Pack Your Bags: It’s Time To Hike the CTV Trail

4 Min Read

Adding any new format to your marketing mix can be a challenge, but you don’t necessarily have to start from scratch. When it comes to Connected TV (CTV), you’ve got best practices to follow that can help you reach your audience and grow your business. 

Jon Zucker, Senior Product Marketing Manager at MNTN, joined MarTech to discuss some CTV strategies that can help elevate your brand to its highest potential. Let’s take a look at their conversation: 

Getting A Strong Start

From strategy to setup, you’ll want to make decisions that align with your goals and objectives to create a successful CTV campaign. 

One of the most effective ways to get a strong start is to implement multiple strategies from the beginning. We’ve taken a look at the approaches some of MNTN’s top advertisers use and found there are benefits to launching both prospecting and targeting at the same time. 

Advertisers who launch both campaign types at the same time find faster growth than customers who waited to launch later on. Combined, these strategies have delivered 27% more site traffic and 2x more return on ad spend (ROAS) for some MNTN customers. 

This same research found that customers who wait to launch retargeting until halfway through their first 90 days only saw 17% more site traffic and 52% more ROAS than those who launched at the same time. While this is still incredible growth, we’re guessing you want to get as much out of your CTV campaign as possible. 

Effective Creative Is Key

One of the most significant barriers to CTV campaign success is effective ad creative, but there are ways to make the content you need—even with a smaller budget. As you’re getting started, there are two essential kinds of creatives you’ll want to incorporate: evergreen and seasonal. 

When it comes to evergreen creative, you’ll want to maintain a balance between optimizing your current creative and ensuring your audience doesn’t experience ad fatigue. According to what we’ve seen from MNTN advertisers, evergreen creative has an average shelf life of 64 days. This means you’ll want to consider refreshing your content every two to three months. 

With seasonal creative, small changes can make a big difference. This content can (and should) align with the most important times for your business. For example, if you’re selling school supplies, you should have back-to-school seasonal creative. If you’re selling holiday decorations, you’ll want to kick off your ads a few months before major holidays. Since this content is limited to specific initiatives, it has an average shelf life of about 17 days, so we recommend updating every 10 to 20 days. 

This may sound like a lot of content, but you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Instead, you can repurpose existing creative by swapping out end cards, changing the voiceover, or even changing a few images throughout. 

Brands that maintain evergreen campaigns and activate seasonal heavy-ups find the most success on the TV screen. This consistent and opportunistic approach creates sustained growth for your business. 

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize 

Seriously, we can’t say it enough. 

Once your campaign is set up, you can’t just hope it continues going well. You’ve got to analyze and optimize your campaign for the most effective results. The right CTV platform will help to steer you toward your key performance indicators (KPIs). While this is great, you can also take more steps to improve performance, including optimizing your creative and understanding your target audience.

Zucker also mentioned that it’s essential to note that, as with anything, success on CTV takes time. For example, over the first 75 days, ROAS grows significantly and CPAs decrease substantially for many of our MNTN advertisers. 

Additionally, we’ve found that it takes an average of 75 to 90 days for advertisers to see consistent and accelerated performance. If you’re not seeing the results you want right away, there’s no need to worry. Remember that ad delivery and optimization take time, so make sure you’re giving your campaigns the time they need to perform. 

Clear CTV Skies Ahead

All of this is to say, it’s time to start hiking the CTV trail. The good news? You’ve got a map. 
With both prospecting and retargeting strategies and a balance of evergreen and seasonal creative, you can reach greater Performance TV success faster than those who wait to launch retargeting until later. Ready to learn more about launching successful CTV campaigns? Watch the full webinar here.