Find CTV Success With Purpose-Built Creative

4 Min Read

When it comes to digital marketing, you know the drill. You know how to use search and social in your strategy; they’re ingrained in your annual plans, and you know how to optimize them. But what about when it comes to Connected TV (CTV), the third performance marketing channel? 

Eric Hatzenbuhler, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at MNTN, recently joined MediaPost to discuss how brands can enhance the impact of their digital strategies with high-quality TV ad creative. Let’s recap their conversation. 

Today’s Living Room Experience 

The living room experience is obviously different than it was 10 years ago. Television advertising used to be reserved for high-level awareness campaigns. 

But things are changing quickly. Within the last few years, unprecedented numbers of folks have been turning away from cable and heading to streaming. With CTV, we can offer them a personalized experience with targeted ads, similar to the ones we already serve with search and social media. 

Speaking of those other channels, here’s one of the most important things to note: the impact of the CTV experience goes beyond the living room. Whether it’s because 74.2% of US adults use an internet-connected device while watching TV or just the digital nature of almost everything we do, CTV creates a halo effect that extends to other marketing channels. 

No matter the reason, advertisers are certainly enjoying the benefits. When utilizing CTV within an omnichannel marketing strategy, brands saw an overall increase in site traffic and conversions. One brand experienced a 163.5% total increase in paid search conversion rates. Plus, folks are spending more time on brand websites, allowing them to find new products and learn more about the company. 

Digital Strategies for CTV Success 

Thankfully, as marketers, we’re not totally starting from scratch. Even if it’s your first time advertising on CTV, you can take a look at existing digital strategies. While the channel we’re ready to reach our audiences on might be new to a brand, we already know the primary stages of how we’re reaching our customers, including these main campaign types:

Prospecting

Implementing a prospecting strategy is an effective way to attract new clients, grow brand awareness, and drive new traffic to your website directly from streaming television commercials.

Retargeting

Retargeting is essential for keeping potential customers engaged throughout their shopping journey. You’ll be able to increase conversions by targeting interested people with educational ads, the latest promos, and more on the biggest screen in the house. 

Retention 

Keep your customers coming back for more! With a retention strategy, you’ll be able to generate direct response performance from current customers by showing them new products and exclusive offers for returning customers. 

The Importance of Purpose-Built Creative for CTV

In the past, television advertising has been about sharing broad commercials. But now, with CTV, marketers can target specific audiences with specific wants and needs. Each part of the journey has potential customers who are looking for different types of content. To help push your customers through the sales funnel, you need to provide them with the right content at the right time. 

The key to making this happen: an ad designed with your audience or goal in mind, also known as purpose-built creative. If your brand knows the target audience you’re trying to reach—and you should have some idea, at least at first—you’ll want to keep them front and center of the entire video production. 

If you’re focusing on reaching a specific audience, consider the data you already have about them before getting started. For example, do you know how they’ve reacted to similar content in the past? 

It’s okay if you don’t have this information yet! No matter where you are in the process, learning about your audience is an ongoing process. As you continue creating, sharing, and testing content, you’ll be able to learn more about your audience and optimize your ads. 

Identifying Individual Elements 

When creating your ads, you’ll want to pay attention to how your audience responds to individual elements. Identifying these separate pieces can help you drive more informed, granular decisions throughout the production process. These elements include:

• Messaging. What conversation style, value propositions, or CTAs does your audience find most appealing? 
• Talent. In general, folks are more likely to resonate with your product if they see it being used by people like them. If you’re targeting a specific demographic, for example, you might want to keep onscreen talent within their age range. 
• Opening hook. You have 3 to 5 seconds to grab your audience’s attention if you want them to watch the rest of your video creative. 

As you gather more information about how your audience reacts to each detail of your ads, you can optimize your creative accordingly. By producing variations of your ads during a single production, you can stay creatively agile, swapping out elements to improve how well your ads work for you. 

It’s Time to Make an Impact With CTV 

No matter the strategies you’re ready to implement, an effective campaign demands purpose-built creative. Watch the full webinar here for more information on how the right CTV ads can positively impact your digital marketing strategy.