The Digital Voice Mic Drops: Q&A on Hang Time with GumGum’s Peter Wallace

‘Mic Drops’ is a series of industry interviews conducted by The Digital Voice™.

Here, we meet Peter Wallace, General Manager, EMEA at GumGum, to discuss the contextual intelligence company’s Hang Time ad format. 

So, we’re here to talk about Hang Time – what is it?

Hang Time is a full-screen, inline ad format that gives creatives a huge storytelling canvas to deliver highly engaging, impactful and interactive creatives. Sitting in the middle of an article, with a 1000-pixel footprint supporting 16:9 video, the ad unit appears to ‘hang’ as it flows through the page.

The ad was well and truly built for the age of attention. From the interactive scrolling timeline through to the ability to analyse which portion of the animation delivered peak attention, this ad unit will help advertisers to gain and hold attention for longer periods of time and drive better outcomes.

In what markets is the Hang Time ad unit available?

Hang Time was developed by Playground xyz, the global attention-based advertising platform acquired by GumGum in 2021. The format is already available in the UK & JAPAC, where it has become one of GumGum’s most popular ad products. Hang Time is also available across EMEA, including key markets such as Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium. Furthermore, it will be released in the US soon.

How can advertisers use Hang Time to achieve the best results?

High impact ad formats like Hang Time are most effective when deployed as part of The Mindset Platform™, GumGum’s solution for the future of digital advertising. The platform applies proprietary contextual and attention technology to create a match between advertisers and consumers to deliver better brand outcomes. 

By combining these three elements – creative, context and attention – advertisers are able to identify the moment that a consumer is in the right mindset to be receptive to a brand’s messaging. Applying a continual feedback loop, GumGum works to exceed a brand’s KPIs and deliver real business value.

Can you give us an example of a successful deployment of Hang Time and The Mindset Platform™?

Hang Time and The Mindset Platform™ proved hugely successful for global pizza brand, Domino’s, when they were deployed as part of its “50% off” pizza campaign in the UK last year.

By combining advanced contextual targeting and attention measurement, Domino’s was able to optimise the delivery of its high-impact creative towards only the best-performing categories and away from the under-performers. The approach achieved significant uplift across major campaign KPIs, including an additional 2,989 hours of attention on Hang Time alone (against control). The most significant results, however, were the stellar commercial outcomes, with overall return-on-ad-spend (ROAS) of 135% – 398% being secured across each creative element.

The campaign won the award for Game-Changing Technology at The Drum Awards for Digital Advertising in 2023.

What’s coming next for Hang Time?

Whilst we continue our global roll out, we will also very shortly be introducing our CAT (Creative Attention Tracker). This technology enables brands to identify the exact elements within the creative and animation which delivered the greatest amount of attention. This offers brands and creative agencies the perfect data point to optimise creative design to maximise outcomes, making the creative design feedback process more data-driven than ever.

Also published in: New Digital Age