2020 Flashback: A world of possibilities with unique ad formats

OTT is an ever-evolving giant. Advertisers and marketers have to be on the ball to make the most of the medium. Disney+ Hotstar is showcasing what other marketers did last year via 2020 Flashback by Hotstar Marketing Platform. Its five chapters will inspire advertisers to create more impactful campaigns, target their audience more effectively and get better results.

Here, brands and advertisers can look at the first chapter of Flashback: Exploring unique ad formats to achieve marketing objectives.

While pre-rolls, mid-rolls and other established ad formats do achieve specific marketing objectives, there is a lot more to explore. Here’s a look at two other feature-rich formats:

• Live streaming billboard – to unveil product offerings and creating a buzz
• Long-form ad formats – An industry-first 180-second ad format with skip ability at 60 seconds; for effective storytelling and conveying the brand message in totality

Brands that have explored these new formats have reaped big benefits – for example, the campaigns that brands including Vivo, Oppo and Samsung ran via live streaming billboards on Disney+ Hotstar.

For the launch of their handsets, they chose Disney+ Hotstar to livestream the event on Hotstar Billboard for users to watch on the platform itself. By changing the call-to-action to ‘buy now’ after the unveiling, it was innovatively turned into a well-rounded launch event.

Let’s look at another campaign – this time by iD Fresh Food using the long-form ad format. Since inception, the brand has relied on the emotion behind food as its core value, something that lends itself to the brand communication strategy. In 2020, iD Fresh partnered with Disney+ Hotstar to do justice to its emotion-stirring Mother’s Day campaign.

The film, over two minutes long, showed a heartwarming interaction between a retired teacher and her ex-student, basing on the love behind the line ‘Khaana Khaaya Kya?’ (Have you eaten?). The result: it garnered 65% completed views.

A new marketing paradigm requires new solutions – founded on technology and more focused than ever on results. Disney+ Hotstar offers not just unmatched reach and compelling content, but a wide range of advertising solutions – something for every marketer and their need. With consumers turning to Disney+ Hotstar, brands can’t afford to leave it out of their marketing mix.