Hulu self-service ad platform offers targeting by gender, age, location, interests, and show genre
Advertising is only as effective as its capability to get the branding or retail message in front of the right audience. Once a consumer is aware of a brand, the next step for an advertiser is to get them sufficiently interested to respond to a call to action. It is a fact that video ads constantly outperform static ads on every platform. For years, businesses have been able to buy ads using the self-service model on the dominant digital advertising platforms like Google and Facebook.
Recently, however, relative newcomers including streaming service Hulu are offering their own self-service ad management tools, which are being enthusiastically received, especially by smaller, local brick and mortar establishments who depend on consumers within a certain geographic area or DMA. A self-service tool like Hulu’s Ad Manager provides a powerful suite of advanced advertising solutions with which a marketer can deliver an enhanced viewer experience.
Since making its debut last year, Hulu’s self-service advertising solution has become a huge hit with small to medium-sized businesses who, thanks to this platform, are now able to place their ads in the same streaming media space normally reserved for only the largest brands.
Hulu describes their Self-Service Ad Manager as a self-service advertising solution that enables an advertiser of any size to target specific audiences, upload video ads and then measure the analytics in real-time. Advertisers can now customize their ad budgets according to their means with a minimum campaign spend of $500 per campaign.
In addition, they can forego broader scattershot strategies like geotargeting in favor of zeroing in on true potential customers by ZIP code, interests, and show genres. Finally, this service allows for easy tracking of the status of the campaign including ad-spend and impressions on a user-friendly dashboard. With its budgetary flexibility and ease of use, Hulu’s Ad Manager lets advertisers monitor up-to-date campaign status, budget, and impressions on one user-friendly dashboard.
Businesses can oversee every aspect of their campaigns from beginning to end, with the option to stop, pause, or cancel them at any time. In short, Hulu Ad Manager is an easy-to-use self-service solution that allows businesses of all sizes to stream their ads on some of the most popular shows in the world.
Add in the fact that it costs nothing to sign up, there are no additional fees, plus the minimum ad spend is only $500 and it’s no wonder that both digital marketing agencies and business owners are diverting increasing amounts of their advertising budgets to the Hulu streaming platform.
For smaller businesses who don’t have the bottomless advertising budgets of the giant corporations, a platform like Hulu’s Ad Manager is a gift that came at a particularly opportune time as it became available in March of 2020 just as the country was becoming aware of the severity of the pandemic. With quarantines forcing the vast majority of the population to stay home, subscriptions to streaming services and the consumption of streaming content skyrocketed, making CTV and OTT advertising an essential part of any marketing strategy.
The main reason agencies and businesses are so enthusiastic about Hulu’s Ad Manager is that it allows advertisers to target audiences through streaming TV advertising by gender, age, location, interests, and show genre with a super-affordable buying minimum of $500. However, the self-service ad placement platform comes with a wide variety of other benefits. Hulu’s Ad Manager also allows selection by state, DMA, city, and ZIP code.
Finally, when utilizing Hulu’s Ad Manager, users can purchase and place their ads without a sales team. However, they do have access to a dedicated customer support center. The platform will also benefit advertisers by providing a framework that exposes viewers to a wider variety of ads as well as a more relevant ad experience.
To run an Ad on Hulu, users must create campaigns that outline the who, what, when, where and, why of the brand. At the center of the campaign is the creation and uploading of the video ad. As of now, Hulu Ad Manager supports video ads between 15-30 seconds in length. After ads are uploaded they are screened through both automated and human-review processes.
Social media advertising indicates the number of views but not whether they are views by people who are within a business’s target demographic. Advertising on Hulu provides an option for smaller-sized businesses to circumvent this problem and maximize the value of every ad dollar.
People are familiar with the Hulu brand and because of the programming, they are aware of the extent of its reach. Businesses also see an advantage with advertising on an established platform like Hulu because it implies a connection that adds to the legitimacy of the business. Furthermore, on Hulu, viewers cannot click through and skip ads. That combined with Hulu’s high level of viewer engagement means that people in targeted areas will undoubtedly see ads and learn about the brand.
Hulu has been a household name for quite some time, with a massive audience and instant brand recognition. This has significantly contributed to the popularity of Hulu’s Ad Manager. The high-quality content on Hulu attracts a certain kind of audience which is conducive to audience targeting.
Since in most cases, businesses have already established a precise audience profile and now want to reach that audience on a larger scale, Hulu’s Ad Manager provides a golden opportunity to do so. Since its inception, user feedback has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about all the products available in Hulu’s self-service advertising solution.
Customers rave about the platform’s ease of use especially when it comes to ad creation and placement. With broadcast television, the broad audience makes advertising cost-prohibitive for smaller local businesses. The Hulu Ad Manager geo-targeting capabilities and affordability provide a way for advertisers with limited budgets to be both efficient and effective with their ad dollars.
Streaming TV platforms like Hulu have become the go-to infotainment option for an ever-expanding and actively engaged audience known as “Generation Stream.” Advertising on Streaming TV presents an opportunity for businesses to put their brands in front of these targeted viewers and deliver the advertising message in an extremely effective way.
Whereas advertising on TV used to be reserved exclusively for the biggest advertisers and their million-dollar budgets, Hulu’s self-service Ad Manager has made advertising on streaming TV an effective and affordable method for smaller businesses to expand their reach and stand beside their larger competitors. Hulu’s self-service Ad Manager is one of the latest ways technology has leveled the playing field so that everyone can compete.