The digital advertising market grows and evolves just as consumers do. The average American spends nearly five and a half hours on their mobile device each day, so it should come as no surprise that brands are shifting their focus to social and digital ad channels to reach target audiences. Connected TV (CTV) has emerged as a new medium for advertisers as consumers – especially younger demographics – demonstrate a preference for streaming and spending on the platform is projected to be the fastest-growing medium in the U.S. this year, growing 21.2% to reach $25.09 billion.
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While linear TV uses viewing ratings by age for each program, CTV offers more precise targeting, including age, geographic targeting and interest targeting (for example, program genre), depending on the streaming service that delivers the ad. With a captive audience, CTV advertising is a valuable space to explore.
Based on our experiences with this medium, there are three key things we recommend to other marketers who are experimenting with CTV.
Timing is key for campaign optimization.
Some marketers think CTV is impression branding based, but there is tracking technology that enables performance-based campaigns to be run. CTV allows accurate audience targeting by IP address, geo-location, device type, online behavior and more, and ad metrics can be checked in real-time. Outlining your campaign’s objectives ahead of time will help you build out the right tracking to ensure it’s optimized.
Ad creative is extremely important.
While a U.S. recession is still under debate, to curb expenses, many consumers are spending more time at home, which gives them ample time for streaming. A Deloitte study found price-conscious viewers are receptive to ad-supported streaming videos if it means reduced subscription fees or free content. This presents marketers with opportunities to reach this captive audience.
A viewer’s experience with these ads – especially if they’re unable to skip them and ad breaks are built into the program they’re watching – can affect how they perceive a brand, so targeted ad creative is important. A benefit of CTV is, unlike linear TV, marketers can submit various ad formats and A/B testing is possible. Measuring a campaign’s success, however, requires a combination of online and offline awareness promotion.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
This brings me to my next point – CTV campaigns can be paired with other digital media to increase their effectiveness.
Consumers may need three to five impressions before becoming interested in a product they’ve never heard of before. If CTV serves as the first touch point, banner ads may target them as a second touch point when reading articles online. It may take seeing ads for the same product again on social media such as Facebook – the third touch point – before they finally decide to click the ad to learn more.
Marketers who are using CTV to target customers who are deeper in the purchase funnel might want to consider pairing it with another search-optimized user acquisition strategy. In this case, when people see an ad on the CTV screen, if it resonates, their first action will be to search to learn more.
For example, in the mobile gaming app industry, social media channels are the link between an app and its current and potential user base. Including a brand’s social media handles and campaign-specific hashtags in CTV ad creative can be a useful measurement tool to learn how effective the campaign is.
Conclusion
As consumer behavior continues to drive the digital advertising landscape, CTV is an exciting new medium to explore. It allows marketers to make sure they’re targeting the right people in the right regions, as well as refine creative to see what resonates with the audience. This enables brands to use their ad budgets more effectively to increase awareness.
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