Are You New to Connected TV? Here’s What You Need To Know.

5 Min Read

This post was produced in partnership with Lever Interactive, a digital advertising agency specializing in emerging channels.

It’s no secret that an increasing number of people are “breaking up” with their cable TV subscriptions in favor of streaming services. This mass transition from linear to Connected TV (CTV) poses a huge opportunity for brands and the agencies who represent them, to reach new and existing customers on their favorite streaming platforms. If you’re new to the TV space however, diving into CTV can feel overwhelming.

Don’t stress—success with CTV advertising is easier than you think. By utilizing CTV as a performance marketing channel, brands across a wide variety of industries can advertise on TV with full control over their campaigns and the accompanying results. Let’s take a look at how to maximize your CTV advertising efforts.

Lead With a Performance Mindset

Think of CTV as TV advertising with a digital backbone, with a set up akin to any other digital campaign. CTV allows advertisers to:

1. Target audiences with precision
2. Have access to detailed campaign data

Because of this, it’s important to approach every CTV ad campaign with a performance mindset and to always consider the impact each campaign will have on the full marketing funnel. Fortunately, CTV advertising provides the tools and insights you’ll need to do just this.

Precision Audience Targeting

A key benefit of advertising on CTV is its audience targeting capabilities. MNTN Performance TV takes this one step further, giving advertisers access to over 80,000+ audience segments—from “typical” demographics (age, location, etc.) to psychographic targeting via consumer interest or behavior. For example, if you’re an apparel retailer specializing in athleisure wear, you could target CTV viewers who recently purchased athleisure items or who like brands similar to yours. Similarly, you can also leverage your own first-party customer data and target users who previously visited your website, or previously converted (among others).

Detailed Campaign Data

This accurate audience targeting provides advertisers with comprehensive campaign data that wouldn’t be possible with linear TV. Platforms like MNTN Performance TV help brands to closely track their CTV ad campaigns and view detailed reporting via customizable dashboards. Unlike linear TV, which mainly tracks vanity metrics like impressions, CTV does double-duty by also reporting on bottom-line marketing metrics that matter most to your clients, like revenue, return on ad spend (ROAS), cost per acquisition (CPA), conversion rates and more. This data can help you to understand which networks are driving the most performance and what types of content your ideal audience is most engaged with—ultimately providing you with actionable insights to guide your overall marketing efforts.

To get the full picture of your campaign results, we recommend pairing in-platform reporting suite data with a third-party platform like Google Analytics. Doing so will allow you to view CTV ad campaign performance alongside your other marketing channels and paint a holistic picture of the overall health of your marketing strategy.

Outcome-Focused Campaigns

The combination of precision audience targeting and detailed campaign data allows you to run campaigns that generate conversions and revenue across the entire customer funnel. No matter what your advertising objective is (reaching new audiences, building brand loyalty, increasing conversion rates), you can easily launch campaigns with outcome-focused goals (site visits, ROAS, eCPA) that are fully measurable and will move the needle.

For instance, both prospecting and retargeting campaigns have proven to be effective on CTV. While each type of campaign offers its own benefits, combining these types of campaigns yield stronger results—MNTN users who ran both types of campaigns saw a 34% increase in ROAS.

Inventory—it’s Kind of a Big Deal

In order to uphold a positive brand image, your ads need to be paired with the best content available. The CTV inventory landscape has a lot of great content…and a lot of bad. Because of this, it’s paramount to ensure your ad buys are only being served on top-tier streaming networks and apps.

“In our experience, there’s a lot of CTV inventory that relies on TV OEM-streaming channels that don’t get a lot of exposure, internet-based channels that are unreliable and mobile placements that seem like rebranded programmatic display buys with video,” says MNTN agency partner Lever Interactive. “To ensure our clients are getting the best possible results from CTV, we need to rely on premium inventory to showcase the exposure and direct response they can receive when they’re assured that their marketing dollars are reaching their target audience effectively.”

MNTN’s Living Room Quality feature ensures ads serve only on top-tier networks. Via this feature you can advertise to your ideal customer on networks such as the Food Network, CNN, ESPN and many more. Another bonus? Living Room Quality ads are served in a non-skippable format. This makes for top quality advertisements that engage viewers, pulling their attention away from various second screen distractions.

“With CTV buying through MNTN and utilizing the detailed insights, we can be confident that we can showcase success in a myriad of ways. Our clients are not only happy with the detailed metrics, but also can build trust knowing that they’ll be able to speak to how their marketing dollars are performing.”

Performance + Premium Inventory = Advertising Success

Advertising on CTV offers many benefits to a plethora of brands, but in order to see the best results, you need to hone in on certain aspects of the channel. Leading with a performance mindset and focusing on serving ads only across premium inventory is the best way to drive success alongside your other marketing channels.