Together with Matterkind, a leading brand in Australia was looking to use premium short-form video inventory as an innovative way to activate reach campaigns in an open market auction. The brand’s primary objective was to increase video completion rates across Australia’s top 200 media owners, and leverage programmatic efficiencies to drive their media dollars further by maximising moments of receptivity.
Q&A with Clay Gill from Matterkind and Janette Higginson from Index Exchange: How can programmatic help marketers drive working media dollars further in times of economic uncertainty?
What challenges are marketers experiencing in the current macroeconomic climate, and what channels can they lean into to diversify their media mix?
Clay: Matterkind prioritises partnerships and channels that provide the performance, and efficiency we need to help our clients make the most of their campaign budgets.
Long-form video is dominating the industry in Australia, but there’s a significant opportunity with short-form video content and its ability to reach new audiences. Australia has the largest supply of pre-roll inventory, and programmatic short-form video is a cost-effective way to drive brand awareness, and connect users with their choice of content across all screens and devices. However, curating this inventory to target specific audience groups can be a challenge.
How is Index working to solve these challenges for media buyers and the brands they represent?
Janette: The sheer expanse of the open market can create efficiency challenges for media buyers, especially when they’re looking to target the right inventory while reaching the right audience. When buyers are planning their campaigns, they want the flexibility to curate the inventory available to them, and they want access to programs that work to maximise their campaign budgets.
That’s why media owners and buyers are streamlining supply and demand paths to build more resilient value chains and focus on more strategic partnerships that give more flexibility and control, coupled with a more efficient path to premium supply.Index is helping to solve these challenges by building solutions like Inventory Packages that use a single deal ID to curate open market inventory while mimicking the dynamics used in a controlled open auction environment. Coupled with our Volume Incentives program, the more volume of inventory the client buys, the more savings are pushed back into the auction for reinvestment.
Matterkind recently launched a video campaign utilising Index’s Inventory Packages and Volume Incentives solutions. Can you tell us what kind of results this delivered for marketers looking to reach consumers in a digitally fragmented world?
Clay: Marketers are navigating new headwinds from inflation concerns to weakened brand loyalty to ever-increasing competition for consumer attention. Coupled with the pressure of delivering campaign ROI, marketers are looking for solutions that maximise their media budgets and reach the right audience across a number of screens.
It’s because of challenges like these, that Matterkind partnered with Index Exchange on a recent brand campaign targeting short-form video.
By leveraging Index’s Inventory Packages and Volume Incentives programs, the brand saw:
- An 8% increase in video completion rates across all campaigns due to the curation of premium audiences
- CPM efficiencies of 34% enabling greater reach from reinvested media dollars
- 35,000 additional impressions delivered using the same media budget (achieved via Volume Incentives)
- 50% reduction in cost per completed view, from a performance standpoint
These programs provide media buyers with buying options, control, high-quality inventory, and market-leading transparency into fees across the entire supply chain. This is the type of innovation that delivers the impactful results our clients are looking for.
How do Index’s products feed into an agency’s Supply Path Optimisation (SPO) strategy?
Janette: Media buyers want to maximise working media in relation to transaction fees, and they’re looking for programmatic pipes that can bring efficiency to negotiations, provide fee transparency, and reduce technical costs.
A newer component of SPO is the development of supply-side control, and optimisation from a delivery perspective. This means that for the very first time, agencies, and marketers are starting to utilise SSPs to control their own supply chain from an activation, investment, and management level.
That’s where Index’s Volume Incentives program can allow buyers to benefit from two key supply path optimisation (SPO) drivers: curated inventory and incentive-derived savings. This is especially important in the current economic climate as the combination of savings, and curation leads to better campaign outcomes—more reach, improved efficiency, and performance—delivered with the same media budget.