In previous installments of this series, we’ve looked closely at how advertisers can effectively use data to plan a strategic local ad spend, combining streaming and broadcast platforms. In addition, we’ve shown how, by layering in a localized approach, these same advertisers can engage communities, build brands, and increase customer retention.

Reflecting on decades spent successfully helping brands place localized ads on both streaming and broadcast platforms, Locality, a provider of local video advertising solutions, has developed a set of rules for getting this right. Here are some actionable insights into the thinking behind this guide:  

Start with Strategy

When developing the strategy, says Steve DeMain, Locality’s executive vice president of sales, it’s important to first understand the brand and who it’s trying to reach. What markets are they in? How is their business, and their competitors’ businesses, doing market by market? Who is their target audience? What do we know about that audience in each market: interests, hobbies, buying behaviors that can be applied? “Once we have that general framework,” DeMain says, “we can look at streaming and broadcast,” both of which, he says, are foundational and “should be part of any plan.” Part of this strategy should also include planning to leverage the right measurement tools, so that you’re ready to apply them immediately when you activate the campaign. From the local media partner’s perspective, this includes understanding what the advertiser is looking for in terms of reporting.

Vet Your Partner, Validate the Audience, Avoid Ad Fraud

DeMain advises advertisers to address this issue head-on in the pre-campaign planning phase. “Make sure that the partner you’re working with has a way of validating the audience and the local ad impressions you’re going to be running,” he says. While this is less of a challenge with broadcast since, as DeMain puts it, “the TV is the TV for broadcast,” it can be an issue on the streaming side. But it shouldn’t be. Asking these questions upfront will ensure that the right measurement tools and the right protocols are in place, making sure that “all of the locally targeted impressions you’re receiving from your campaign are fraud-free.”

Take Brand Suitability into Account

Early in the planning stage, let your local advertising partner know exactly where your sensibilities are. The partner, DeMain says, “wants to make sure they’re putting you in the right context from an advertiser perspective, aligned with the content that matters most for your target audience and not next to something that might be of concern.”

Consider Creative

“Creative management is really important,” DeMain says. What creative does the advertiser have? Is it one ad or different ads for every market? If it’s a single creative, “how can we enhance it for market-specific attributes like store locations, SKUs, weather, and seasonality? What technologies—such as artificial intelligence—can we bring in to personalize it, addressing each market’s nuances, while maintaining the authenticity of the brand message?” On the other hand, if the advertiser wants to be in 20 markets and already has 20 different ads each, “then we might not need to layer any dynamic messaging on top of that because they’re already addressing for local personalization.”

Start Measuring on Day One

Once the campaign is activated, DeMain says, “start measuring it immediately.” This is critical because every advertiser wants to know, as quickly as possible, how their local video ad impressions are pacing, across platforms, in their optimal markets. This goes for ad effectiveness metrics like conversions and foot traffic, too. “Speed matters,” DeMain says. But more than that, he adds, “As soon as some of those insights start coming back, they should be used to optimize the campaign—on both sides, streaming and broadcast.”

Use Available Tools

However, says DeMain, only use the measurement tools you’re comfortable with and are compatible with your local campaign’s KPIs: “If you’re not really comfortable with them, maybe you don’t want to use those specific tools on your first campaign.” At the same time, advertisers need to be proactive in terms of letting their local media partners know which KPIs are important to them so they can, as DeMain puts it, “get ahead of it and be able to report back quickly, for data-informed optimizations.”

Be Flexible

Sometimes, DeMain cautions, it can be challenging to be flexible with local campaigns. For example, he points out, budgets might sit in different video ad buying groups, siloed between linear and streaming TV. However, he stresses, “baking flexibility into the ad spend gives you the ability, should you need it, to shift some of that local budget in one direction, like streaming video, or the other, like broadcast TV, to accommodate the overall campaign strategy.”

Be Transparent

Transparency is everyone’s responsibility. Advertisers must be as transparent as possible from the start about what they’re trying to accomplish, and the media partner, DeMain notes, “needs to be equally transparent about what it’s delivering to that customer.” This avoids questions later in the process about what had been promised at the start. As DeMain puts it, “In the long run, whoever does the best job of delivering to the customers is going to win.”

Don’t Over-Engineer

“At the end of the day,” DeMain notes, “this is local video advertising. Either somebody’s watching a television through a satellite coming down or a broadcast signal or they’re watching it over the internet. It’s still on a big screen in their living room. So don’t overthink it. Don’t overengineer it.” The point at which campaigns start to unravel, DeMain cautions, is “when an advertiser says, ‘I want to find a very specific audience in a very specific market in a very specific window. Don’t set yourself up for failure by being too specific.” Instead, he suggests, “layer on tactics and use the power of local streaming and broadcast together to message precise audiences with streaming and extend that with the broader reach of your local broadcast strategy.”

Immediately Start Developing the Strategy for the Next Campaign

If you’ve done it right, all the way from pre-campaign strategic development to post-campaign measurement, you should be able to take the insights, evaluate the performance, and, working with your local media partner, find two or three things to do differently the next time around. This, DeMain says, “simplifies the overall process from a strategy perspective. At that point, we will have added a few new tactics and will be using the data we’re getting back from a campaign to inform the next one—maximizing your brand’s local impact one incremental step at a time.”

In the next installment, we’ll dive more deeply into local measurement and attribution to understand the strategies necessary to maximize the effectiveness of the local ad spend.