2021 Will See B2B Advertising Find its Home on Connected TV

4 Min Read

Industry experts love to make bold predictions on what trends a new year will bring to the marketing world. Well, we’re not immune to that either so here’s our prediction: 2021 will be the year B2B marketers go all in on Connected TV advertising. 

Connected TV has proven itself to be especially effective for B2C business—ecommerce, direct-to-consumer, and brick-and-mortar businesses have all reaped the benefits. Thanks to its precision audience targeting and reliable measurement, these brands have used television in a new role. Instead of using it as the branding tool it’s traditionally been, they’ve leveraged it as a direct-response performance marketing channel. 

This year will see B2B tap into those same advantages because the opportunity is just too good to pass up. Here’s why 2021 will see B2B come to CTV en masse.

We’re a B2B Brand, And We Use It

MNTN is in the B2B business, so we speak from experience when saying it’s been an effective marketing tool. A while back we created our own ad and deployed it to help reach audiences valuable to our brand. We used it to not only reach new prospects, but also retarget our site visitors to keep our brand top of mind.  

It’s helped warm leads and benefited our sales team when kicking off meetings with prospects. More than a few times the subject of the CTV ad came up, proving that not only did the ad successfully reach them, it left an impression as well. 

That’s key in the B2B world because prospects are constantly bombarded with your competitors marketing material. A TV ad is a much richer experience than an email or a display ad, making it an especially effective way of standing out.

It Stands Out from the Regular B2B Noise

Connected TV ads have a knack for cutting through the regular B2B marketing noise. They’re a breath of fresh air compared to the normal deluge of emails and search ads. Case in point, our Connected TV ad was used as an example of successful B2B advertising in this AdExchanger piece authored by Brienna Pinnow, co-founder of Blinc Digital Group. 

“I saw an ad for MNTN, a streaming TV advertising platform,” she wrote. “When I saw the ad, I immediately thought, ‘Wow! This is so cool! It’s actually an ad about the field I’m in.’” 

That’s the type of reaction you want your ads to deliver—it left such an impression she wrote an article about it. She continues, “Beyond capturing my attention and delivering a strong call to action, the ad positively elevated my overall impression of the company’s seriousness and presence in the industry – a wonderful halo effect that only TV has the power to deliver.”

That’s a major reason why B2B brands will start adopting Connected TV more and more. It can be a crowded field, and differentiation can make all the difference.

First, Third, and and CRM Targeting

Connected TV’s audience targeting capabilities make it an attractive channel for B2B. It offers third party targeting that lets advertisers reach specific viewers based on purchase intent, job title, interests, industry, and more. But more importantly for the B2B world, it allows targeting based on first party data.

B2B marketers rely heavily on their own audience data to nurture prospects, and tend to gravitate toward digital marketing channels that offer a way to include it in targeting strategies. And while linear TV has never afforded that opportunity, Connected TV does. Advertisers have a couple of options available to them on this front:

• Retargeting | Retargeting is critical to maximizing site traffic’s value. Once a prospect hits an advertiser’s site, they can then be targeted with Connected TV ads.
• CRM Upload | Advertisers can upload their CRM list to target users in their sales funnel and convince them to convert. 

Reliable Measurement To Track Success

B2B marketing requires precise performance tracking, and Connected TV provides it. 

Thanks to its digital nature, Connected TV ad performance is fully trackable. Not only can marketers measure engagement stats like impression counts and completion rates, they can also track the actions viewers take after seeing an ad. 

MNTN Performance TV lets marketers track key metrics including return on ad spend, site visit rate, cost per acquisition, and more. And it’s fully integrated with Google Analytics, allowing performance to be tracked alongside any other digital marketing campaigns. 

This level of precision helps make Connected TV a viable channel for B2B marketers. They can rest easy knowing their budgets are being spent on campaigns that make a difference to their bottom line. This can be crucial when working with marketing budgets that are comparatively small versus their B2C counterparts. 

2021 is B2B’s CTV Year

When taking the above advantages and capabilities into account, B2B marketers have plenty of reason to make Connected TV a mainstay in their 2021 marketing strategies. If you’re a B2B marketer and are interested in getting ahead of the curve, let’s talk.

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