What is a new format experiment?
A new format experiment is a deliberate, small-scale test of a format a brand has not used before: a new platform feature, an emerging ad unit, a different length, an unusual screen, a piece of technology such as augmented reality or shoppable video. The aim is to learn, cheaply and quickly, whether the format suits the brand and its audience before committing a real budget to it.
What makes it an experiment rather than a gamble is structure: a hypothesis, a limited scope, a way of measuring and a decision at the end. Without those four things, a brand is not experimenting; it is just trying things and hoping to remember what happened.
Why it matters
Why new format experiments matter
Platforms change faster than annual plans. Formats that reach people today, vertical video, short series, creator collaborations, did not exist or did not matter a few years ago, and the brands that tested them early learned the grammar while mistakes were still cheap. Brands that wait for proof tend to arrive when the format is crowded and the costs have risen.
Experiments also keep creative teams curious. A new constraint, a strange screen size, a format with no conventions yet, often produces the freshest ideas a brand has all year, because nobody can fall back on what worked last time.
In practice
How new format experiments work in practice
- 01
Start with a question, not a format: will our audience watch a three-part vertical series? Does a product film perform better at six seconds or fifteen? Set a small budget and a short timeline, define what success looks like, and make the work properly, because a sloppy test only proves that sloppy work fails. Keep a control where possible, the brand's usual format running alongside, so results can be compared.
- 02
When the test ends, review it honestly: what worked, what did not and why. Formats that earn their place graduate into the regular plan with a proper budget; the rest are retired with their lessons written down, so nobody has to rediscover them next year.
At RIOT
New format experiments at RIOT
We like formats that do not have rules yet. For Red Bull Kumite we made work for the screens of Times Square, where the scale and the street change how a film has to be built. For Gantri we produced two months of social product films, a steady run of short pieces in which each batch could learn from the last. And AltSounds, our own music video channel, gives us a place to try formats with our own audience before we suggest them to anyone else.
Watch out
What people get wrong about new format experiments
Calling every new idea an experiment. Without a question and a measure, it is just something new. The other mistake is judging a format on one attempt. Early tries are clumsy; give a promising format two or three iterations before deciding. A third is running the test with second-string work. If the experiment does not get a brand's best thinking, the result says more about the effort than the format.
