10 min read

What is CTV Advertising & How Does It Drive Leads?

 

Moving further into 2023, connected TV (CTV) advertising will continue to evolve with better ways to target and measure, giving advertisers the data-driven transparency they’ve been looking for.

Developing context around ad spending and knowing how ads are being viewed by targeted audiences drives these enhanced capabilities.

And with CTV audiences growing every year, brands will be adopting programmatic ad buying to reach these viewers on a powerful medium that is gaining viewers’ attention.

The good news is that today’s campaigns offer more transparency, more accuracy, and more insights. Let alone, the unmistakable impact of taking existing TV campaigns and adding programmatic optimizations to reach and frequency.

Down below, we’ll dig into the basics of CTV advertising and why it’s one of digital’s fastest-growing channels.

 

Table of Contents

  1. How Does Connected TV Advertising Work?
  2. Key Differentiators in a CTV Advertising Campaign
  3. How Can CTV Advertising Drive Leads Beyond Brand Awareness?
  4. What Every Marketer Should Consider in CTV Advertising
  5. Unlock The Power of CTV Advertising & Boost Conversions Today

 

How Does Connected TV Advertising Work?

 

a hand holding a TV remote points it towards a streaming service interface in the background

Connected TV advertising, also known as CTV advertising, is advertising that is delivered to viewers through internet-connected television devices such as smart TVs, gaming consoles, streaming devices, and set-top boxes.

It allows advertisers to reach a specific audience with targeted video ads, while they are watching TV content on streaming services or other digital platforms.

Since content consumption has transformed with the introduction of search, social media, smartphones, and video on demand streaming platforms, this has changed the advertising landscape.

With all this data, sources of content, and streaming options at our fingertips, traditional advertisers find themselves battling declining viewership. Especially as more cord-cutters make the jump to subscription-based and advertising-based streaming services.

Now, the advertising conversation is shifting as well. Instead of asking, “Are we reaching enough people?” We should be asking:

  • Are we engaging a relevant audience?

  • Does our engagement create impact?

  • Are we meeting the needs of our audience?

Key Differentiators in a CTV Advertising Campaign

 

Marketers discuss a CTV advertising strategy

Using CTV, streaming audiences are more active in choosing what to watch. It is why advertisers gain the confidence to engage consumers in the market for their products or services.

Flexibility: Connected TV advertising offers a cost-effective way to reach audiences on the big screen by reducing wasted impressions and making the most of their budget by adjusting ad creative and placements based on audience response.

In the past, TV advertising has been prohibitively expensive for smaller businesses and brands. However, CTV's ability to target niche and local markets means that marketers can now create TV-like messaging on streaming devices.

With 85% of households already using CTV, and over half of the US population expected to watch content from at least one ad-supported streaming service monthly by 2026, CTV advertising offers a significant opportunity for advertisers to reach their target audience effectively and efficiently.

Continuity: As consumers increasingly use multiple devices at home, advertisers need to ensure consistent messaging across all channels. 

Omnichannel marketing strategies can leverage CTV advertising to track ad frequency within households, enabling advertisers to use additional ad formats, such as display and audio, to deliver effective sequential messaging.

Advertisers can further refine their audience targeting and optimize ad cadences by retargeting users who engage with CTV ads.

This approach helps to ensure that the right people are seeing connected TV ads at the right time, making CTV advertising a valuable tool for reaching consumers across multiple devices and channels.

Hyper-targeting: Now, advertisers can move beyond the linear advertisement mindset and effectively understand and target their desired audience.

By leveraging different demographics and contextual audience identifiers, CTV advertising integrates extremely sophisticated audience targeting that goes beyond standard geographic and demographic targeting, allowing for personalized segmentation by individual behavior, interests, and context.

As the industry evolves, there is a focus on simplifying the CTV advertising landscape by optimizing data sources and processes like first-party data activation to ensure that only engaged consumers receive messages during campaigns.

Attribution Measurement: CTV advertising campaigns also offer accurate reporting and attribution tracking. Marketers can now see objective ROI on each campaign and receive feedback on responsive CTV audiences and device engagement to drive them through the purchase funnel.

Detailed measurements provide valuable insights into tactics, creative, and conversion paths for online and offline touchpoints. Metrics like website visits, purchase attribution, after-ad influence, brand lift, and awareness tracking provide transparency to campaign performance.

Scale: Reaching a larger audience and achieving marketing objectives more efficiently is easier with connected TV devices. By scaling campaigns, advertisers increase the impact of their messaging, drive more engagement and conversions, and ultimately generate more revenue.

Advertisers have the opportunity to adapt to changing market conditions and consumer behavior. As audience preferences and media consumption habits evolve, advertisers need to be able to quickly adjust their campaigns to maintain relevance and maximize results.

 

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How Can CTV Advertising Drive Leads Beyond Brand Awareness?

 

text of the words lead generation against a someone working on a laptop in the background

As traditional ad-supported broadcasts and cable viewership dwindle, streaming services continue to climb.

This cord-cutting movement is happening in greater numbers across all age groups, not just within millennials and Gen-Z. So, the question isn’t whether or not CTV advertising is the right move, it’s how can you best leverage it to capitalize on leads.

As one of the pioneers in programmatic CTV advertising, our team knows the intricacies of successful CTV advertising campaigns better than anyone, and the level of focus needed to generate quality leads. 

Audience targeting is easier than ever with the amount of data we have in our hands. It is a matter of how to be strategic with budget allocations and overall campaign strategies.

It cannot be emphasized enough: serving ads programmatically on CTV is not enough to guarantee a plethora of leads. Not anymore. You might get lucky, but other levers need to be manned as the ecosystem evolves to help drive conversions.

 

Optimizing Audience Targeting

 

What is the purpose of crafting an amazing ad if it isn’t seen by the right person? CTV audience targeting eliminates trial and error, allowing you to speak directly to your core audience. The more specific, the more effective.

Traditional linear TV advertising was limited to content-centric targeting, whereas CTV audience targeting is highly sophisticated and allows for a deep level of personalization.

Let's say that there’s a college student, who loves fitness and makes most of their purchases between 8 and 10 PM on the weekends with their mobile device. Yes, you can serve ads directly to them. This is the level of targeting we can leverage to create relatable, engaging ad impressions.

You're simply out of the loop if your targeting is still stuck at the conventional demographics like age, gender, and location.

 

Retargeting Other Channels To Increase Trackable Conversion Actions

 

CTV advertising is effective because full-screen, full-motion videos, on the largest digital device in the household, leave a more meaningful impact than other forms of digital advertising, such as influencer marketing or digital banners.

The downside is the inability to get a click action. Generally, people cannot click to go somewhere while watching their Amazon Fire Stick, Roku, or Samsung smart TV.  

Because brand resonance and customer engagement are notoriously difficult to measure when it comes to CTV ads, a strong campaign will incorporate other channels by retargeting. 

To avoid oversaturation of the same video content to the wrong individuals, we recommend a strategy focused on targeting individuals with a high video completion rate.

Once a viewer watches a CTV ad to completion, we can then retarget those individuals with clickable call-to-actions on their mobile phones, tablets, and computers. 

This added qualifier of only re-engaging with viewers who have completed the initial CTV ads ensures that the messaging has higher relevance and a higher chance of sales success. It is this combination that allows you to essentially track the conversion performance of the CTV ad with the retargeting campaign.

 

Is your CTV campaign reaching its full potential? Download the Complete Guide to CTV Retargeting to get the most out of your investment.

 

 

Reporting and Attributing Performance

 

Reporting and attribution tracking are mission-critical in determining the success of any campaign. If it can’t be measured, it can’t be replicated. On the other hand, measuring the incorrect metrics can also easily lead you down the wrong path. 

As we’ve noted, CTV ads are not “clickable” which can make attributions particularly tricky. But ultimately, there are a few important pieces of data we want to think about. 

First, how many of the target consumers are watching the video to completion? How many of those consumers are then following up and visiting the advertiser’s website? And, what device is streaming content, and which of those devices are showing your ad? 

At Strategus, we specifically created the Attribution Suite to answer all of those questions.

The motivation behind creating a full-function product suite for both online and offline attribution is simple: we want to know who saw your ad and what actions they did or did not take after. Only then can we have a true, objective ROI on each CTV ad campaign.

 

What Every Marketer Should Consider in CTV Advertising

 

marketers meet together at a table with laptops and other marketing materials

CTV advertising provides a unique opportunity to reach a diverse and engaged audience. It is important to understand who your target audience is and what type of content they consume on CTV platforms:

  • Tailor the ad to the platform

  • Use data to target effectively

  • Measure and optimize

  • Be creative and engaging

Above all, stay up-to-date with industry trends. In the constantly evolving world of technology and digital marketing, staying up to date is crucial because new trends, platforms, and tools emerge all the time.

 

Unlock the Power of CTV Advertising & Boost Conversions Today

 

Should you consider CTV advertising? Without a doubt. We have more options than ever before. Plus, consumers are growing accustomed to having personalized, tailored ad experiences.

CTV campaigns alone may bring awareness, but conversion requires dedicated lead-generation efforts. This is what we specialize in.

Our team has been running OTT and CTV campaigns non-stop since the beginning and deeply understands how the landscape is shaped. As the leading edge of this emerging technology, Strategus has the experience and expertise to make a CTV campaign work for your brand.

We are always happy to deep dive into the topic.

Contact us to talk about leveraging CTV ads as a part of your media strategy.

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Posted by Strategus