3 Reasons Connected TV Is Necessary for Your Ad Campaigns
175.4 million adults are watching their favorite TV shows on OTT (Over-the-top) devices like Connected TV (CTV) — that’s a third of the American population. This opens up new advertising inventory for marketers: Broadcast TV apps, free video streaming services like Hulu, and video game consoles like Xbox. While CTV advertising is still in its early stages with programmatic, it offers three key opportunities marketers should capitalize on in the coming year.
- Granular targeting
Traditional ads on live TV are often set up to reach nation-wide audiences. But, beyond age-range and gender, they offer very little in the way of demographic targeting. On CTV, ads can be more personalized to an audience’s interests. Though many marketers do not use DSP’s (demand-side platforms), this tool allows you to harness your first-party data to perform granular audience targeting. Equipped with audience predictor tools and look-alike modeling, you can create precise audience segments within the CTV ecosystem.
Third party data elements can add an extra layer of insight: for instance, you might discover that the cohort of users most likely to convert are football fans, or have an income of $70k or above. Along with narrowing down your audience, you can build audience exclusion-based segments. Eliminate low-value users by identifying common traits of low performing users. You can also create a retargeting pool with your DSP’s retargeting services. While this type of audience segmentation is not available in traditional broadcast TV, CTV now enables marketers to use the same tactics used across other digital channels for their TV ad campaigns.
- Omnichannel advertising on a budget
Traditionally, a 30-second TV commercial requires a large budget and the help of a video marketing agency. With CTV, TV advertising is no longer exclusive to the most powerful brands, it’s attainable for growing companies. No need to film a whole new commercial — you can revamp old creative for new ads. Creating a seamless online and offline experience is a powerful way to acquire and retain customers. Static banner ads can be an irritation to users, and turn them off to your brand altogether. With CTV, the model of payment is based on CPMs, so marketers pay for concrete results, not generic audience shares. And your budget goes toward the audience you actually want, not just ‘as many people as possible.’ In our experience, relevant targeting will drive conversions over exposure time and time again. Simply put, with Connected TV, you buy the audience, not the airtime.
- Increased control
Like your paid search and social campaigns, you have the ability to optimize your TV campaigns in real-time — whether that means turning them off, increasing their intensity, or switching the ad content all-together. Marketers can perform A/B testing with different ads to ensure quality and relevance. CTV offers more metrics to measure campaign effectiveness, such as view-through conversions and video completion rates. You can use the same metrics as your paid display campaigns for your CTV ads. For example, Nielsen Digital Ad ratings and Nielsen OTT measurement are both compatible with Connected TV. With Nielsen Digital Ad ratings, you can measure age, gender, reach GRP (gross rating point), and impressions. With the latter measurement tool, this includes frequency and incremental reach.
It’s worth noting that advertising on Connected TV won’t replace linear TV — it’s more of an extension of the TV ecosystem. As more and more Americans are abandoning linear broadcast TV, CTV is going to bring many changes to TV and video ad consumption. It’s necessary for media buying agencies and marketers to take advantage of Connected TV’s opportunities to bring success to their businesses and clients.
Learn more about Connected TV and its capabilities for agencies and marketers on our Twitter Live series #KatanaTalks! The next installment streams live on Wednesday, December 13th, 11 am PST, so be sure to follow us on Twitter!
