Transferring a consumer’s interest in a news story to brand interest via leveraging topical alignment is certainly not a new way to increase advertising impact and ROI.
However we see many of today's advertisers limiting topical opportunities to Facebook or Twitter, missing the larger scaled opportunity advertisers can leverage through a holistic content alignment approach.
The biggest news story of this week was NASA’s discovery of water on Mars, and right alongside the majority of this news coverage was 20th Century Fox’s latest release The Martian.
Sceptics question the NASA press release timing, thinking it was a little too good to be true with The Martian opening this week and director Ridley Scott claiming to have known months ago about NASA’s discovery.
Whether the release timing was staged or not – we may never know, but being nimble enough to capitalise on such a huge topical opportunity combined with a well-planned press release strategy certainly paid off.
A survey of n=1000 revealed that 35% of Australians said NASA’s announcement made The Martian advertising more impactful to them, which is evidenced in increased ad engagement (click-through rates were 26% higher on the day the Mars news story broke).
Making sure The Martian surrounded the biggest news story of the day was built around 3 elements;
- Reactive, programmatic display served in real-time via our Audience-On-Demand DSP appeared around news portals where the story was making headlines
- Mobile takeover of news.com which had The Martian creative popping up over the NASA top story in mobile feeds and counting down to the film’s release date
- Working closely with the publicity team at 20th Century Fox to amplify syndicated content linked to science and news articles via Outbrain
In addition, fun, reactive tweets from #TheMartian and Matt Damon continued to keep The Martian fresh and relevant.
Granted, not every film will have a globally-relevant NASA-type story to leverage but the opportunity isn’t in the news story itself, it’s in knowing what is topical, being nimble enough to react and using data and technology to be there when it matters most to cut through.
The Martian is out in cinemas now.