What Insiders Say Your CTV Strategies Should Look Like in 2022

4 Min Read

2021 was a year of many things, but for advertisers, it was the year of Connected TV. The meteoric rise of CTV this year was the topic of conversation for every brand and performance marketer, as the platform changed how ads are created, advertising budgets are shifted, and marketing departments are structured.

Today, the ad channel is hotter than ever, with advertiser emphasis intensifying, budget increasing, and more brands engaging their audiences. Far from an overnight fad, 55% of today’s leading brands using CTV started as early as 2018 – and these early adopters are now on their way to CTV/OTT advertising mastery. The competitive landscape has resulted in a need for creative strategies and new tactics – and the data to support those decisions.

To help brands out, MNTN Chief Operating Officer, Chris Innes, and Head of Production for Custom at Digiday Media, James O’Brien, are sitting down to discuss why brands are moving ad dollars away from social media to CTV, why it’s spurring the convergence of branding and performance marketing teams, new opportunities in the CTV space, and unique strategies you can employ to strengthen your CTV campaigns. RSVP to Digiday’s Virtual Forum: Framing CTV Tactics and Growth for 2022 to learn more.

Redefining Performance and Brand Marketing

By combining linear TV’s storytelling capabilities with digital marketing’s laser-focused targeting and granular metrics, CTV has unlocked something once thought impossible in advertising – the ability to measure the outcome of a TV ad. This ability to raise general brand awareness while also driving and measuring conversions has transformed advertising departments and torn down the barrier between brand and performance marketers.

As a result, advertising teams are creating a new brand-performance hybrid model, where teams are in constant communication, goals are clearly defined and shared, and ad dollars can easily shift between the two teams as needed. This new way of thinking is catching on – while 46% of advertisers surveyed by Digiday and MNTN reported running pure-awareness CTV campaigns, 35% are already using the hybrid model. With this new space that CTV advertising is creating, brands are discovering the platform is bringing television out of the pure-awareness space and into an exciting new environment that aligns their teams towards common goals.  

Unlocking Creative Optimization Through Testing

Thanks to its ability to get consumer feedback, savvy advertisers are learning that CTV holds the keys to better creative optimization through testing. Premier CTV platforms like MNTN Performance TV enable brands to upload creative, run A/B campaigns, monitor how their target audience receives the ads in real-time, and tweak the creative on the fly – something that is unimaginable on platforms like linear TV. This combination of abilities unlocks massive potential for optimizing and improving creative advertising and campaign strategy.

And thanks to CTV being audience-first, you can focus on delivering the right ad to the right customer at the right time – regardless of what they’re watching. As an example, we recently ran a MNTN ad using Performance TV’s A/B testing for creative. One ad showed our Chief Creative Officer, Ryan Reynolds, as he spoke directly to the camera. The other ad merely featured his voice narrating a montage of footage. We assumed the ad featuring Ryan’s superstar face would be the successful ad – but the real-time insights we got proved us wrong. Realizing the voiceover ad was more popular, we were able to switch the campaign over to the more effective ad immediately. The switch proved to be a smart move, resulting in several valuable prospects requesting a demo – and it was something only capable through CTV’s real-time feedback and A/B testing. Gone are the days of waiting for post-campaign brand studies and campaign postmortems to learn valuable feedback on consumer behavior. Connected TV is giving brands those tools now to help them spend less time focusing on what went wrong and more time on getting it right.

This is Just the Tip of the MNTN

There are a lot more insights, examples, and insider tactics to learn. Join us for Digiday’s Virtual Forum: Framing CTV Tactics and Growth for 2022 to get even more strategies from industry leaders to supercharge your CTV campaigns. RSVP now to secure your spot.