you to stay at the forefront and maximize the impact of campaigns. Our Advertising and Analytics teams at Universem will be delighted to help you implement them and to draw all the possible benefits from them!
