4 tips to get the most out of CTV advertising

Connected TV (CTV) targeting has long been anticipated to revolutionize advertising. It’s taken longer for that promise to become real, but we’re now at the inflection point. 

The rise of streaming services and the proliferation of smart TVs are leading more people to cut the cord and turn to CTV. This switch leads to many advantages, including the ability to target specific demographics. 

The benefits of CTV advertising

With data from streaming services and smart TVs, advertisers can create highly targeted campaigns that reach the right audience based on content and timing. 

As we know, this level of precision is not possible with traditional TV advertising, which relies on wide-ranging demographic groups and broad-stroke targeting.

Another key advantage is the ability to measure campaign effectiveness. With traditional TV advertising, tracking how many people actually saw an ad and whether it impacted purchasing behavior is challenging at best. 

Conversely, CTV technology tracks:

• How many people saw an ad.
• How long they watched it.
• Whether they engaged with it. 

This level of engagement and overall measurement is essential for optimizing campaigns and maximizing return on ad spend.

Dig deeper: How CTV can deliver market research for B2B marketers

CTV brings unique advertising opportunities

The shift we’re seeing in viewing habits has seismic implications for the advertising industry. As of late 2022: 

• Netflix alone has eclipsed 200 million subscribers worldwide. 
• Disney+ now touts more than 152 million subscribers worldwide.
• Domestic-only provider Hulu still has 46 million subscribers.

This rise of CTV reach has also led streaming services to develop new ad formats better suited to the environment.

Interactive ads, for example, allow viewers to engage with the content and learn more about a product or service. These dynamic ad formats are proving to be more effective than traditional linear ads across both measurable engagement and conversion.

The larger reach is also translating into an overall increase in ad spend. Some marketers are shifting budgets away from the iOS and social placements where scale is becoming sparser and re-investing in CTV advertising. 

Right now, CTV advertising is projected to increase by over 14% in 2023, according to the IAB. What that all rolls up to is a CTV ad spend that will likely exceed $26 billion in 2023 and $31 billion in 2024.

So, how is this shift in ad spend to being justified? 

Brands and marketers are seeing that CTV offers unique advertising opportunities including:

Audience targeting

CTV is built on data that allows marketers to build or target specific audiences based on many more factors than other forms of TV advertising, including location, language, content and consumption.

Eyes on ads

Because streaming providers don’t often allow for ad skipping, this equates to a much better ad completion rate, ensuring that all ad content is seen by the targeted audience.

Identity and data insights

Because CTV devices are stitched into home networks, marketers can build anonymized insights based on IP address and other device IDs. As such, identity signals can be aggregated into audience insights for even deeper segmentation and traffic monitoring (i.e., which ads led to a website visit).

The overriding goal is to get more eyeballs on both content and ads. With that, many streaming providers aim to provide subscribers the option to switch from the current subscription model to a “no-cost but fully ad-supported” streaming experience. 

Netflix and Disney+ plan to introduce a fully ad-supported option for their subscribers. While the specifics are still sparse, 64% of CTV viewers polled say they would prefer to watch ads than pay for more content, according to a DeepIntent survey. 

That said, Netflix is entering this area cautiously until they can ensure they won’t lose subscribers accustomed to commercial-free viewing. 

Dig deeper: Brands are betting heavily on CTV advertising

How to get the most out of CTV advertising

Whether the model stays subscription-based or ad-supported (or something in-between), we must continue to adapt to take full advantage of CTV targeting’s benefits. 

With the right strategies and partnerships, we can create data-driven targeted ads to find new customers, build more robust and longer-lasting relationships with existing clients and ultimately drive more brand awareness and sales. 

For marketers looking to get the most out of CTV advertising in 2023, here are four tips to remember.

1. Target fraud-free and premium inventory

Until now, TV advertising offers minimal controls in the open exchanges to monitor where and within what content your ad is shown, leading to a slew of brand safety issues. 

With CTV targeting, you can work within CTV aggregators, allowing them to only show your ads in and around brand-safe inventory and to an audience with a higher propensity to engage and convert.

2. Measurement and attribution

The data and identity-driven backbone of CTV advertising allow for:

• Directly matching sales data with ad exposure data.
• Getting deeper insights on the impact of CTV ads viewed on the path to purchase and overall campaign success.

3. Enriched viewership data

With CTV devices connected to IP addresses and other device IDs in the household, you can overlay viewership data with offline and online data.

This lets you better analyze household make-up and create ad creative and messaging tailored to specific audiences.  

4. Revamping ad formats

With ad completion rates so high for CTV ad formats, marketers can get creative.

Consider campaigns incorporating short but interconnected ads that can be shown throughout the program. Such narrative-style ad campaigns can tell a story across multiple commercial breaks within one show or series.

Get ahead with CTV advertising

While we don’t know how CTV advertising will evolve over the next year or two, it’s clear that this format will be a significant area of growth for brands and marketers.

CTV advertising is set to become an increasingly critical part of the overall advertising landscape for many years to come.