As marketers, we’ve all been on ad commercial shoots with umpteen takes until the talent got the texts and delivery right to satisfy the director.

Wouldn’t it be easier if the first take was exactly what the director wanted? And what if marketers didn’t need to go on location and could create the shoot wherever and whenever they wanted, from the convenience of a laptop?

Welcome to the new world of virtual presenters

Virtual presenter Miquela first appeared in an ad for Calvin Klein with Gigi Hadid in 2018, though both were animated. In Korea, virtual presenter Rozy has appeared in more than 100 sponsored posts and ads, including for Chevrolet. The quality of the virtual presenter is so high that many viewers don’t realize that Rozy is virtual.

But this doesn’t mean that marketers should stop using real creators. There are many benefits of working with real creators, tapping into their knowledge, experience, and active follower base to tell stories that engage prospective users.

For example, for a utility app, we recently contacted hundreds of real creators on Instagram and TikTok, ultimately going live with 40 for a campaign that achieved a 150% Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). By enabling the creators to talk about the app in a fun and native way, including a Call-To-Action, while providing an affiliate link in the creators’ profile to increase creator revenue, this campaign was a win-win opportunity for the app and creators alike.

Because we were interested in tapping into the creative wisdom of creators and establishing campaign baselines, it made sense to work with real creators. And the cost of working with creators with less than 100,000 followers on the targeted platforms enables generating a strong ROAS due to the lower upfront costs.

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When does it make sense to work with virtual presenters?

For a campaign featuring daily or more frequent videos over an extended period of time, it makes sense to use virtual presenters, who can make as many videos as needed, day or night. With current technology, marketers can create one or more presenters to make their videos more relevant to a specific region, language, or target audience. It enables marketers to have exclusivity with the presenters they create, something not usually possible with human presenters.

A second use case worth trying virtual presenters with is when the product or creative direction lends itself to working with them. For example, a product whose marketing is set in the future could use virtual presenters. Already in Super Bowl LIII in 2019, six of the commercials in the big game featured robots. These marketers could all work with virtual presenters as part of their video marketing strategy.

Beyond use cases, virtual presenters represent a significant cost saving for marketers vs. hiring actors and producing commercials. Marketers can run more ads or improve the ROI on existing campaigns due to the savings on actor fees, location shoots, and other production costs. These savings also translate into a lower carbon footprint for the marketing campaign.

The use of virtual presenters enables a marketer to spice up the content mix with A/B testing determining the value of each according to the marketer’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

In 1985, Coca-Cola used the character Max Headroom as a virtual presenter for new Coke. With current technology, marketers can create far more sophisticated and future-focused campaigns and more effectively integrate them across all marketing channels.

Rather than focus on either real or virtual presenters, I think we’re at the beginning of an era where marketers will use both, depending on the creative and the video use case. I’d even expect videos featuring both real and virtual presenters interacting.

What’s important is to get the entire marketing team on board regarding the possibilities and potential, both creative and business-wise, for adding virtual presenters to the creative mix.

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