Connected TV Advertising Offers a Resolution You Can Keep

5 Min Read

The days are ticking down to the new year and resolutions are being outlined. When it comes to a business-minded solution, adding Connected TV to your ad mix may just be the makeover you’re looking for. This year was a pivotal year for streaming and 2023 promises to be an even greater opportunity.

Jessie Haase, Senior Customer Success Manager at MNTN, joined Adweek to help set attendees up for success in achieving their ad resolution of adding Connected TV to their advertising channel mix. She outlined the shifting TV environment and got specific as to how to set up a first CTV campaign.

The Television Landscape Continues to Evolve

Haase began by discussing the changing tides of TV viewing. She noted that in July of this year, a major milestone was reached: Nielsen reported that for the first time, streaming made up the largest share of TV viewing, beating out its predecessor linear TV. Despite this major achievement, Haase noted that advertisers have been slow to make the same changes. “Unfortunately, CTV only accounts for about 18% of video ad dollars. So there is a huge disconnect and a miss in terms of where you’re spending your ad dollars when it comes to video content,” she explained. 70% of all viewers aren’t accessible at all by linear TV, meaning that advertisers who aren’t leveraging this tactic are going to be left behind.

Streaming has continued to grow in popularity as TV lovers cut the cord. “Especially now for the holidays, people are likely gathering together with their family and friends, streaming their favorite TV shows,” Haase explained. “And of course, ‘tis the season for giving so a lot of people will likely be getting streaming devices who haven’t necessarily streamed before.”

One of the larger shakeups to happen this year was the announcement of an ad-supported tier not only by Disney+, but also by Netflix, two of the biggest streaming channels. These additions to the ad inventory pool only further continue the reach of streaming advertising and add to the value of CTV within an advertiser’s channel mix.

Connected TV Campaign Set Up is Easy, Even For First-Timers

Haase then moved on to outline how to set up a Connected TV campaign so attendees would be ready to conquer their CTV resolutions. “I often get asked by my clients what’s the first thing that they need to do when they start to think about adding CTV to their marketing mix,” Haase said. “And really first and foremost, what I always like to say is that it comes down to what are your business goals? What comes first to you when you’re thinking about 2023?”

She highlighted that while TV offerings of the past were mainly broad-awareness plays, CTV can go beyond that and act as a performance channel. Businesses should select which KPI is most important to them, whether that’s site visits, conversions, etc. Haase pointed out that one of the reasons this is so important is that the right CTV platform will auto-optimize toward this goal thousands of times a day throughout the campaign. This not only helps brands hit their performance goals but also run more effective campaigns over time.

After selecting the main business goals, Haase then recommends selecting a target audience. Connected TV allows advertisers to be as broad or specific as they want when defining a target audience. Audience targeting ensures that a brand’s key targets are always reached, even as they switch from channel to channel or churn out after bingeing the latest season of a popular show. Haase also returned to the idea that Connected TV reaches the full funnel. While prospecting is a great way to reach the top of the funnel, CRM enables brands to reach the mid-funnel and retargeting site visitors addresses the lower funnel. She suggests segmenting audiences, budgets, and creative by campaign to maximize performance and align with business goals.

Video Creative Does Not Have to Be a Barrier

The final step before launching a CTV campaign is uploading the video creative. Haase reassured viewers, “The good news is that you don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel here to get started on CTV. You don’t necessarily need to have any sort of Super Bowl commercial. With CTV, it’s really versatile and you can really plug and play the videos to get started. You can use videos you’ve already used on other platforms, like social for example, and quickly add that to your CTV platform. I know I have a client who recently launched CTV and they had a user-generated content (or UGC) style video that was really successful for them on social. So we brought that to CTV and now they’re utilizing CTV with that video offering.”

If a brand doesn’t have any video to test at launch, Haase has a suggestion. There are non-agency solutions that can create a video asset without the large price tag. One solution she recommends is MNTN Creative-as-a-Subscription (CaaS) which offers creative at no additional cost. Instead, it’s bundled with the media and can allow brands new to CTV to really make the most of their test budgets.

Connected TV Offers Extensive Data and Testing Capabilities

Once live, Connected TV’s digital roots provide extensive data that’s invaluable to advertisers. Haase showcased various dashboards available to CTV advertisers from network performance, showing the network-level performance breakdown, to audience segment reporting, which allows advertisers to see what audiences are performing best, even within the same campaign.

Haase recommended brands leverage the data to see what works best for them. A/B testing the creative is easy to set up within the dashboard and the readily available data means advertisers can make adjustments to their strategy before the next round of creative development. “In my experience when I’ve worked with my clients on video testing for 30-second and 15-second, one of the things that we’ve found is that 15 seconds is usually best if your goal is to drive people to the website while 30 seconds is best if your goal is to drive leads, sales, conversions…you’ll want more air time,” she shared.

Watch the Full Webinar

Adding Connected TV to your ad mix is an easy and impactful (and actually achievable) resolution to add to your New Year resolutions for 2023. To learn more about how to make the most of this key performance channel, check out the full webinar here.