What Is Performance TV Advertising?

Performance advertising describes tactics that are designed to achieve measurable business results. Lead generation, online sales, and foot traffic are all potential outcomes that can be prioritized and tracked in a performance campaign.

The concept was initially introduced thanks to digital tactics like pay-per-click (PPC) advertising that focused on specific goals, like clicks. Today, though, performance marketing is more broadly applicable to any strategy that can be tied to quantifiable results. 

Google Trends Data for ‘Performance Advertising’

This focus on ‘measurable outcomes’ means two things:

1. Performance advertising  tactics must be oriented around a specific goal
   
   
2. The channels used must offer sufficient reporting and attribution to gauge success. 

This data-driven approach continues to find its way into new applications, including TV advertising.  This is because with the rise of programmatic connected TV (CTV) technology, television advertising has evolved into a powerful tool for driving direct responses and achieving data-backed results.

But getting it right requires a new playbook. Hyper-targeting, personalization, real-time measurement, and robust attribution are all key to transforming the living room television into a high-performance marketing channel.

So what does it take to thrive in the newest era of performance TV? We detail it all below, including tips for targeting your viewers, KPIs to track, and best practices to implement today.

What Is Performance TV?

Performance TV is an approach to TV advertising that uses the targeting, measurement and attribution capabilities of programmatic ad placement to achieve measurable business outcomes. These campaigns go beyond generic awareness plays by incorporating direct-response tactics that motivate viewers to take action.

Remember the good old days of Oxiclean’s infomercials with Billy Mays? In many ways, these infomercials laid the groundwork for today’s performance TV campaigns. That’s because they focused on a clear call to action, and often used urgency-based incentives to further motivate viewers.

But performance TV takes this several steps further by combining the precision targeting and data-driven reporting of programmatic CTV. This allows advertisers to pinpoint who sees their ads, personalize the messaging accordingly, retarget those viewers across supplementary devices, and gain granular insight into campaign results.

How to Use CTV as a Performance Channel

To transform CTV into a performance marketing channel, marketers must use all the capabilities available in a strategic and goal-oriented manner. 

As such, three things underpin performance TV success:

1. Precise targeting: When running programmatic CTV campaigns, marketers can target specific audience segments. This replaces the spray-and-pray approach of linear TV with a much more precise strategy. In this way, CTV allows brands to reach the right people, at the right time, with the right message by customizing their creative based on which customer segments are being targeted. 
   
   
2. Full-funnel retargeting: It’s rare that someone purchases a product or service directly after seeing an ad on their television. That’s why CTV ads should be used as an initial touchpoint in cross-device campaigns. The average household now has 16 connected devices. And because it can take seven or more exposures to a brand before customers are ready to buy, integrating all of these devices into a cohesive strategy is key to converting prospects.
   
   
3. Robust attribution and measurement: Performance marketing hinges on measurability. While it’s all good and fine to cross your fingers that a billboard will drive visits to your store, actual results will remain an unproven assumption without the hard data. Luckily, CTV delivers the deterministic data required to link ad exposures to real outcomes, eliminating the guesswork. 
   
   

Strategus Co-Founder and EVP of Innovation Joel Cox explains:

How Connected TV Audiences Are Targeted

CTV targeting will vary depending on what your ad tech stack looks like. Some DSPs still use rather fundamental data sources to build generic segments. Other CTV platforms provide more precise audience building tools, but they limit marketers to a single walled garden.

At Strategus, though, we take a layered approach to targeting that incorporates multiple data sources to maximize results. Rather than providing off-the-shelf audience segments, we work with agencies and brands to build custom audiences based on a mix of tactics.

Our targeting methods include:

Website Retargeting: Reengage warm leads on the big screen and lure online shoppers back to their abandoned carts. This keeps your brand top of mind after leads step away from the computer.


First-Party Data: Leverage customer data from your CRM to deliver personalized CTV ads directly to your contacts’ living rooms. 


Lookalike Modeling: Expand your reach by building custom lookalike audiences. This powerful tactic is our second-best performer for driving results.


Location-Based Retargeting: Reconnect with users who‘ve visited your stores — or conquest foot traffic from competitor locations. Both are powerful tactics to translate physical touchpoints into digital engagement.


Smart Audience Contextual: Reach consumers actively researching your services by targeting viewers based on the websites they’ve been visiting and keywords they’ve been typing into Google.


ACR Data Targeting: Reach specific households based on their TV viewing habits and interests for precise audience alignment. This could mean showing an ad for a Lexus convertible on its way to a golf course to a viewer who regularly watches live golf.


Linear TV Extension: Bridge the gap between your linear TV campaigns and CTV by targeting households exposed to your TV ads for increased reach and frequency. A combination of both mediums ensures that your efforts aren’t siloed.


Amazon Data Targeting: Leverage Amazon purchase data to reach consumers actively shopping for products related to your campaign. For instance, a person who often purchases gluten-free products may see a commercial for a local health store.

CTV is thus a more premium subset of OTT that focuses on big-screen TVs where co-viewing is more common (resulting in more ad impressions) and viewers are more engaged. 

Integrating CTV into Full-Funnel Campaigns

CTV ads run on the most important screen in the house: the living room TV. But without also considering laptops, smartphones, and other connected devices, campaign performance will suffer. Why? People rarely take action while watching TV, and multiple touchpoints are required to maximize conversions. 

Luckily, though, the digital nature of CTV advertising makes it possible to retarget people who’ve seen your TV ads on other devices, thus driving conversions in clickable environments.

In this way, marketers can retarget the same users across supplementary channels until they’re ready to convert. We call this CTV retargeting, and it’s key to driving campaign performance. In fact, our tests show a 200% increase in conversions when using this approach as compared to only running CTV ads.

Performance TV Metrics to Track

By definition, performance TV requires access to robust data about campaign performance. Impressions, completions, conversions, and clicks should all be tracked.

Monitoring these is essential for several reasons. For one, keeping an eye on this data ensures brand safety and viewability. It also helps advertisers gain insight into audience engagement and identify opportunities for improvement.

Here’s a look at the most common CTV metrics and how they might inform your approach.

• Impressions: This metric tells you how many people saw at least a portion of your CTV ad. Although it’s more of a vanity metric in that it doesn’t quantify revenue, it still sheds light into the reach of a given campaign.

• Completion rate: Video completion rate is often high in CTV advertising because the ads are non-skippable and play within user-selected content. For this reason, VCR is more useful for detecting major trends that would indicate an issue, as well as for monitoring completion rates across other streamable channels like online video and streaming audio. 

• Clicks: When running omnichannel CTV campaigns that use retargeting tactics across clickable media like search, display, online video, and more, you’ll want to measure how many clicks are generated. This is a straightforward count of the number of times users clicked on your ads to learn more.

• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Click-through rate measures the number of clicks per impression. While the CTR will generally be low, any increase indicates that your efforts are resonating with viewers and driving action. This metric should always be considered in terms of the goal and channel. An awareness ad won’t have a high click-through rate, nor will a CTV ad that lacks clickable elements.

• Conversions: This metric focuses on the specific actions taken by viewers as a direct result of seeing your CTV advertisement. Depending on your campaign, a conversion might mean that the viewer filled out a contact form, made an online purchase, or stepped foot into brick-and-mortar locations. 

• Conversion Rate: Conversion rate measures the percentage of users who’ve completed a desired action by dividing conversions by impressions. These actions are tied directly to attribution capabilities, which is why we dive deeper into attribution below.

Learn more about CTV reporting →

Using Advanced Attribution to Measure Tangible Results

Without comprehensive insight into the buyer's journey, it’s not possible to tie TV ad exposures to business results. That’s because TV ads rarely convert in real-time. For this reason, measuring the effectiveness of a CTV campaign requires tracking user activity following ad exposure, across both digital and physical touchpoints.

By combining the key metrics above with multi-touch attribution, TV media buyers can clearly identify marketing-influenced leads and calculate return on ad spend (ROAS). Here's a closer look at the tangible outcomes that attribution can be used to measure on CTV.

Post-View Website Visitation: See how effectively your CTV ads drive traffic to your website. Quantify the number of viewers that explored your online presence after seeing your brand on the big screen.

Foot Traffic: Use smartphone GPS data to connect the dots between ad views and in-store visits. Measure the real-world impact of your CTV campaigns on foot traffic.


Online Purchases: See the full path from ad impression to online checkout. Attribute sales directly to your CTV efforts, providing clear ROI insights.


CPG Sales: Bridge the gap between online ads and offline purchases for consumer packaged goods. Leverage SKU-level purchase data to connect the dots between CTV exposure and in-store sales.

First-Party Data Matching: Integrate your proprietary customer data with our ad exposure files to gain a deeper understanding of how CTV impacts your existing customer base. Measure new customer acquisition and even assign a dollar value to each new customer gained.

Revenue Pixel: Track revenue with precision. Implement our revenue pixel to capture the exact revenue associated with each online purchase attributed to your CTV campaign.


Search and Social Impact: Uncover the hidden influence of CTV on other channels. Measure the lift and improvement CTV advertising has on your search and social campaigns, revealing its role in driving conversions across platforms.

Learn more about CTV reporting →

Programmatic TV Advertising Best Practices

Once you have the capabilities for targeting, retargeting, and attribution squared away, the final step is taking a strategic approach focused on business outcomes. This means aligning your CTV campaigns with specific, measurable goals, and continuously optimizing your approach based on the data. 

1. Define campaign goals and target audiences: The first step to crafting a CTV campaign is defining your goals (e.g., brand awareness, website visits, foot traffic to a brick-and-mortar location) and target audience segments. This will lay a foundation for more targeted and actionable campaigns.
   
   
2. Gather existing video assets: Next, assess your existing video library. Look for high-quality, on-brand content that aligns with CTV's technical requirements. This includes professional production value, clear branding throughout, a singular focus on a key message, and clean design with easy-to-read text and contrasting colors for optimal viewing on large screens.
   
   
3. Update what you have or build CTV-first creative: Whether you’re updating existing video assets or creating new ads from scratch, it’s all about giving users a clear call to action based on your campaign goals. Some tactics for doing this include promoting current deals, showcasing your current inventory with dynamic creative, or incorporating interactive elements like QR codes that drive action.
   
   
4. Personalize messaging to different audiences: The key to CTV advertising is delivering relevant ads that resonate with viewers. As such, tailoring ad creative to different buyers drives better results. This could mean swapping out the B-roll or highlighting different products and services.
   
   
5. Nail the basic requirements and specs: Align with technical specs for the length (15 or 30 seconds), file format (MP4), and resolution (1080 p). Failure to meet these specs can cause latency and buffering, potentially causing viewers to abandon the app or even reboot their devices.
   
   
6. Put guardrails in place to prevent ad fatigue: Rotate at least 3 creative variations can help prevent ad fatigue, as well as refreshing your ads quarterly. You’ll also want to monitor campaign frequency and engagement to adjust your strategy based on what the data shows.
   
   
7. Integrate your CTV ads into full-funnel campaigns: Expand your reach and boost conversions by layering retargeting efforts across various channels like display ads, paid social media ads, and paid search ads. This allows you to deliver targeted messages throughout the customer journey, from initial brand awareness to website visits and ultimately, conversions.
   
   
8. Test and optimize campaigns in flight: Just like other digital channels, programmatic CTV campaigns should be monitored and optimized on an ongoing basis.

Why Choose Strategus as Your Performance TV Partner

Performance TV advertising isn’t rocket science, but navigating its complexities requires expertise and a deep understanding of the CTV landscape. That's where Strategus comes in.

As the first agency to run a programmatic CTV ad in 2015, we have the experience and technology to help you achieve your performance goals. 

We offer:

Unmatched Expertise

Our team of CTV specialists will guide you through every step of the process, from strategy development to campaign execution and optimization.

Full-Funnel Retargeting

Extend your reach and maximize conversions with cross-device retargeting strategies that engage viewers across all their connected devices.

Advanced Targeting & Attribution

Our ecosystem of 200+ data providers ensures targeting and attribution like never before, enabling us to develop informed strategies and adapt on the fly based on what the data reveals.

Transparent Reporting

Gain clear insights into campaign performance with our comprehensive reporting dashboards and custom analytics.

With Strategus as your partner, you get the broad reach, data integrations, and expertise required to drive CTV results. Our combination of premium inventory and data-driven targeting ensures precise ad placement focused on your viewers, thus maximizing campaign results.

Ready to transform your TV advertising into a performance powerhouse? Contact us today and let us help you achieve your business goals with Performance TV.