Part 3: The ideal advertising experience is not just an extension of the existing one [serialized by So Miyamura on LINE Yahoo]

In this series, So Miyamura, head of LINE Yahoo’s sales planning organization, appears and talks about trends in the advertising industry and future trends in the industry. In Part 3, we will explain “the state of smartphone advertising”. What kind of advertising does Mr. Miyamura’s ideal “navigator-like advertising experience” refer to? If you are in charge of marketing or creative work in advertising, please use this as a reference for your creative strategy!

Part 1: Digital Advertising: Unchanging ideas from turbulent changes [serialized by So Miyamura on LINE Yahoo]
Part 2 Trade-off relationship between portability and sensitivity [serialized by So Miyamura on LINE Yahoo]

There’s no such thing as a perfect ad

Have you ever cried because of an ad?

Hello everyone, this is Miyamura. This is the third article in the series. Let me start this time by reviewing what happened last time. In an era where user-first is important, the previous article was positioned as the first half of the “Frame Edition” as we delved into the concept of framework x people. What I have told you is that

The word frame can be broken down into four layers.
1st layer: The device is the campus and is the limit of the size that can be used to express advertisements.
The larger the campus is physically, the more sensitive the advertising experience can be.
Portability and sensitivity are trade-offs
Trends in the number of users are important from a marketer’s perspective, but irrelevant from a user’s perspective

▶ 1st layer: Device (on what device) ▶ 2nd layer: Service (on what content on the device) ▶ 3rd layer: Place (where on the content) ▶ 4th layer: Format (on what ad ▶ Highly portable devices have many users, but the campus is small

Last time, we touched on the strength of TVs and PCs: “The number of users is decreasing due to their low portability, but because the campuses are large, it is easy to stimulate sensitivity.” On the other hand, the weakness of smartphones is that they are highly portable and have many users, but because the campus is small, there is a limit to how much they can stimulate sensitivity.

A little off topic, but when I was in this industry for about five years, a colleague at the time asked me, “Have you ever cried when you saw an ad on a smartphone?” I remember. When I think about it, I’ve had experiences where I was moved by TV commercials, but I never felt the same stimulation from an advertisement on a smartphone. Now that I think about it, I think this question and this structure mean the same thing.

Why positions exist in sports

This trend seems to suggest that smartphones, which are the main battlefield for digital advertising, have low value as a frame, but this is not the case. My argument is that the expected roles differ depending on the advertising space.

In the 10 years I’ve been involved in

the platform

business, I’ve been exposed to all kinds of devices, services, and formats, but I’ve never come across a universal ad space. No matter how good you are at something, there is always some area where you are weak. There is no absolute superiority or inferiority, but like a radar chart, there are strengths and weaknesses, so planning can be said to be about assigning roles to use and compensate for weaknesses depending on the purpose.

It’s like thinking about positions (and managers) in sports. I became a forward because I was good at offense, and I became a defender because I was good at defense. Since we don’t have all-around players, it’s the same as dividing the roles and organizing the match.

On the other hand, if you come across an ad space that only emphasizes its strengths as if it’s all-purpose, you should definitely be suspicious. For example, research results that pit the recognition rates of TV commercials and smartphone ads head-on and emphasize the superiority of one are like comparing the “scoring rates of forwards and defenders.”

Based on that premise, I would like to share my thoughts on the role of advertising space on smartphones. Once again, please be aware in advance that the content of this article is my personal opinion and has no bearing on the views of the company I belong to.

Smartphones are a “foreign” existence

There is no ideal experience that is an extension of the current experience.

Although I emphasize that this is just my personal opinion, I believe that there is still a gap between the majority of advertising experiences on smartphone devices and what they should be from the user’s perspective. The reason for this is that smartphones, which are the “royal road” for advertising

and marketing

, are rather “different” compared to other devices.

What are you talking about? You might think this, but it’s become so commonplace that we don’t even think about it anymore. Of all the devices on which ads are displayed, no other device has a screen this small. I think that characteristic alone can be said to be unique.

Therefore, I think that if we simply follow the idea that advertising on other devices is an extension of the existing idea, the experience will inevitably be distorted from the user’s perspective. I feel that smartphones need a different advertising experience from traditional ones that suits the role of smartphones.

Smartphones are “navigators”

So what is this “unconventional advertising experience”? I think about it.

Let me digress for a moment again. I’m a big fan of games and movies, and in adventure genre works, the presence of a “navigator” who is the main character’s partner is essential. Is it easy to understand if you say that he is like Jiminy Cricket who appears in “Pinocchio” (?). He is a helpful partner who always acts with the protagonist, researches things, and suggests what needs to be done.

I think this “navigator” is what smartphones, and more precisely smart devices in general, should be (Jiminy Cricket and smartphones are small, always with us, and teach us various things).

Now, the unique thing about navigators is that they are “inner beings of the main character.” For example, if the signboards you see on your adventure are “information from outside,” the navigator will tell you what to do from the protagonist’s perspective. Smartphones are often referred to as personal devices, and the word “personal” may have very similar meanings.

I think the reason why even the same advertisements/creatives are ignored as soon as they come into contact with them on a smartphone, and even feel like a nuisance, is because of the context in which they are an internal and personal presence for the user. This is part of what makes it different from other devices.

Advertising experience where you can talk to the service

Here again, I will consider how to deal with this unique position, based on the relationship between the protagonist and the navigator, while also incorporating my work experience and verification results.

The arrangement of the navigator’s side is completely my own image, but I don’t think there’s any sidekick who forces the main character to do solo shows and is hated, so please don’t feel weird about it lol.

What I would like to emphasize here is “how to communicate” and “information to convey.”

As I briefly touched on in the first article, in the 2020s, hacks for optimal creative expression depending on the medium and ad format suddenly became a trend in digital advertising. For example, social media uses expressions that are conscious of dissemination and engagement, and outstream video formats include subtitles since the default audio is turned off.This is a trend that is conscious of the context (motivation and environment) in which users interact with digital advertisements.

These are studies of “2nd layer: service” and “4th layer: format” in the hierarchical definition of advertising space. I believe that this idea of aligning information granularity with the services users use can be translated into “an experience where you can talk to the services you are using.” This is a trend that was born because smartphones are an internal presence for users, eliminating the foreign feeling of advertisements within the services they use.

I myself have a creative team and have been working on the optimal creative expression on Yahoo for over two years, and after analyzing the performance of over tens of thousands of submitted advertisements, I found that optimized creative expression is better from

a CPA

perspective. We have confirmed that the winning rate is high. Although it depends on the product and purpose, it was interesting to see that “expressions that are concise and state the conclusion” tend to have higher click rates and search lift rates than “wordy expressions that contain a large amount of information.” I feel that the science of optimal creative expression for advertising space can be described as user-first practice.

Advertising possibilities expand with creative frame design

2nd layer: Service, 4th layer: Creative production that is optimized for the format is the result of the ingenuity of the advertisers, advertising companies, and production companies involved. We believe that the true value of the innovations that we as platformers come up with lies in the “third layer: Places.” In explaining this rationale, I would like to share with you one of my successful experiences (I am talking about our products, but this is by no means an advertisement. Please bear with me).

There is a product that I worked on and released last year called “Yahoo! JAPAN Top Page Topics PR SP.” As you can see, unlike regular advertisements, it is characterized by a high degree of nativeness that blends into the “place”.

Fortunately, we have accumulated a lot of placement results, and when we analyze the trends in the ad space itself,

Approximately 30% of click users do not usually click on ads at all.
Named search lift occurred in all verified cases (20/20 cases)

We were able to detect trends that are not normally seen. Personally, I feel that this result is a great hint for a user-first advertising experience on smartphones, which have a different nature (especially the former). While valuing the traditional advertising experience, I now feel strongly that creating a user experience where new information is naturally provided by the service will lead to both user-first and advertising effectiveness. Masu.

However, what you should be careful about here is that you should never create a highly stealthy advertising space where there is no border between organic and advertising (in the above example, there is an intentional difference in display size and PR notation between organic and advertising). We believe it is important to provide a place where users can recognize that it is an advertisement, but also feel that it is useful information.

Ideas that are not bound by “existing frameworks”

Trust relationship between protagonist and navigator

This article is a bit long, so please let me review it.

Smartphones, the king of advertising destinations, are a “different entity”
The ideal smartphone should be a “navigator”

▶ Unlike other devices, it is an “inner presence” for the user ▶ A different advertising space experience is required ▶ It is important to design an experience that allows the service to “talk directly to you” ◇ 2nd layer: Service = optimal creative ◇ 3rd layer: Place = Natural information provision ◇ 4th layer: Format = Optimal creative

Up to this point, we have organized using the navigator as an example, but what is not mentioned in the table above is “trust relationships.” And this is probably the item that currently has the biggest difference. The reason why the protagonist listens to the navigator’s information is because there is a relationship of trust between them that ensures that the navigator will not do anything to deceive him.

Fraudulent advertising has recently become a problem in the

digital marketing

industry. No matter how useful the information in that frame is to the user, if it is shut out before they even have time to look at it, it is no longer there. It is necessary to aim for a state in which users feel that advertisements are a useful source of information.

What the Japan Advertisers Association Urgent Recommendations mean About the issue of spoof advertising [Current status and challenges of digital advertising Hideyuki Nagasawa Series 1]

Advertising space will look completely different in a few years

lastly. The reason I used the symbol “navigator” this time is not because it is easy to understand as an organization. This is because I believe that such a concrete ideal vision will serve as a vector for thinking that will bridge the gap with the current situation. If we think outside the box and come up with a “navigator-like advertising experience,” we might use formats like audio and push notifications, rather than the video and banner ad formats we deal with on a daily basis. The timing of ad distribution may also be triggered by events that occur in real life, rather than while using the service.

I believe that thinking outside the box will lead to the ideal advertising experience. Personally, I would like to continue to think through things from a user-first perspective.

It looks like the rest is good, so that’s all for today’s content. Next time, I will talk about the “person edition” of “frame x person”. I hope you will read it next time.

Thank you very much for watching until the end!