In a world where traditional advertising is falling short, influencer marketing has risen to become one of the most powerful tools for brands to reach core, engaged, and targeted audiences and drive awareness and commercial impact. While sponsored posts have been around for a while, its a format that is crowded and noisy. With its ability to create native experiences that keep viewers engaged, virtual product placement is quickly becoming one of the most preferred forms of influencer marketing. Let’s explore how you can make the most of the power of virtual product placement using cutting edge AI technology.
How to Make the Most of Virtual Product Placement: The key to making a successful campaign with virtual product placement is creating an experience that feels like it belongs in the content. Keeping viewers engaged by making inserted products feel native, contextually relevant, and realistic helps ensure a more positive brand perception and reinforces your message. Additionally, it is important to find influencers who reinforce your brand message and have an audience that fits your target market. Working with multiple influencers simultaneously also allows you to scale impact and reach while still keeping the integrity of your campaign intact. Think of this as getting many ‘at-bats’ to reach your audience.
Scaling Campaigns Like Other Media Formats: In order for brands to really have an impact, they need to be able to scale their campaigns to reach across multiple influencers all at once. This requires the technology they are using to be automated such that they are not relying on manual VFX (Visual Effects) artists to insert products by hand. Cutting edge Artificial Intelligence technology can help here, doing inverse rendering of the scene to capture depth, lighting, shadows, scale, and then automatically re-generating the scene with the product inserted virtually. In addition to just inserting products, disclosure is critical. Automating disclosure so that brands are able to get more attention, and influencers are not forced to go back and re-shoot their disclosure videos, is key. A technology partner that can automate this end to end is critical to success in scaling your influencer marketing strategy with AI based virtual product placement.
Engaging with Audiences: In-content advertising is transforming the way advertisers engage with their audience. By seamlessly weaving compelling ads into web and streaming content, this powerful method can boost audience growth and improve the reach of campaigns up to 49% more than traditional TV spots. Many brands are now recognizing the impact of in-content advertising – it serves as an effective addition to their usual ad strategies, helping them to create a more engaging connection with their target market. Ad-blocking has become a major issue for digital channels, and by inserting a brand directly into the content, the brand becomes part of the story, not the interruption.
Conclusion: Virtual product placement offers brands an opportunity to strengthen their advertising campaigns and accelerate their reach by creating native experiences that keep viewers engaged without interruptive video advertising or sponsored posts. It’s important for brands to use influencers who fit their target market, disclose who is sponsoring posts, add animations or effects, as well as properly color match assets used in each campaign for maximum visibility and success. By utilizing these tips, you can unlock the full potential of virtual product placement and see impressive results with your next ad campaign!
