eCommerce Video Advertising Cross-Device Tracking For CTV/OTT

This post is part of our larger “OTT/CTV eCommerce Advertising Guide,” click here to learn more.

The ability to measure “what drove purchases” in eCommerce is kind of the whole point of eCommerce video advertising – just behind the actual conversion itself. When it comes to eCommerce video advertising for Connected TV/OTT, attribution gets a little tricky if you aren’t working with the right partner and the right technologies. You see, CTV ads aren’t “clickable.” So how do you encourage action in a space where the action doesn’t appear to be possible? Through cross-device tracking/targeting (and capable partners), of course! 

“Average CTV ad spend for the year is expected to reach $16MM per advertiser,” an 8% year-over-year increase, according to an IAB 2020 spend report. 

You don’t want to fall into a CTV advertising purgatory where you’re wandering around, hoping you’ve crossed over to the other side, but have no way of knowing if you actually succeeded. And that is why attribution is everything. 

With CTV advertising on the rise and not slowing down anytime soon, it’s prime-time to jump on that learning curve bandwagon and start creating actionable campaigns that drive results. To learn more about driving results through CTV eCommerce ads, check out this article. 

Let’s take a look at how cross-device tracking allows you to move beyond that “Brand Awareness” limbo and into a space where you get to decide who sees your eCommerce video ads, when they see them, what they should do AND they did do after viewing them.

Encourage Action With eCommerce Video Advertising For CTV

As we’ve discussed above, you don’t want to be lost in Brand Awareness Land when your aim is clear attribution and effective campaigns. Yes, it’s true that you can’t perform a clickable action on a CTV video ad, and it’s also true that you can encourage attributable actions from that very same CTV ad. Is your head spinning yet? Don’t worry. We’ll break it down even more. 

Thanks to a powerful tech solution called Encore Omnichannel, created right here at Strategus, we have found a way to turn a CTV-viewed ad into an “actionable” event. This isn’t a gimmick or a trick to achieve this, just really smart people doing some really cool problem-solving.  

Encore Omnichannel encourages an attributable behavior, whether that be a clickthrough to a website or filling out a survey, but that behavior happens on another device–you know the one we’re talking about, always clutched in the hands of millions – the smartphone, or any other connected device, really. 

You can read more about Encore Omnichannel at this link.

If you’re still confused about how the viewer gets from Point A (the Connected TV) to Point B (a secondary connected device), let us remind you about cross-device tracking. With the amount of information available all over the place in this DigiAge, it’s possible to track, target, and re-target consumers from their CTV to their mobile phone to their laptop to the stores that they shop offline. Sure, that’s a little frightening, and it’s excellent news for advertisers who want to create a more focused and holistic consumer experience. 

“Dream big, start small, but most of all, start.” – Simon Sinek, motivational speaker and author of many books, including Start With Why

The best part about this kind of technology when it comes to an effective and attributable campaign is that it only re-targets those who watched the CTV ad to completion (indicating full engagement), thus avoiding irrelevant ads and wasted time. 

Where Is The Consumer In The Buyer’s Journey?

Understanding where the consumer is in the buyer’s journey is imperative to offering them relevant eCommerce ads. If a viewer sees your ad on their CTV and then sees another piece of the puzzle after being re-targeted on their smartphone, you don’t want to lose that successful transition because the viewer was at a different stage in the buyer’s journey. No, we can’t read minds, but we can read behaviors – and people sure do have a lot of them. 

• Every second of every day, Google search processes over 40,000 search queries. 
• According to Statistica, 306.4 billion emails are sent every day in 2020. 
• There are 2.5 quintillion bytes of data created daily. 

That’s a staggering amount of data and “behaviors” being documented every moment of every day. And unlike real-world trash, there is no garbage truck picking up our data and carrying it off to the landfill.

“By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic — 15 times higher than it was in 2017.” Cisco Annual Report

Figuring out where the viewer is on the buyer’s journey is as “simple” as collecting, analyzing, and utilizing all of that behavioral data and then targeting that individual consumer across all of their devices. No big deal, with the right partner (ahem)! 

There are two types of data that allow a consumer to be tracked across multiple devices, and they include:

1. Probabilistic Data – Uses anonymous data points like page visits, time of date, operating systems, browsing habits and other information that is more complex than option two below. 

2. Deterministic Data – Collected based on identifiable data such as login information. A person leaves a footprint when they login to Hulu on their CTV, Spotify on their phone, Gmail on their laptop, and so on.

Utilizing this data is a key feature of the possibility of cross-device tracking. It ensures, with near certainty, that you are targeting the right person on the right device at the right point in time on their individual journey. 

How Attribution Works With eCommerce Video Ads Across Devices

Measurable conversions are the name of the game for marketers, at least the ones who value knowing if their strategies are effective or not. While Encore Omnichannel makes CTV ads “clickable” by encouraging a trackable action across devices, Strategus’ Attribution Suite is what you’re after when it comes to measuring those actions. Both action and attribution are essential components of a successful CTV ad campaign. 

The Attribution Suite is the first of its kind in the industry and allows for online and offline attribution so that you can customize the experience to be as specific as you need. 

Some of the cool attribution features you’ll find with this product are:

• Who visited a physical store through foot traffic attribution
• Matching offline purchases and actions after exposure to an ad
• Seeing who made an online purchase and where
• Post-view website visit attribution
• How many of a specific product (via UPC code) was purchased post-CTV-ad viewing
• Observing a viewer’s browsing behavior before and after the ad, allowing the opportunity to infer what we call After-Ad Influence (AAI)

To learn more about The Attribution Suite, check it out here. 

Say No More to ineffective CTV/OTT campaigns for your eCommerce site where conversions and dollars aren’t adding up. With the right partner, like the team here at Strategus, you can take control of every step of the process, except for free will and all of that. The biggest takeaway from this article is that you have the power to make CTV ads actionable and attributable across multiple devices, the two key ingredients necessary for baking this tasty eCommerce video advertising pie. If you’re in the mood to be inspired, download this eCommerce case study that saw Strategus leveraging CTV to generate over $93,000 for one company in just 2.5 months.