The Best Practices For Advertisers During An Economic Crunch

3 Min Read

“Are we in a recession or what?”

It’s a question that many advertisers have been asking themselves for months now—and how MNTN’s Senior Product Marketing Manager John Zucker kicked off his recent webinar, Stand By Your Ad: Why CTV is Every Marketer’s Ally in Good Times and Bad.

Zucker noted that there seems to be a lot of uncertainty around the economy—including if the economy is even in trouble or not—and that has created a lot of stress for advertisers. “As marketers, we’re left in a tense position of constantly analyzing opportunities ahead and preparing for upturns, downturns, and everything in between,” Zucker said.

Thankfully for marketers watching, Zucker provided some key insights that all marketers need to know—including addressing marketing fallacies regarding the economy, providing some surprising stats about holiday spending this year, and detailing best practices for brands to weather economic downturns. If you missed it, a full recording of the webinar can be found here—or you can keep reading for a high-level recap of just a few of the best practices Zucker shared.

Keep the Focus on Digital

During the 2008 recession consumers tightened their belts considerably—and overall retail shopping declined as a result. Despite this, online shopping stayed fairly consistent during that time – and that’s when e-commerce was a relatively new experience. Fourteen years later, online shopping is significantly more ubiquitous—especially after the pandemic changed shopping behaviors forever. In 2021 alone there were 2.14 billion unique online shoppers, making up 27.6% of the world’s population.

And despite economic uncertainty, this holiday season is poised to be a big one, with global e-commerce sales expected to hit $5.5 trillion by the end of year. Thanks to shifting consumer behaviors, as well as online shopping’s ease of use, it’s clear that a digital strategy is key for brands to weather any economic downturns. “Brands need an online store presence—and your ads need to be able to both drive viewers there and track conversions,” Zucker noted.

Get More Ads, For Less

We previously talked about how maintaining ad spend—especially on Connected TV—is paramount for brands during recessions. But small-to-mid-sized brands often worry about the cost associated with simply creating so many ads. “Video creative can be costly, time-consuming, and require a lot of planning and production,” admitted Zucker. To help brands out, Zucker pointed to two of MNTN’s services that help brands of all sizes get more ads for less.

• Creative-as-a-Subscription: Get customized, high-impact creative just for purchasing the media you were already going to buy
• QuickFrame by MNTN: Get more video, affordably and at scale, for CTV, social, and beyond

These features help brands of all sizes and industries save time, money, and energy by taking the headaches out of video production. “The takeaway here is that consolidating creative reduces costs, increases ROI, and helps to produce creative that performs better for less investment,” said Zucker.

Interested in Learning More?

Zucker covered a lot more in his discussion with Ad Age, including additional best practices, why it’s historically been bad to ease off marketing in hard times, why there’s a lot of optimism this holiday season, and how TV can be a growth driver in good times and bad. Click here to watch the full recording of Stand By Your Ad: Why CTV is Every Marketer’s Ally in Good Times and Bad.