There are many articles talking about forecasts for ad spend into 2023, and most have an element of hesitancy and forecast a deceleration of spend versus last year. One overarching theme, however, is how to get spend to work more diligently for media buyers and their clients.

One acronym resonating with many is ROAS, Return on Ad Spend, to drive “smarter” buying decisions and help buyers eke more from their media spend.

How we got here
I want to zoom out for a moment to look back at when digital media buying went programmatic. At the time, there was plenty of quite reasonable criticism decrying the bastardisation of creatives to cram them down the programmatic pipes. The focus became about delivering something, rather than getting hung up on the quality of what was being delivered.

In contrast to programmatic, video emerged as a quality channel, as long as advertisers stuck to premium content – which meant that they had to pay premium prices.

As each channel matured, brands found new ways to measure success: attribution, engagement, attention.

Now we find ourselves in the present
Measurement metrics are no longer enough. But to increase ROAS, advertisers need to find ways to take the best of our industry and leave the worst.

On the media buying side, the challenge the industry has is precedent: crappy quality ads pushed through programmatic pipes; expensive video in a separate buying category.

On the creative side, people are used to brilliance – genius-level quirkiness from New Zealand; the sharp and beautiful from Asia; the next-level huge activations we see from the US – but too rarely is this wizardry apparent on programmatic channels.

So the challenge is dynamic: 

1. Get more from the same budget or less

2. Maintain brand guidelines on quality (even in programmatic channels!)

3. Deliver media guarantees and commitments

4. Make audiences happy

5. Achieve ROAS

6. Improve sustainability in the process

With a few well-placed innovations, achieving these goals is possible.

One way to do it: streaming video content into display banners
We recently announced one such example for LATAM Airlines, the largest airline in Latin America, with a global presence in key markets across the globe. Together with media agency Matterkind, LATAM runs a variety of video and display campaigns worldwide. In 2022, they began working with SeenThis to increase high-quality video reach, while also hitting performance and cost-efficiency goals. possible.

Although LATAM Airlines was producing beautiful video content, distribution channels were limited to expensive video inventory placements. For performance marketing across display, LATAM was using static banners. With innovative SeenThis streaming technology, LATAM was able to run high-quality video in display placements.

Combining adaptive streaming with media-utility functionality, SeenThis optimises ad content and adapts the delivery of the stream to each user’s bandwidth, browser and device. Streaming delivers faster loading times, no buffering, and leverages the large scale of display inventory.

LATAM reduced Cost Per User across all key markets by as much as 83% - while also using less data, saving energy and avoiding unnecessary CO2 emissions stemming from digital advertising. LATAM dramatically increased its video reach at a lower cost compared to other video alternatives, while also remarkably outperforming display banners.

Across all continents, in fact, streaming delivered excellent ROI results:

• –83 per cent in the US
• –47 per cent in Mexico
• –65 per cent in Europe
• –15 per cent in Oceania

Reducing digital advertising’s carbon footprint
LATAM Airlines is also highly dedicated to tackling the challenge of sustainability in the aviation industry. Using the SeenThis emissions calculator, data savings were estimated to be around 25 per cent – about a 14-ton reduction in CO2e emissions. (Learn more about SeenThis’s methodology and carbon footprint measurement here.)

Manuel Breve, Marketing Technology Team Lead at LATAM Airlines, called the parallel improvements in ROI, performance and sustainability “truly amazing”, which is gratifying.

Next steps include measuring actual carbon emissions savings on all digital campaigns run with SeenThis. This can be carried out with the new Emissions Dashboard, where clients can follow the results of their campaign in real-time.



No doubt there are other ways, too, of increasing ROAS, using less energy and breathing fresh creative life into online ads. But our suggestion is: throw adaptive streaming into the mix. You might be surprised at the effect it has.