An Inside Look at How Leading Advertisers Use CTV

3 Min Read

Connected TV has redefined how brands view advertising, upended traditional marketing teams and methods, and evolved campaigns strategies. But how do the world’s leading brands and agencies – 55% of which started embracing CTV as much as early as 2018 – use CTV to redefine their advertising goals?

To find out, MNTN teamed up with Digiday to survey 123 of these CTV early adopters about their experiences in 2021, challenges they’ve faced, and where they’re taking their strategies in 2022. Join MNTN SVP of Customer Success Alexa Tierney as she breaks down the survey results, provides additional insight, shares how you can build a CTV dream team, and more.

Blending Performance with Brand Marketing

By marrying together linear TV’s storytelling capabilities with digital marketing’s analytics and targeting, CTV has unlocked something once thought impossible – the ability to measure the outcome of a TV ad. This merging of brand and performance marketing has shaken up how marketing teams operate, expectations are met, and strategies are determined.

In 2021, CTV’s continued popularity – combined with COVID-19 driving a surge of online audiences – led to CTV campaigns being even more synonymous with actionable engagement and performance marketing. Myles Dacio, senior marketing manager at Allergan, told Digiday, “That was a game-changer for us, seeing that we aren’t only driving awareness, but lower-funnel tactics as well.” With the convergence that CTV is creating, brands are finding that CTV can drive viewers to a website to convert – bringing television out of the pure-awareness space and into an environment where it’s mixed with performance-focused goals.

A Receptive, Engaged Audience

One element that draws brands to CTV advertising is its ability to target the right audience at the right time. In 2021, CTV continues to be household-based, with its ability to target IP addresses remaining a powerful and popular solution. By enabling brands laser-focus on their ideal audience, marketing departments can save time, money, and energy by knowing their message isn’t being spent on someone unlikely to convert.

And the good news for brands on CTV is that the audience is more engaged and receptive to ads than ever. Nine out of ten of CTV viewers report watching ad-supported content, and 80% are more likely to pay attention to ads in line with their lifestyle or opinions – with 47% willing to share more information to get those relevant ads. It makes sense why – TV is a natural, organic home for advertising. And with many viewers choosing to save money with ad-free tiers of streaming services, CTV provides brands with an audience that has already opted-in and expects ads.

Opportunities and Challenges for CTV in 2022

Thanks to its marriage of linear TV’s storytelling with digital marketing’s agility to change creative, CTV will continue to give brands the ability to test and iterate on their ads in the new year. By testing creative, advertisers gain stronger insights into the various elements of their campaign – enabling them to measure an ad’s effectiveness, see how different audiences react, and tweak messaging on the fly if necessary. This will provide many opportunities for savvy brands next year, who will use this to ensure they’re running optimized ads on CTV – and saving money before deploying the same ads on more expensive (and more difficult to change or measure) linear TV outlets.

Key challenges that respondents say they’re encountering aren’t that different from challenges experienced with other marketing channels: dealing with fragmented data and inventory (53%), reaching relevant audiences (49%), and solving for inconsistent measurement (42%). For some marketing teams, the key will be figuring out how to measure cross-channel performance and solve for attribution. According to Tierney, “Brands are assessing how they can advance their attribution model and view things holistically, recognizing that different channels have different places within the funnel. How do you account for that effectively?”

There’s More to Share

Our survey with Digiday uncovered even more valuable insights for brands looking to get the inside scoop on maximizing CTV/OTT advertising. We’ll share all of this, alongside tips for developing KPIs and navigating the brand-performance hybrid model in our webinar with Digiday.