What is Sequential?
Sequential is a highly personalized marketing strategy. In terms of advertising, it is a strategy that serves ads in a specific sequence in order to tell a story. As with most stories, you would have a beginning, middle, and end. As long as you are following the rule of showing ads in a meaningful order, Sequential can be applied to many different funnels such as banner ads, paid search, TV, social media, and many more tactics.
Why Sequential?
We are always looking for innovative ways to deliver ads with the best possible engagement. Sequential presents a unique opportunity to best deliver brand messages. Sequential messaging allows brands the flexibility to move users along a pre-determined order of creative, in a way to tell a smooth story that matches the brand strategy. You would serve creatives to a user in the order the client specifies ahead of time. This order encourages customers to learn the message first before they buy-in. It’s important to have the chance to convince the customer first.
Third party cookies stipulations:
- If utilizing Sequential within Campaign Manager 360 (DoubleClick) for trafficking display ads, there will be stipulations on usage based on forecasted future trends with cookie-less data. A user must be able to receive a DoubleClick cookie, or a device ID, to be passed through the placement tag to be accurately targeted with sequential messaging, or the user will be served a default ad. Per Google, if for whatever reason the user’s position in the sequence cannot be determined (for example, if the user clears their cookies), then Campaign Manager 360 won’t serve the first ad in the sequence, but instead considers the user ineligible for the sequence (therefore serving the user a default white ad). Third-party cookies directly impact:
- Creative controls, such as sequencing and frequency capping.
- Measurement, such as post view conversion tracking.
- Audience targeting, since that is based primarily on cookies.
- We need to be forward-thinking and produce solutions in that cookie-less world. We need to think of the future, and how clients want innovation and exciting ways to drive engagement.
Real World Scenario
Sequential messaging greatly benefited a case scenario where the intended engagement metric was website form signups. A creative messaging story was portrayed via display web advertisements, with each ad being a different step of the story. The last step in the sequence was the driver to increase engagements. The display ad led to a website with the form for users to complete. In this case scenario, utilizing sequential messaging allowed for a successful campaign and interest into compiling future sequential ad sequences for upcoming campaigns.
Before You Begin
There are some items to consider prior to executing a sequential messaging campaign strategy. The top two factors include inventory and timing. Ensuring there is a match of your target market substantial enough to perform an analysis of success. It is important to consider one part of your audience to receive the sequential storytelling strategy, and another part to receive the standard creative rotation. This way an analysis can be conducted to evaluate if sequential messaging is the best option to deliver the most engagement on the expected outcome. The other factor to consider is timing – since a user needs sufficient time to flow through the sequential path of creatives. This will vary depending on the number of creative messaging within the sequence, and average impression frequency.
The Sequential Solution
Sequential marketing gives you the chance to convince your market to drive a decision. Come to your clients and partners with a solution before a problem arises. For example – has your team been running the same creative message for over 6 months? Is it possible that performance is dropping because of creative fatigue? Sequential marketing may be a great opportunity to boost performance and engagement.
Connect with your Compas lead to discuss how you can utilize Sequential for your campaigns.