Does discussion of programmatic pause ads still outweigh the actual advertiser adoption of the format?
One point against wider adoption is the lack of a standardized way to buy pause ads across streamers and ad sellers.
The IAB Tech Lab began an initiative last year to standardize programmatic signals for new streaming TV ad formats, such as pause ads, in-scene ads and smart TV home screen placements. The IAB Tech Lab collected public comments through early June and is currently reviewing the feedback with the working groups involved. The updates should roll out later this month.
Meanwhile, many brands are eager to add pause ads to their repertoire. Take Fiskars, a Finnish company that makes garden tools, such as weeders and shears. For Fiskars, pause ads represent an enticing opportunity for the brand to build awareness for new products, including a new line of electric-powered tools it launched earlier this year, Kevin Goy Ramos, senior manager of media and advanced media tech solutions at Fiskars Group, told AdExchanger. (Fiskars Group is the parent company, which also has other lifestyle and luxury brands.)
But the brand has not actually purchased any pause ads yet, Ramos added. First, Fiskars needs the flexibility, scale and measurement that it expects of programmatic pipes.
Get with the programmatic
For the most part, advertisers that buy pause ads do so through direct deals with individual publishers.
The prevalence of direct deals is because media buyers “have not really had the option to buy [pause ads] at scale any other way,” said FreeWheel Chief Product Officer David Dworin.
Once the IAB Tech Lab’s updated signals for programmatic pause ads are generally available and adopted, Dworin said, agencies will be able to easily run pause ads across many streaming services and distributors. Which will attract demand from buyers that primarily buy media programmatically, he added.
In the meantime, programmatic platforms are taking matters into their own hands to make pause ads easier to buy.
Sell-side platform Magnite made pause ads available across select video distributors, including Fubo, Dish and DirecTV. And FreeWheel teamed up with a handful of demand-side platforms, including The Trade Desk, to more clearly differentiate pause ad inventory from classic commercial spots in the bidstream.
But there is still some friction. For one thing, publishers are in different stages of development with pause ads. Some started by building native specs for pause ads on their own platforms, while others prefer the more standardized VAST (video ad serving template). And from a publisher or distributor perspective, there’s still no way to “integrate demand,” said Jerrold Son, VP of advertising revenue operations at Xumo. (Xumo is a free ad-supported streaming platform owned by Comcast, the media conglomerate that keeps splitting itself up.)
Another obstacle is that bids for pause ad inventory from different SSPs, such as FreeWheel and Magnite, are not translatable from one to the other, Son said.
“Right now, that’s a limiting factor,” he said. What the industry needs, he added, is a way to “mediate” demand, which is a more polite way of saying that competing bids must be able to battle it out for the same impression.
Differences aside, there’s optimism in the air about pause ads achieving that programmatic consistency – and revenue. “We’re seeing higher CPMs on pause ads than we are on video ads,” Son said.
Publishers and platforms expect standardization to open the floodgates for new demand, too.
Once the IAB Tech Lab rolls out its updated signaling standards, a broader range of marketers will become pause ad buyers, “some of whom have been holding out because of workflow and coordination challenges,” said Rob Hazan, GM of product management at The Trade Desk. For now, Hazan said, agencies will likely continue testing pause ads on the margins without making meaningful budget allocations.
Fiskars, for example, is one of those brands holding out for wholesale programmatic standardization before it decides to cut its teeth on pause ads.
Just push pause
Standardization alone isn’t enough for pause ads to earn a permanent place in marketer media plans. The performance has to be there, too.
For Fiskars, it expects pause ads to garner brand awareness and consideration in part because the format is more respectful of the user experience. “I believe pause ads simply have a better attention value,” Ramos said, because it’s an ad experience initiated by the user. Which is a refreshing contrast from the standard bombardment of interruptive ad breaks, he added.
There are certainly benefits to pause ads from a user experience perspective. But there are cons as well.
Not all users press pause to go to the bathroom or grab a snack, for instance. Sometimes they want to get a closer look at the content, such as to read subtitles in a foreign language or capture a particular character or scene. The user experience very well may differ depending on why someone pauses, and “it’s not easy to intuit why someone hit pause,” FreeWheel’s Dworin said.
From an advertiser perspective, it’s also hard to guarantee that the ads will run at a regular cadence or in particular programs.
“You can’t guarantee that somebody is going to push pause” while they’re watching their show, Dworin said. Plenty of people like to binge-watch shows for several hours straight, as evidenced by the “are you still watching” interstitial that is common among some streamers.
Consumer viewing habits are also a factor. Some brands bank on pause ads to get viewers scanning QR codes. (Good luck with that.)
But what pause ads lack in predictability, they make up for in performance. Or at least that’s the hope.
What will the performance of pause ads look like, and will that performance be distinct from your typical in-stream supply? Those questions remain unanswered for now, said The Trade Desk’s Hazan.
