The Importance of OTT Advertising in Detroit and Why it is Growing

Over-the-top or OTT is a media service that streams media through the use of the internet. OTT platforms include platforms like Roku or Apple TV that provide you OTT services which are streaming services like Netflix or Hulu and in the past few years they have gained some major traction.

More and more people these days are ditching their traditional cable to use streaming sources such as these as their main form of TV consumption. With the onset of the pandemic, this has only skyrocketed. With more people at home during the beginning of the pandemic, media consumption of all kinds had gone up and will likely continue to be the case.

By utilizing OTT advertising for your Detroit business, you can reach a broader, yet targeted audience in the Metro Detroit area.

OTT Advertising vs Traditional TV Advertising

Traditional TV advertising through cable or broadcast has been one of the biggest ways to reach a broad audience. In 2020 with the onset of the pandemic, OTT has been able to gain a lot of traction in this and is now being able to offer advertisers a broad audience reach as well.

Around 41% of people are watching TV through a streaming service these days. Many are choosing to cut the cord with traditional TV as streaming services are typically cheaper and are easier to cancel the subscription than traditional cable TV.

This does not mean though, that everyone is ditching traditional TV altogether. Many are still choosing to keep their cable services on top of subscribing to different streaming services. DMCNY reported that around 50% of people have cable in addition to streaming services.

The Pandemic’s Effect on OTT

At the beginning of the pandemic, streaming services saw a huge spike in the number of users. According to MCNY, around 80 million Americans during the pandemic increased their streaming viewership while only half of that was the case for cable TV viewership.

OTT inventory is continually growing as more and more streaming services come into the market fighting for the ever-increasing viewership.

With many working from home now as well, many are watching streaming services as they work. This means that more people are watching TV at different times of the day than primetime, opening up more options of spots for companies to advertise on.

With a nationwide quarantine, movie theaters also faced the issue of being closed down and any new releases had been put on hold. Since the reopening of theaters is so unsure and many people are hesitant to go back, many have started releasing their movies on streaming services as an alternative to this. This has gone over well with consumers and many prefer the comfort of their own home over viewing movies on the big screen.

Why You Should Consider OTT Advertising

In an article put out by Adweek, Roku, one of the biggest connected TV platforms, has 51.2 million active accounts. This is nearly double the number of subscribers of Comcast, the country’s biggest cable provider. They have also doubled their number of monetized video ad impressions year over year and in 2020 alone gained nearly 14 million new accounts.

If you have not incorporated OTT advertising into your Detroit marketing plan, now is definitely the time to consider doing so. There are plenty of benefits that come with OTT and one of the biggest is being able to better reach your target audience.

By using consumers’ buying and searching habits, you are able to get right to your ideal market, which means you can also specifically target the Detroit area even. This also means you can tailor your message to specific audiences with this. Your audience is also bigger since streaming services can be used on multiple devices from a tv to your smartphone to gaming consoles.

Audience targeting is huge for creating a bigger ROI since you are getting your message to the consumer who would be most interested in your product or service. More people are also using their mobile devices to stream videos and have more engagement rather than a quick look on social media before. Advertisers are able to advertise on OTT media and have their message be received better than ever before.

One thing to be aware of as you advertise on OTT is your target audience’s viewing habits. What is popular with people is constantly changing and keeping up with what your target audience is watching is crucial.

Another thing to consider is running ad campaigns on both traditional cable and broadcast as well as OTT. According to Forbes, doing so could increase ad recall by 34% since many still have cable along with their streaming services.

Using OTT for advertising is a great option as well if you are looking to reach a younger audience. Though many of the older generations are now switching to using primarily streaming services, they originally began with a largely younger audience which is still the case today.

OTT advertising as of right now is also cheaper than traditional broadcast TV advertising. So, ad spending on OTT could save you money and get you a more targeting audience.

Final Thoughts

OTT advertising is becoming a huge market as viewership continues to go up for streaming content and this gives advertisers the opportunity to reach a large, targeted audience. Streaming services are constantly improving and providing more high-quality content and as more streaming services and platforms come onto the market, this only increases the opportunity for advertising.

This can be great for your Detroit business as you can specifically target which demographic and what area in the Metro Detroit area that you are looking to reach.

With both consumer and advertisement spending increasing as the economy begins to pick back up, now is the perfect time to get your message out on OTT platforms and streaming services.