2022 Winner
BronzeBest Use of Display/Video
Ford
"Dynamic Video Captions"
Xaxis & Sharethrough
"Dynamic Video Captions"
Xaxis & Sharethrough
Sharethrough is an omnichannel supply side platform underpinned by advanced RTB tech and enhanced ad experiences. Its mission is to build a sustainable advertising ecosystem for journalists, content creators and app developers, by connecting publishers and advertisers with true technology innovation supporting all ad formats, devices, and user experiences.
Technology has drastically changed the way we consume content, altering human behavior online. Sharethrough has sought to help advertisers and publishers overcome this challenge. By taking a human-centric approach, Sharethrough creates ad formats and experiences tailored to real humans, making sure to treat users with respect and care.
Sharethrough conducted research on 750 individuals on their video consumption behavior. It learned that a majority of people are more likely to watch mobile (72%) and computer (62%) videos if they have captions. The research led it to develop a product where captions live in the headline of the ad. It is dedicated to adapting human behaviour to its ad products, therefore building tools that reflect people’s expectations was a logical step to take and deliver. The introduction of Dynamic Video Captions has capitalized on Sharethrough’s commitment to help marketers in this respect; enhancing campaigns by connecting humans to brands.
Ford’s objective was to expand brand awareness and visibility of its 2022 F-150, Ford Ranger and Ford Explorer to its targeted audience. In the course of optimizing Ford Canada’s programmatic campaign performance, its media agency partnered with Sharethrough to find a solution to increase attention, comprehension and completion rate of their video ads. Motivated by its research study on video consumption behavior, its solution was to leverage the newly-released Dynamic Video Captions technology. It added dynamic captions to 11 of Ford’s video ad tags and ran the campaign on Sharethrough Ad Exchange along with its agency.
Its goal for this campaign was to expand Ford’s brand awareness and visibility, as well as increase the attention, comprehension and completion rate of its ads.
Sharethrough is one of the first ad exchanges to use new metrics such as comprehension and attention in the online advertising landscape (in addition to traditional metrics such as CTR, video completion rate, etc.).
Sharethrough believes comprehension plays a critical role in connecting humans to brands and triggering any sort of successful behavior change.
If there’s no comprehension, it’s almost impossible to get a person to encode a new idea, let alone to get them to change their behavior. This emphasis placed on ad comprehension is why it’s known for being a human-centric ad exchange. The approach to innovation and building products is centered around the notion of elevating human-centric advertising to the forefront - in other words, surrounding the user experience. It is, and always has been, the guiding principle when developing new products.
Once it decided to move forward with this project, one of the challenges faced was deciding where to put the captions to have the best impact. The goal was to place them in the spot that would best draw users’ attention and increase chances they would remember the main message of the video. Instead of just embedding captions into video, it referenced its previous eye-tracking study that concluded that people scan headlines first while browsing content.
Using this as the starting point, it decided to have the captions animate where a headline would normally be. Dynamic Video Captions were applied on 11 of Ford’s video ad tags. In order to test the effectiveness the delivery of Ford’s video ads had on comprehension, it showed participants several videos with and without Dynamic Captions. The videos were followed by a list of questions to assess the impact it had on comprehension. It uncovered a 142% increase in message comprehension when there were captions.
The campaign generated millions of video views, targeted to in-market auto intenders across the Sharethrough Exchange. The combination of product innovation and programmatic campaign optimizations by Ford’s agency resulted in a 70% video completion rate, which is 57% higher than industry benchmarks for similar video ads. On top of this, the cost per completed video was 59% lower than industry average. Also, when comparing Ford Canada’s video with/without Dynamic Captions and by adding Dynamic captions it saw a lift in every metric.
Overall, the Dynamic Video Captions have provided a better user experience, better comprehension and higher engagement with ads, furthering the goal to help Ford create meaningful engagement and authentic advertising experiences for its users.
Technology has drastically changed the way we consume content, altering human behavior online. Sharethrough has sought to help advertisers and publishers overcome this challenge. By taking a human-centric approach, Sharethrough creates ad formats and experiences tailored to real humans, making sure to treat users with respect and care.
Sharethrough conducted research on 750 individuals on their video consumption behavior. It learned that a majority of people are more likely to watch mobile (72%) and computer (62%) videos if they have captions. The research led it to develop a product where captions live in the headline of the ad. It is dedicated to adapting human behaviour to its ad products, therefore building tools that reflect people’s expectations was a logical step to take and deliver. The introduction of Dynamic Video Captions has capitalized on Sharethrough’s commitment to help marketers in this respect; enhancing campaigns by connecting humans to brands.
Ford’s objective was to expand brand awareness and visibility of its 2022 F-150, Ford Ranger and Ford Explorer to its targeted audience. In the course of optimizing Ford Canada’s programmatic campaign performance, its media agency partnered with Sharethrough to find a solution to increase attention, comprehension and completion rate of their video ads. Motivated by its research study on video consumption behavior, its solution was to leverage the newly-released Dynamic Video Captions technology. It added dynamic captions to 11 of Ford’s video ad tags and ran the campaign on Sharethrough Ad Exchange along with its agency.
Its goal for this campaign was to expand Ford’s brand awareness and visibility, as well as increase the attention, comprehension and completion rate of its ads.
Sharethrough is one of the first ad exchanges to use new metrics such as comprehension and attention in the online advertising landscape (in addition to traditional metrics such as CTR, video completion rate, etc.).
Sharethrough believes comprehension plays a critical role in connecting humans to brands and triggering any sort of successful behavior change.
If there’s no comprehension, it’s almost impossible to get a person to encode a new idea, let alone to get them to change their behavior. This emphasis placed on ad comprehension is why it’s known for being a human-centric ad exchange. The approach to innovation and building products is centered around the notion of elevating human-centric advertising to the forefront - in other words, surrounding the user experience. It is, and always has been, the guiding principle when developing new products.
Once it decided to move forward with this project, one of the challenges faced was deciding where to put the captions to have the best impact. The goal was to place them in the spot that would best draw users’ attention and increase chances they would remember the main message of the video. Instead of just embedding captions into video, it referenced its previous eye-tracking study that concluded that people scan headlines first while browsing content.
Using this as the starting point, it decided to have the captions animate where a headline would normally be. Dynamic Video Captions were applied on 11 of Ford’s video ad tags. In order to test the effectiveness the delivery of Ford’s video ads had on comprehension, it showed participants several videos with and without Dynamic Captions. The videos were followed by a list of questions to assess the impact it had on comprehension. It uncovered a 142% increase in message comprehension when there were captions.
The campaign generated millions of video views, targeted to in-market auto intenders across the Sharethrough Exchange. The combination of product innovation and programmatic campaign optimizations by Ford’s agency resulted in a 70% video completion rate, which is 57% higher than industry benchmarks for similar video ads. On top of this, the cost per completed video was 59% lower than industry average. Also, when comparing Ford Canada’s video with/without Dynamic Captions and by adding Dynamic captions it saw a lift in every metric.
Overall, the Dynamic Video Captions have provided a better user experience, better comprehension and higher engagement with ads, furthering the goal to help Ford create meaningful engagement and authentic advertising experiences for its users.
Credits
Sharethrough Inc - Dynamic Captions technology provider & Ad Exchange- Share Ryan, Digital Advertising Sales & Strategist
- Benoit Skinazi, Chief Marketing Officer
- Frank Maguire, VP of Insights & Strategy
- Marie-Claude Gosselin & Benjamin Nikolajew; Graphic Designers
Headlight/Mindshare/GTB: Strategy & Creative team
Xaxis Canada: Ford’s Programmatic Agency (campaign execution)
- Samantha Forster, Project & Partnership Manager, Canada
Ford Canada – Advertiser