With connected TV (CTV) becoming a widespread mode of media consumption, digital marketers are taking notice of connected TV advertising advantages. Becoming a champion of CTV will help you win over more client dollars and ensure your team is leveraging CTV’s full potential.
In a survey featuring over 200 brand advertising and agency decision-makers, we found that advertisers are beginning to pull marketing dollars from more traditional sources and shifting them toward CTV advertising. In some cases, however, marketing managers and media buyers struggle with approaching the channel in a way that shows both team members and clients its true potential. An industry-leading business intelligence firm, Advertiser Perceptions, helped us complete this survey to unlock more insight on the benefits and opportunities that CTV presents.
Are you ready to champion the CTV channel? Here are 7 reasons why advertisers are finding CTV gives them a competitive advantage:
7 Reasons Advertisers are Leveraging Connected TV Advertising
1. CTV Advertising is Cost-Effective
The rapid growth of CTV offers independent agencies opportunities to reach or even exceed their clients’ advertising goals. Cost of entry is one of the most significant barriers to exploring typical marketing channels.
And yet, it’s one of the most significant connected TV advertising advantages. CTV ads offer a much lower cost of entry compared to linear TV. Displaying this advantage to clients can position agencies as strategic partners that deliver incredible value.
Traditional TV spots are notoriously expensive because advertisers are paying for an ad that is at the mercy of the network. This is due to the fact that companies are limited to the time slots each network has available. Y
ou may get your ad shown on TV, but it may show at a time that’s completely missing your target audience. As a result, linear advertising can be prohibitively expensive, especially for small or mid-size agencies. And, that money goes to an ad that your target audience may not even see.
CTV advertising is more cost-effective because it provides access to the internet, accurate targeting, and precise inventory selection. You can deliver ads to hard-to-reach and highly specific audiences, which will improve your audience quality. This increases ad relevance to match consumer preferences and helps connect your campaign to other online and offline behaviours.
2. CTV Offers Precision Targeting
CTV leverages similar campaign setup and targeting as other programmatic media buys like display, native and audio. Therefore, you can assess progress against goals and metrics while a campaign is live, much like other programmatic campaigns.
Some of the targeting parameters advertisers can use include:
- 1st-party audiences, including homepage visitors and past purchasers, on the big screen.
- 3rd-party segments to target households based on traits like age, gender, income, presence of kids, vacationers, or shopping intent.
- Lookalike audiences to target households that look most like your valuable 1st-party users by running a lookalike model in the platform.
Advertisers who employ CTV targeting metrics can leverage so much more than the baseline benefits of advertising on TV. Because you’ve honed in on your target audience, your retargeting campaigns become a gold mine of leads for your business.
Since CTV ads work with streaming data, users can be tracked across platforms. If a potential customer sees your ad on their Smart TV, you can now track them across other devices. This has incredible potential to boost your customer conversion rates.
3. Next-Level Optimization and Measurement
CTV further sets itself apart from linear because along with accurate targeting, it offers more precise measurement and attribution. With CTV, you’re empowered to unlock data, which goes far above and beyond the benefits of advertising on TV.
You can proactively learn who is interacting with and viewing your ads. Then, you can optimize and retarget accordingly based on that new information. You can also use CTV to retarget users based on impressions or engagement with other campaigns.
Leveraging the full impact of CTV audience targeting leaves plenty of opportunity for optimization. Armed with a deeper level of customer data, you’ll be able to maximize the impact of your advertising dollars. This is one of the biggest benefits of connected TV advertising compared to linear.
With linear ads, you wait weeks, sometimes months, for performance reports. Once your ad run is done, it’s too late to make changes—be it targeting adjustments or other campaign optimizations. With the ability to target and report in real-time, CTV allows you to view stats and adjust on the fly.
CTV advertisers can also measure campaign results related to website visits or online purchases, as well as offline behaviour. The ability to track the impact of your CTV campaigns with digital metrics, including video completion rates and offline results like increase in footfall traffic or in-store sales, is one of the great benefits of CTV advertising.
4. Holistic Campaigns
CTV is very effective to use on its own, but it works even better as a part of a larger media mix. As advertisers, it’s important to think, “what is CTV’s role in my overall marketing strategy?” Leveraging native, display, and video together is the traditional trifecta for your campaigns. We recommend combining these tactics along with CTV and audio to get the best campaign results. This allows you to meet your audience wherever they are online.
As much as we like to think that television viewers are glued to the TV screen, the reality is that many are actually browsing their phones or surfing the web simultaneously. Statista found that 191.1 million US adults were two-screen viewers in 2020 (they used a computer or mobile device to browse online while watching either digital video or traditional TV).
This second screen-viewing behaviour is exactly why intelligent advertisers leverage the advantages of advertising on connected TV as part of a more extensive, holistic campaign. Engaging your users on multiple platforms ensures you capture viewers who may be checking other devices during their programming. Providing similar content across different devices will increase viewers’ chances of seeing your ad and taking action.
5. CTV Has a High Adoption Rate
According to the IAS Streaming Wars report, which surveyed US consumers, CTV is nearly universally adopted. Today, 88% of US consumers have access to a CTV device.
The rise of CTV has created a phenomenon known as “cord-cutting.” This term refers to the pattern of viewers cancelling their subscriptions to cable or satellite television services or dropping paid television channels, favouring TV content served via the internet.
Cord-cutting can be attributed to the flexibility and consumer control that CTV offers viewers. Streamed content is a much more economical choice when compared to traditional cable or satellite. It also has increased consumer appeal because it allows viewers to watch what they want when they want. In light of this fact, the already high adoption rate of CTV is expected to continue to go even higher.
Time spent on CTV has increased as well. In 2021, the average daily viewing time in the US was 80 minutes. With so many consumers embracing streamed content and spending increasing amounts of time with it, it’s no surprise that more advertisers want to leverage the advantages of advertising on connected TV. In fact, Our Ad Perceptions report found that advertisers had a 56% year-over-year increase in forecasted spend last year.
6. Setting Yourself Apart With Connected TV
CTV is not only a new channel to advertise on, but it is a unique one. Our Ad Perceptions report found that 75% of marketers believe CTV is a cutting-edge way to promote their brands. In addition, agencies leverage their CTV knowledge to market themselves as innovative.
No other channels have the power to position agencies in this way. Couple this with the fact that findings from Integral Ad Science indicate advertisers can reach more than 90% of US adults with CTV advertising, and it isn’t hard to see why this is a channel to champion.
The connected TV advertising advantages don’t stop there. CTV affords advertisers flexibility and control related to audience, KPI measurement, targeting, and the viewing experience that simply isn’t available when it comes to linear TV, or other more traditional marketing platforms.
For example, viewers watching CTV are more engaged because they’ve made the active choice to watch the programming, and they do not have the option to fast forward or skip any ads. Additionally, these viewers do not always have traditional TV or cable subscriptions—enabling the advertiser to widen their campaign’s reach.
7. CTV Provides Impressive Rate of Increase
The rate of increase in CTV spend is impressive—even more so for advertisers who are experienced in the space versus those who are newer to the channel. Our Ad Perceptions report found that advertisers with 3 or more years of CTV experience spend more dollars targeting this device, citing a very healthy +40% year-over-year expected increase.
This data shows that experience with CTV brings success, which in turn drives more dollars. In fact, our report further found that those who spend more on CTV are more likely to experience greater advertising success. And those who experience success invest more dollars in CTV—helping to put their brands at a competitive advantage.
How do you gain this experience and competitive edge with CTV? Build your confidence in executing CTV campaigns by leveraging your existing teams. Use education to build proper knowledge on how to onboard CTV and shift your budget strategically to facilitate the implementation process.
Owning enthusiasm around your client’s potential connected TV advertising advantages, specifically as you pull or redirect linear TV budgets and integrate CTV into your media mix, can also help to give you an edge. In addition, take some time to learn about the misconceptions around this channel so that you can educate your clients effectively and confidently answer any questions or concerns.
Connected TV FAQs
What are the advantages of advertising on Connected TV?
CTV allows you to meet your audience where they are as they stream their favourite
content on their favourite device. As an advertiser, you’ll also have access to new levels
of data analytics, insights, and reporting that you don’t get with other marketing
channels.
Why is connected TV advertising on the rise?
CTV advertising is on the rise because streaming content via video-on-demand (VOD)
providers like Netflix and Hulu is becoming the norm. CTV has a lower barrier to entry
than traditional media advertising and allows companies to reach larger segments of
their target audience.
We’ve released a comprehensive guide covering the connected TV opportunity for independent agencies who are looking to thrive in 2021. Get your copy of the report, Connected TV, The Independent Agency Opportunity, here.
