Boring Things Are Important
One of the most important things media professionals are doing right now is discussing form-factors of the digital campaigns with creative personnel.
Internally at DNW, we were recently discussing a topic around creative specs and as a parent of a 5 year old, I couldn’t help but find some parallels from an episode of Bluey that we keep facing at DNW.
In an episode of Bluey called “The Pool” the kids and Bandit Heeler (dad) want to go to the pool (Bandits brother), and on their way out the door, Chilli Heeler (mom), reminds them to bring all the essentials for their trip. But in a rush of excitement to beat the heat and get in the pool, they leave a lot behind.
As the kids get to the house to enjoy the pool, they slowly realize in their rush to have fun, they forgot all the essentials needed to make a pool day the best it can be. Whether its bringing floaties so Bingo (the youngest) can enjoy the pool, to googles so the Bluey can play with sinkies at the bottom of the pool, all the little things they overlooked are restricting their fun. In the end, mamma Heeler states to the rest of the family, “So Boring things are important sometimes then?”
How the heck does this relate back to DNW and digital media?
Whether its client direct or partners, we feel like we have really had to hit home on a key essential to campaign success that is often boring and tedious – “form-factors.”
Form factors are all the specs needed to bring a campaign to life in the best way possible. And with so many platform options, all with different bells and whistles, it’s tricky to navigate it when planning a campaign.
Pop quiz, did you know that Meta now has over 20 placements that make up your ad buy? 20+!!! That is 20+ chances for your ad to show up looking a little off if you aren’t paying attention to the details. You need to think square (or 4:5) along with vertical (think Reels and Stories or TikTok or Snap). On top of that, you need to think beyond the overall format to things like “Safe Zone” which account for pop ups or overlays the platforms have that could block your ads messaging. Layer on best practice with image vs video, the form factor discussion can be quite boring at times, but its extremely important to campaign success.
Below are the examples of TikTok and Meta safe zones on the vertical assets within Reels/Stories. You can see that any ad is cut down dramatically and we have experienced having to create multiple revisions of the creative to account for it. And in worse case scenarios we cannot edit and have less than ideal assets for the suite of placements running in digital.
The “boring stuff” has become more important than ever in digital media as it continues to become fragmented with slight differences between each one. Its key to discuss with media partners early and on-going to make sure what is being built matches the campaign plan because its not simple enough anymore
The media planning, creative development, and campaign results may be the fun part of the job, but the way to get the most out of cmapaigns is with the “boring” part around form factors that can help avoid missteps and elevate results.