The term ‘moment marketing’ is common parlance among ad tech vendors and advertisers wanting to capture consumer attention at a specific moment in time, where something within the offline environment triggers an online action. As TVTY, which originally coined the phrase, put it in a recently released moment marketing whitepaper: “[It] instantly connects online advertising to what’s going on in the offline world. It’s about connecting with people at the key moments when they reach for their smartphone or laptop to check the web or interact on social media.”

Moment marketing has actually become so popular for brands wanting to ‘cut through the noise’ and deliver personalised moments to their consumers, that it was cited as the top digital marketing trend for 2016 in the Deloitte and WARC Marketing Trends Toolkit.

So, how do you find your consumer at this crucial moment, and how do you ensure that your consumer is paying attention? I was invited along to TVTY’s offices to get a greater understanding of this targeting phenomenon and how advertisers are able to develop an understanding of their users to ensure they can engage with them at the moments that matter.

Antoine de Kermel, TVTY

My time with TVTY started with an overview of the platform from TVTY’s managing director EMEA, Antoine de Kermel, and marketing manager, Ahmed Omer, where I discovered the scenarios where brands would use moment marketing – travel brands automatically adapting messaging and promotions to push certain countries based on fluctuating market exchange rates; pharmaceutical brands syncing with weather or health feeds to promote health products depending on certain weather conditions, pollen counts or pollution levels; brands automatically pushing certain messaging if their brand ambassador scores a goal; brands increasing visibility with specific messaging to counter-attack competitor TV presence – it seems the opportunities to target your consumers ‘in the moment’ are endless. And it’s affording brands the opportunity to be incredibly creative when choosing their target audiences and how to message to them.

To give me a flavour of how this works, I sat down with Alice Aram, head of customer success UK, and Kugeran Kugalingam, head of strategy & analytics, TVTY, who showed me how to build out a campaign using my own daily habits to shape it. Once it was established that I have a pretty standard (boring) daily routine – I wile away far too much of my time watching trash TV (Catfish The TV Show may have come up in conversation); read news sites on the bus and play games on the tube; browse clothing sites a lot more when it’s sunny and am especially drawn to promotions; watch sport on the weekends, but not by choice; have a habit of searching for actors’ names when I watch them on TV; and use my smartphone much more than my tablet for dual screening, even though it’s right in front of me – we set about building a campaign.

Based on my habits, if a clothing brand wanted to effectively target me ‘in the moment’, it would go something like this: trigger a promotional campaign ad to run when I am browsing my favourite news site on mobile and the weather is sunny (not necessarily with warm temperatures). Combine this with an integrated TV campaign to show adverts when I am watching my favourite trash TV programme and run promoted tweets to align with my Twitter usage during the show and a boosted paid search campaign to capture my interest when I’m searching (either for the stars of the show or the brand). As promotions seem to be a weak spot of mine, the brand would use conquest activity across multiple channels to ensure that I am seeing it alongside its competitor. Finally, if I’m being forced to watch sport on TV, and my second screen usage increases exponentially, ensure visibility across display, video, search and social and provide me with a stronger offer to pique my interest and reward me for dutifully watching a football match.

As a consumer, it’s pretty scary, but as an advertiser, it can be incredibly powerful. So powerful, that advertisers can get a little overexcited, as Aram and Kugalingam said. They asserted that advertisers are in danger of taking a moment marketing campaign and building it into an always-on campaign; and that should not be the intention. Advertisers can get carried away with the myriad targeting options, either overlaying far too many targeting options (if Giroud scores in the second half against Watford and it’s sunny, yet below 3ºC, only activate ads for 15 minutes after the match has ended if your competitor is running ads during that ad break, and your target audience is located in Barking and searches in Google for the query ‘Barking pubs’) which leaves them with an audience of one. Or, by being too broad and targeting the entire nation during for the duration of the Arsenal vs Watford match, and 30 minutes before and after, regardless of the outcome, resulting in an always-on campaign and no discernible moment marketing.

Having sat in many meetings with ad tech vendors (including TVTY), being pitched to as an agency, it was a nice change of pace to see the strategic campaign delivery in action, but also to see it from the consumer perspective; understanding how and why I am targeted, and the advertiser tactics implemented to engage me as a potential consumer in a particular moment in time. As the top trend of the year, moment marketing seems to be a very compelling way to for advertisers to differentiate themselves, and it’s understandable why it's gaining so much momentum.