Strategies for Reaching the ‘Liquid Audience’ in a Changing Digital Landscape [STUDY]

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and YuMe released “Digital Advertising Audiences: The New ‘Liquid Consumer’ Paradigm,” a whitepaper that taps into top creative, brand, agency and publishing leadership for insights and guidance on navigating the new “liquid audiences” that discover content across a range of mediums, devices and platforms. Produced in cooperation with the IAB Agency Advisory Board, composed of 36 senior executives from across the creative and media-buying arenas, the report demonstrates that the need to reach the “liquid consumer” has strong and specific implications for the creation, organization, distribution, and measurement of content.

Thought-leaders and industry pioneers providing observations on the phenomenon include:

•     Lincoln Bjorkman, Global Chief Creative Officer, Wunderman
•     Alexa Christon, Head of Media Innovation, GE
•     Brian DiLorenzo, CEO, Ming Utility and Entertainment Group
•     Brian Gilbert, Executive Director, Advertising Business Development, Pandora
•     Michael Lampert, Senior Vice President, New York Media and Account Management, 360i
•     Nick Law, Global Chief Creative Officer, R/GA
•     Michael Lebowitz, Founder and CEO, Big Spaceship
•     Alejandro Lopez, Executive Creative Director, Troika
•     Sophie Kelly, CEO, The Barbarian Group
•     Rich Routman, Global CRO, Perform Media
•     Jim Russell, Partner and Chief Digital Officer, McKinney
•     Larry Weitzman, Chief Content Officer and Chief of Operations, CineSport

The report highlights key ways that “liquid audiences” should impact content and marketing strategies. Among them:

•     Definitions of “audience” must evolve – currently-used gender/age definitions no longer suffice
•     “Social” and “mobile” are unsurprisingly crucial, but both embrace a wide array of meaning and nuance, which marketers must unpack to build successful strategies
•     Understanding how someone navigates to content can be critical to connecting with that consumer
•     The industry’s fixation on KPIs and standard metrics can distract from the more important goal of building fan-bases
•     The line between “marketing” and “content” continues to fade – it’s all storytelling

These valuable and practical findings from the paper will come to life during an on-stage session at the Cannes Lions Festival Creativity on June 24 at 3:30pm CET, when Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB, delves into the need for “liquid creativity” with Danielle Lee, Vice President, Commercial Marketing, Vevo, and Athan Stephanopoulos, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Partnerships, NowThisNews.

“The digital media and marketing industry is in the business of reaching audiences anywhere, anytime and any place,” said Rothenberg. “It is critical to have a deep understanding of how the ‘liquid consumer’ behaves in order to reach that audience effectively. I am excited to talk to Danielle Lee of Vevo and Athan Stephanopoulos of NowThisNews to see how they are rising to the challenges.”

“Audiences are taking various routes to get to the content they crave,” said Anna Bager, Senior Vice President, Mobile and Video, and General Manager of the IAB Digital Video and Mobile Marketing Centers of Excellence. “The media landscape has evolved into an incredibly complex ecosystem, with roads and paths that are hard to map – making it almost impossible to pin down today’s consumer.”

“Content – whether created by a publisher or a brand – is at the heart of the digital media industry,” said Stephanie Gaines, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at YuMe. “And audiences are finding new and exciting ways to consume the content they love. With so much data now at our disposal, it’s up to us to deliver it in nuanced, innovative ways that suit the contexts and the circumstances that audiences have come to expect, and this report is an important step in the right direction.”

To download report CLICK HERE.