Why brands need music videos
Music videos prove that broad reach and brand safety aren’t mutually exclusive: The hunt for both broad reach and secure, brand-safe environments is nothing new, but in our fragmented media landscape, the search can sometimes feel fruitless. However, there is one glaring anomaly, and it’s been staring you in the face for over a decade, writes Vevo’s Bryon Schafer.
With fewer high-quality brand safe content sets with massive reach available to media buyers, brands are struggling to reach the right people, at the right time – without putting their brand at risk in the process. Marketers are now facing the huge task of figuring out the places and spaces that truly make sense for their brand, as opposed to simply putting themselves anywhere and everywhere and hoping for the best.
Planners and buyers have a strong desire to become less reliant on platforms like Facebook and Google, who dominate budgets with a seemingly limitless amount of commoditised inventory. The demise of targeted, cookie-based advertising has seen a renewed interest in traditional marketing tools, including contextual messaging tied to both time and place. Enter: music videos.
The evolution of the music video
Within the world of video, music videos have become a counterbalance for advertisers looking to easily reach and properly contextualise their messaging to audiences around the world via high-quality content. Music videos are able to create valuable brand associations tied to culturally relevant content that consumers want to watch, listen to and talk about.
Brands are bathed in the glow of association with the biggest stars in the world, while simultaneously accessing billions of previously hard-to-reach audiences. It does not just drive attention to a product, but it sends a clear quality signal, communicating value.
Vevo was formed over a decade ago as a joint-venture between music labels Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group. Music videos became a critical component of the YouTube revolution, helping solidify their importance with media planners and buyers through digital video distribution and on-demand channels.
The historical link between music and video content can’t be understated: first airing forty years ago on MTV in the US, music videos quickly became an indispensable place for marketers to reach consumers in a fragmented TV landscape. Advertising benefitted from music videos’ broad market coverage and cultural cachet, qualities previously only found in tentpole programming and live sports.
Today, music videos represent over two-thirds of the most popular videos on YouTube. Over the past few years, Vevo has expanded into a modern global music television network, extending its footprint with a multitude of ad-supported, linear and on-demand partnerships across the globe – including Apple TV, Comcast, Pluto TV, Roku, Samsung TV Plus, Sky Q, T-Mobile, Amazon Fire TV, Virgin Media, Vizio, Xumo, Xite and now Telstra TV in Australia.
Reaching over 150 million people each day across the globe, with advertising partnerships in 55 territories, Vevo arguably reaches more consumers each day than any singular, genre-specific set of video content in the world.
Diversified touchpoints
Diversified touchpoints are a critical ‘must-have’ for marketers reaching consumers through video, typically on platforms where much of the time spent is with ad-free content and limited advertising opportunities.
Broad distribution is important to Vevo’s mission and is important for advertisers looking to put their brand’s message in front of large audiences. However, there is more to media than simply delivering impressions at the lowest possible price.
It goes without saying that a more ubiquitous distribution of advertising media is one of the best ways to ensure consumer products and services are top of mind. Broadly distributed advertising explains the vast majority of media effectiveness and is the single biggest factor driving awareness of a brand’s availability.
With music videos, brands can attract large audiences incredibly quickly, and are allowed the luxury of actually knowing where their ads ran – an apparent rarity in today’s digital marketing landscape.
After a year filled with even further fragmentation, especially from audiences prone to double-screening and content-scrolling, these sorts of opportunities are rare. Music videos are key for any marketer looking to achieve the contextual nuance required to drive both awareness and quality brand associations.