WunderKIND Ads’ Programmatic Pause Ads Sparkle for Zales

Programmatic pause ads are popular because they perform. 

But there’s a problem. The specs for pause ads are not standardized across the numerous connected TV platforms. That means people who want to run pause ads need to not only make separate buys for each platform, but must create creative that conforms to each platform’s technical requirements.

Until someone creates a standard for pause ads that is adopted by all of the platforms, digital marketing company WunderKIND Ads has a solution that has worked for clients including beauty retailer Ulta and Signet Jewelers’ Zales The Diamond Store brand. 

WunderKIND Ads has developed tech that takes a single piece of pause-ad creative and automatically creates versions that will run on each platform the advertiser wants to use.

“Just give us one creative asset. We'll do everything on the backend. You're able to run on all those apps with one creative and one deal ID, as opposed to multiple IDs,” Adam Gendelman VP of sales, supply and operations at WunderKIND Ads told The Measure.

“You can access this inventory at scale across all apps and OEMs within our network via programmatic pipes,” said Gendelman. “So it's really about the simplicity and the accessibility to this inventory, and being able to transact and run it in a programmatic fashion.” 

WunderKIND Ads has access to pause-ad inventory from platforms through a partnership with Open Glass.

Buying pause ads programmatically also means that they will be targeted using the same data and signals as more traditional ads. Advertisers can choose contextual targeting, audience targeting or both in a way that’s not always available in direct buys. 

Pause ads are popular with consumers because they don’t interrupt programming. They appear only when the viewer presses the pause button. They’re attractive to marketers because they’re effective. 

The proof is in the pudding, as they say. WunderKIND, working with media agency Connect at Publicis Media, ran a Mother’s Day campaign for Zales that put pause ads on Xumo, the streaming platform owned jointly by Comcast and Charter Communications.

The brand had viewed CTV as a tool for building top-of-funnel awareness rather than driving direct conversions. The campaign was designed to both showcase Zales’ new brand identity and push holiday sales. The approach combined audience data and contextual targeting, while balancing precision with scale.

Bottom line, the results included a 276% increase in QR code scans and directly attributed sales. 

"WunderKIND Ads for CTV exceeded our expectations by driving more QR code scans vs. prior CTV campaigns, and even drove some directly attributable sales - an unexpected win for an upper-funnel tactic!" said Yasmari Garay, senior director of digital marketing at Signet/ Zales.

“This campaign for Zales demonstrates the measurable impact that innovative ad formats can have on the connected TV experience,” added Joseph Lerner, head of programmatic and revenue partnerships at Xumo. “Our mission at Xumo is to provide advertisers with effective, brand-safe solutions that not only capture viewer attention but also drive tangible results, and this collaboration with WunderKIND Ads and Connect at Publicis Media is a perfect example of that in action." 

Another pause ad campaign WunderKIND Ads did for Ulta generated 79% higher conversions than their traditional in-stream ads and 54% less cost per store visit. 

With pause ads, a challenge remains in predicting when inventory will be available because it is dependent on consumer behavior. “Forecasting is a little nascent and new,” Gendelman said.

The platforms have data on home many pauses they’re averaging on their platforms per month. It turns out the average consumer takes about four or five pauses per day.

“We’re seeing across a lot of apps and OEMs upwards of 100 million pauses per month, which is sizable,” he said. “They want to be able to monetize that inventory and that’s where we come into play. We build up the demand with advertisers and clients.”

WunderKIND started as an eCommerce company, building onsite experiences for retail and travel sites. One of its specialities was finding people about to leave a site and sending them messages designed to convince them to complete a transaction. It started doing audience retention for publishers and eventually got into the ad business with WunderKIND ads. Pause ads were a natural extension for the company, Gendelman said. 

“It has unlocked a new subset of buyers for us because now we offer a CTV product,” he said.

WunderKIND Ads is looking to use its technology to make other interactive CTV ad formats available programmatically, including home-screen ads and screensaver ads and eventually commerce applications. 

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On Tuesday night, 6.26 million viewers tuned in to ABC to see what Jimmy Kimmel would say when he returned to his late night talk show, according to the initial live+same day ratings from Nielsen.

Kimmel was taken off the air amid controversy over comments regarding the murder of conservative Charlie Kirk.

The large viewership was generated despite the show being pre-empted by Nexstar Media and Sinclair, which own ABC affiliates covering 23% of US. households.

Among adults 18-49, Jimmy Kimmel Live had a 9.87 rating, the show’s highest regularly scheduled episode since 2015.

Back in June, ABC said that Jimmy Kimmel Live was the No. 1 late night show among adults 18-49 with a 0.2 rating.

Kimmel also drew significant attention online. Tubular Labs said that with 12.9 million views, Kimmel’s monologue was the most-watched video from the show's YouTube page all year, drawing over two times more than the next most-watched video.

Since Sept. 17, there have been 14,500 videos about Kimmel on YouTube, amounting to 479 million views.