It’s no secret billions of advertising dollars have left platforms like Facebook and Twitter in search of better results, larger audiences and superior Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Yet, the path forward is not always clear for advertisers.  

For those in search of a better platform for onboarding, targeting and measuring digital ads and audiences, El Toro has you covered.  We know the scope and scale of audiences by platform should be a key component in allocating budget for all digital advertising campaigns, and we help our clients maximize the power of their spend through optimal allocation. Let's review several of the major digital platforms and how their audience size and digital mindshare should impact budget allocation for brands and political campaigns.

Americans are Online More Than Ever!

Between streaming, web and social media, Americans spend over 8 hours per day connected to the internet, consuming both content and digital advertising messages (7 hours on the web and just over an hour on streaming). With hundreds of content platforms, the question of how to best reach an audience can be difficult to answer. Let's examine the options by platform type.

One Screen Is Not Enough

For many U.S. consumers, it’s become second nature to scroll on a mobile device or laptop while simultaneously viewing content on a separate device. Consumers are not always mindlessly scrolling. Nearly 71% of U.S. consumers are using the second device to look up information related to content seen on the primary device. 

Social Media is Filled With Changing Dynamics

Social (primarily Facebook) has long been the go-to platform for reaching digital audiences.  However, brands are now increasingly looking for other options due to the impacts of a shrinking and aging audience and limitations in targeting and reach caused by recent changes from Apple and Google.  Platforms like Snapchat, TikTok and Pinterest are increasingly taking market share from Facebook, but they have immature targeting capabilities and smaller audiences. Americans only spend 6.8% of their online time on Facebook, which should lead brands to spend between 6% - 13% of their digital budget on their platform.  A common mistake among brands and agencies is to spend too much budget targeting too few prospects by allocating a large budget to a single platform, which is especially profound with spending on Facebook. El Toro does integrate our data and targeting with Meta, so we can help customers round out their digital audiences and maximize their reach via Facebook; but at El Toro, we recommend a balanced approach, with Facebook only being a part of one’s digital spend.

Narrowcast is Replacing Broadcast

Various streaming options including Over-The-Top (OTT) and Connected TV are now used by 85% of households, compared to 49% of households who continue to consume broadcast television. Although more homes have streaming services, broadcast users consume about twice as much viewing content per day compared to streaming households, equating to about 35% of total television consumption coming via streaming platforms. As the chart below shows, no single streaming platform has more than 25% of the audience. Understanding this, advertisers need to work with multiple streaming platforms to effectively reach a large audience. This is best accomplished via a partner like El Toro, where we have integrated our data analytics and targeting with over 50 different streaming platforms to give our clients the highest possible audience reach and measurability.

General Digital Advertising (Display and Web Video) Continues to Grow

Finally, general digital advertising options have always been highly fragmented, where single publisher buys rarely make sense. The audience size available via programmatic partners like El Toro often exceeds 80% of a targetable population, which provides advertisers a low-cost option to reach a large number of voters, prospects or customers. Advertisers often fall in love with newer media types and forget how effective highly targeted display and web video can be. El Toro provides these tools both as a managed service via our portal or API and also provides audiences shared to over 50 DSPs via Xandr Curate.

In Conclusion

When advertising to customers or voters, brands all-to-often make the mistake of limiting their message to too few people. El Toro has purposely integrated with hundreds of platforms and suppliers to provide our clients with a novel and cost-effective tool to reach the right audience at the right time with the right message.