Early this month, YouTube announced at its Brandcast India event that it’s allowing brands to place themselves on the content upon the video being paused by the user. This is the latest ad format following suit among video streaming platforms.
Disney+ Hotstar, in June, came up with the format ‘Pause Ads’ and is the first platform in the country to do so. In July, Manish Kalra, chief business officer, ZEE5, told afaqs! that the latter will soon be launching pause ads on its platform.
A pause ad is an advert that appears when the user has paused the content or has it playing in temporary stop mode. The whole message of the brand can be incorporated into the viewing experience, not interrupting it, since these ads are just merely banners next to a video that has been paused.
What are pause ads?
Pause ads can reach their audience without interrupting their content viewing experience and since it’s innovative it helps break through the clutter.
On Disney+ Hotstar, when it had just launched in India, Marico, Mondelez, and ITC were some of the first brands to put in advertisements. Now, in this execution, too, there is also a creative window because it can house multiple creatives that have to do with the pause moment. For example, Savlon starts the ad with, “Germs don’t take a pause. Wash your hands.” Similarly, Saffola says, “Hit pause on junk, hit play on health!”
According to Jay Ganesan, senior vice president, APAC, Amagi, pause ads really work well when within them there is a clear call to action. The screen does stay on when a user presses pause, making it possible to include a QR code or some other feature driving people to some sort of action: sign up for this or that, or redeem this voucher.
“This format is more suited to campaigns where you want to drive a certain consumer action, rather than just delivering an informational message,” he says.
Amagi is creating technology that will allow pause ads on different over-the-top platforms, among other things, but it doesn’t base its business around them.
Pause ads are a guaranteed engagement; once the content gets paused, the ad runs until the viewer unpauses. Higher engagement is provided by this. But pause ads resonated a lot better with some genres, like VOD, rather than with live sports, in which they really don’t fit.
Manik Bambha, co-founder and president, ViewLift, a digital content distribution platform enabling monetization of the content via OTT apps, finds this format more exciting to brands focused on click-throughs and direct conversions. This format isn’t very exciting to broad-awareness-focused brands.
“That advanced functionality of these ads drives up CPMs, which isn’t valuable for brands that prioritize reach over immediate engagement. If this format becomes increasingly common and CPMs naturally rise, then the brands concerned with pure branding would potentially see the challenge in their business, since they prefer lower CPMs and broader exposure, even if viewers only watched for five or seven seconds. But it’s still early. The effectiveness of this format for branding-oriented advertisers remains in question,” he says.
For platforms, it is not expected to drive significantly higher ad revenue. Its greatest benefit would be in making a platform more appealing to premium subscribers. Ganesan says the benefit of pause ads is that they’re triggered by the user, not the platform, making them feel less intrusive. So, it wouldn’t be about driving up monetization; it would actually just be less intrusive than traditional video ads in making a platform more appealing to premium subscribers.
“The point of a premium SVoD subscription is that you’ve limited the number of legacy ads, such as mid-rolls, that you’re willing to put up with and still expect a good experience. This level will be different for different people – some are OK with three ads per hour, while others won’t stand a single one. In the premium segment, where the expectations for less interruptive experiences are higher, Pause Ads naturally becomes a more fitting format as they are executed from a user-initiated action — from a user’s press of the pause button—versusa being a platform-initiated interruptive format,” he says.END.
According to Chandrahas Shetty, lead, demand facilitation, Magnite India, “Brands can leverage pause ads as an additional avenue to reach out to their engaged viewers in a non-intrusive way, with contextually relevant content that goes hand-in-hand with what the viewer is watching.” For a publisher, the pause ads can open a new revenue stream and a way to better the viewer’s experience.
“This sort of ad format is effective only if the user context can be preserved, and this requires efficient ad-serving, coupled with seamless ad-delivery execution,” according to him.
Price factor
In an interview with afaqs!, Dhruv Dhawan, head of ads, Disney+ Hotstar, shared that the pause ad, priced 80 percent more than the other ad spots, is a premium invention. He expressed that the platform serves these ads to SVOD audiences across the spectrum on CTV – everything except the ad-free plan, priced at Rs1,499.
There is also a high CPM paid for the format due to paying only when people genuinely get an engagement view.
Nevertheless, Bambha states that the eCPM (effective CPM) is relatively low, still. Take into consideration that one pays for fewer engaged viewers—only those who get to interact with the ad. For example, say the ad target is 1,000 people but only 50 manage to engage; then, you will pay only for those who have engaged.
“It’s early days for this format in India, so it’s hard to gauge the eCPM accurately. Brands will experiment with this approach to see if it’s effective. Platforms will also test its viability before deciding whether to continue supporting it,” he adds.
Rajiv Dubey, head media, Dabur India, says the pricing needs to be stabilized for Pause Ads before brands can start experimenting with this feature.
Streamers take a pause to serve ads; will brands play along?
Why more OTT platforms are offering this ad format now?
Ganesan says the primary reason is increasing penetration of connected TVs (CTV). By the year-endm there are expected to be around 50 million CTV households. And as CTV viewership continues to grow, pause ads are becoming more relevant and a key focus area for those platforms.
“While the current share of CTV viewing for these platforms is small, it appears to be growing rapidly. This shift will change the viewing experience: When one is dedicatedly watching on a 50-inch screen located in one’s classical living room, you are more going to pause the content to answer a call or the door. That pause becomes valuable ad inventory, as the ad is viewable to everyone in the room,” he says.
However, when one pauses content on his or her phone, the person is more likely not to even be looking at the phone screen—they’re probably off the app or doing something else. Although the percentage of overall viewership is increasing for viewing through Connected TV, for the majority of OTT viewership in India, it still happens on smaller screens, hence affecting the effectiveness of ad formats.
Ganesan says that the rise in number of pause ads is part of a broader shift occurring as digital viewing comes to eclipse traditional broadcast, even for major events like news. By now, with a larger spectrum of created content having been made specifically for our digital devices, we will also witness the rise of more innovatory ad formats that are tailored to fit the specifications of a specific device and its aspect ratio.
“This trend will also continue, with new formats for user engagement and Call to Actions to become equally intrusive. India is one such market where Freemium is becoming a norm for many platforms, but Ad revenue is critical even for Subscription-related services like Netflix, which are also reliant on Ads to fill up their coffers,” he adds.
“It is not the OTT platforms currently but encroachment of demand by the marketers which is making this format as one which ensures ‘my money is spent effectively'”, says Bambha.
“. The technology has always existed, but brands are now insisting on specific formats before they spend money. This trend is similar to the introduction of skip ads. “. According to him, “OTT platforms never wanted ‘skip ads’—they preferred to get paid irrespective of ads being viewed or not. But brands, realizing that viewers often skip or ignore ads, pushed for skip ads to be introduced about ten years ago, saying that they’d pay only if the option to skip is available. This trend continues even to this day—brands dictate the terms, not OTT platforms.”.
Streamers pressed pause for ads; will brands play along?
Bambha said the format was getting a lot of interest in Asia and more so in India many OTT Platforms are beginning to talk about the format with Viewlift.
“In Asia, there’s strong demand for these ad formats, and platforms like Google and Freeview already support them, so the technology isn’t a major hurdle. The problem is in the sale process: how to make it sellable, payable, reportable. It requires training the ad sales teams at OTT platforms to well use these formats. From a technology standpoint, it’s not a big deal,” he says.
This format is well-tested and proven effective in Europe. However, North America is slower to embrace it.
“In North America, the supply cannot keep up with the heavy demand, so the eager brands are not so quick on the adoption of these new formats,” he says.
