The continued rise of mobile video usage and audience demand for snack-able mobile content has come as no surprise as phone and tablet device sales continue to dominate technology spending. Content formats continue to become staggered across long and short form with mobile viewership accounting for 46 percent of digital usage according to a recently released report by Ooyala. This has created both a boom and new found set of challenges for brands.
On the one hand, major brands are starting to take advantage of the increasingly visual medium by integrating sources such as Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and long tail video distribution platforms directly into their marketing mix. This allows modern formats of branded entertainment to reach niche audiences at scale while superseding issues like Ad Fraud estimated by MediaPost to cost advertisers $7.2 billion globally and ad blocking which are causing brands and agencies to reconsider many of their efforts highlighted by quickly rising utilization as reported by econsultancy.
On the other hand, the savviest of agencies have realized that with an increased need for content formats across platforms, agency specialization is needed. Large traditional agencies have a diverse skill set that can be complemented by a narrowed down focus that allows specialists s to come in and execute campaigns that leverage highly specific skill-sets and expertise.
GM and Carat for example recently brought a Leap Day campaign to fruition for Chevy that integrated branded videos created in part by specialized producers, with an emphasis on social good. Rather than one large creative firm, the brand and their agency found boutiques whose sole focus was on video, such as Chicago based agency, Philo Media. Philo’s contribution as showcased on Skyword, was to create star studded segments featuring Eva Longoria and Ashley Benson to highlight a philanthropy organization of their choosing. Philo was able to run with the idea due to their experience creating TV quality video for mobile first viewers.
Marriot also has seen some big results by moving towards a model that marries traditional agencies with agile content producers. By embracing smaller creative agencies such as Shine Creative that specialize in highly specific markets for their rampant content marketing efforts a duality of expertise is able to be capitalized upon. Marriot has gone so far as to run their own content studio by blending their own teams with these small hyper-focused agencies.
As the mobile ecosystem demands more emphasis on branded content across formats and platforms, brands will increasingly need agency models that can keep up with the times, keep up with quick fire needs, while operating across growing challenges in the landscape.
