Emerging in 2016

From your television to your second screen, keep an eye out for more “real-time advertising” and new twists on “participation campaigns” during Super Bowl 50.

Real-time Advertising 2.0

With one power failure and one awesome Oreo tweet, real-time advertising became the strategy du jour for brands with and without big Super Bowl spots. With the mighty help of YouTube, we will now see the first real-time video advertising campaign. Wix.com will utilize YouTube’s beta Real-Time Ads platform to instantly insert an ad on Google Display Network’s two million sites.

Participation Campaigns

Over the past few years, calls-to-action have been shifting. First, we were asked to visit dotComs, then there were the calls to ‘follow us’ on branded social outposts, and recently it’s been about joining the broad ‘conversation’ with hashtags.

This year, expect to see a proliferation of brands asking and empowering us to participate in their campaigns.

At the highest-level, there will be two types of Participation Campaigns: Reward-based and Enablement-based.

Reward-based Campaigns will range from the tried-and-true sweepstakes to contests to more. These campaigns will utilize social media to ask you to join the conversation and expand it by adding your own content. Another variation of these campaigns will be tied to two-part ads, where part one asks us to vote for choice of a part two conclusion.

Enablement-based Campaigns will provide us with the assets and tools to make the conversation our own. These campaigns will focus on messaging apps and — with it — all the $1 million branded emoji, digital stickers, and animated GIFs we could ever need.

Setting up the 2017 Campaigns

The rise of social-driven live streams.

Of course, we expect that there will be more real-time video ads and even more brands pushing us to participate with their campaign, but the big thing to watch this year is live video streams. Yes, NBC first live streamed the game in 2015 and CBS is doing the same in 2016, but brands will really be watching what happens in the realm of social-oriented live streams.

This year, watch what people do with live video on Facebook, Periscope, Meerkat, Blab, etc. during the game — brands will be experimenting with social-driven live video. There may even be a breakout story this year. But, more over, savvy agencies and media companies will be watching this space closely. We should all expect multiple live video campaigns coming our way in 2017.

Live social video is the next frontier for brands to experiment and expand their digital and social Super Bowl campaigns.