How to Drive Measurable Actions With Advertising-Based VOD Services

The transition from traditional cable services to connected TV (CTV) and over-the-top platforms (OTT) has been ongoing for the better part of the last decade. From cutting cable costs to personalizing their viewing preferences, the simple truth is that a growing number of television watchers prefer CTV. Why, then, are companies still lagging behind in their marketing and advertising efforts when it comes to CTV? Advertising-based VOD (video on demand), more commonly referred to as AVOD, is one of the most popular forms of CTV viewership. And yet… it still remains a largely untapped source of brand awareness and revenue growth, when executed correctly. 

Researchers predicted a steady increase of CTV usage entering 2020, a trend which has risen exponentially due to COVID-19. As opportunities to engage with customers in person continue to decrease, it’s time for savvy marketers to use these undeniable trends to their benefit through advertising-based VOD. There’s a catch though…

Where’s the Action?

If you have any experience running an AVOD campaign, you’ve likely found yourself asking this question — How do I track action?

Any adequate advertising team can master the best practices in CTV advertising to execute a campaign that puts themselves in front of their customer’s eyes using advertising-based VOD. But what happens after that? 

While generating impressions is wonderful, they mean nothing if you are unable to measure the action that follows. Your advertising-based VOD campaign may have been executed flawlessly, but without the ability to track appropriate metrics — including website visits, increase in foot traffic, and purchases — you can’t assess the success of the campaign. This prevents you from making adjustments in your advertising strategies that are necessary for success.

For far too long, the technology surrounding CTV advertising has lagged behind that of other digital marketing tactics. Here at Strategus, we realized that gap and the impact it has on advertising efforts, especially as CTV and OTT usage continue to soar. So we did what we do best — create a solution.

Make Your CTV Ads Clickable

As opposed to other digital marketing tactics, CTV advertising is virtually always unclickable, preventing you from tracking the viewer’s actions after seeing the advertisement. So, how do you change the narrative from traditional spray-and-pray advertising to measurable, tactful targeting? That’s where Encore Omnichannel technology from Strategus comes into play. Here’s how it works:

• Develop — Like any campaign, the first step is to generate awareness. Use your intimate understanding of your audience to generate a strategic campaign that targets the right audience at the right time through advertising-based VOD.
• Implement — Your audience views the individually targeted ad to completion on their CTV device.
• Retarget — This is where the unclickable becomes clickable, and thus, trackable. After the CTV ad has been watched to completion, the technology retargets the viewer via their smartphone, tablet, laptop, or desktop using clickable calls-to-action.

The combination of advertising through VOD and retargeting to clickable devices brings new capabilities to your CTV advertising campaign. Now that the retargeted ad is in a clickable location, you have the ability to track your customer’s actions as they relate to your brand.

How to Track AVOD Engagement

Your campaign is individually targeted to engaged buyers and your CTV ads are now as close to clickable as possible. Now what? None of that matters if you can’t complete the initial goal — measure the actions that your AVOD campaign creates! 

In essence, you need to answer two questions: who saw your ad, and what did they do after viewing it? Strategus’ Attribution Suite answers both of those questions to help you drive and track action with AVOD services. 

Attribution is a key component of any successful campaign. You need to be able to track the events that led to the completion of a desired action — say, purchasing a new car. In turn, you’re able to gauge the success of certain marketing touchpoints, messages, and channels. 

As the first technology developed to track offline and online attribution in CTV advertising, the Attribution Suite offer six unique functionalities: 

1. Post-View Website Attribution — Attracting people to your website is a necessary first step in the sales funnel. Not only does it expose buyers to your business offerings, it also shows search engines that people are interested in your company. This further impacts your organic rankings and chance of exposure. This functionality tracks who visited your website after viewing the AVOD ad.
2. Post-View Purchase Attribution — As we said above, impressions are great, but conversions are king. The online purchase attribution tracks who made a purchase after viewing the AVOD ad, either on your website or Amazon.
3. Foot-Traffic Attribution — Not every conversion is digital. In-person shopping is still preferred for many buyers,. This tool uses GPS services to report on users who watched the CTV ad before visiting a brick-and-mortar location.
4. CPG Attribution — Universal product codes (UPCs), or bar codes, make it simple to gauge your most popular products. CPG attribution tracks how often a certain product was purchased by customers who were exposed to the AVOD ad.
5. After-Ad Influence — The journey from first exposure to final purchase is rarely a straight line from point A to point B. Many buyers prefer to do research on the product first before purchasing it. After-ad influence gauges this exactly, tracking a potential customer’s online browsing behavior after being influenced by the AVOD ad.
6. Offline Conversion Tracking — Campaigns are always multifaceted and include multiple purchasing opportunities for the buyer. The offline conversion tracking tool aligns with specific goals set forth in your CRM to measure conversions from viewers of your AVOD campaign.

Take the Next Steps

The use of ad-supported VOD platforms has never been higher. If those trends stay true to the projections, reliance on these devices will only continue to increase. As marketers, that means it’s time for you to embrace these strategies and the technologies which make them flourish. 
Proper tactics will only take you so far. It’s the updated technology that truly places you ahead of the curve in CTV/OTT advertising. If you want to learn more about crafting a successful AVOD campaign, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. As pioneers of the industry, we are thrilled to help you drive measurable actions through CTV advertising.