From Undervalued to Invaluable

4 Min Read

As streaming viewership continues to soar, B2B brands would be remiss not to follow their audience there. However, Connected TV is still often undervalued by B2B businesses, who tend to favor tried-and-true solutions such as paid search over the largest screen in the house.

Hooman Javidan-Nejad, MNTN’s Director of Performance Marketing, joined MarTech to discuss the power of CTV as an advertising tool for B2B brands and why it shouldn’t be overlooked. From its ability to generate demand to the wealth of transferable data it provides, CTV is a valuable tool for B2B advertisers. 

CTV is great at generating new demand, while paid search captures existing demand

Javidan-Nejad started by highlighting that Connected TV works for advertisers when used the right way. He noted that it’s important to approach each ad channel with the right mindset. “When you talk to B2B advertisers, 9 out of 10 of them will say that they do demand generation. When you go a little bit deeper and ask them ‘which channels are you using?’ you’ll realize that they are spending 95% of their ad budget on paid search…if you’re doing that, you’re not really generating new demand. Because if anything, paid search is a perfect channel to capture existing demand,” he said.

Connected TV, on the other hand, can generate new demand by reaching potential clients within a target audience who could benefit from a product or service, but may not yet be searching for it. Then, paid search can capture this demand as people look to learn more. CTV can also provide a halo effect for paid search, boosting results of paid search when run in tandem.

The benefits don’t stop there. CTV ads can also shorten a sales cycle and warm leads. “A wise marketer once told ‘happy sales, happy life,” Javidan-Nejad said. He went on to explain further. “[CTV] will help your sales team in their outreach. When they email their prospects and leads, if [they] have seen your ads the night before on the largest screen, it’s just a different conversation your sales team member is going to have with those prospects and leads.”

The wealth of data from CTV’s digital roots provides audience insights

“What else can CTV do for you?” Javidan-Nejad continued. “That extra thing is it can act as a market research tool for you. You can basically take that data and apply it to all the other channels.” CTV’s digital roots provide extensive amounts of data that are not only useful when optimizing on the TV screen but can be applied across the ad mix.

“A great use-case is knowing and understanding your audience. So if you’re a B2B marketer and you want to launch your Connected TV advertising, we suggest that you create multiple campaigns with different audiences or within one campaign, have different types of audiences,” Javidan-Nejad advised. He suggests looking for a sophisticated CTV ad platform that can offer this type of comprehensive reporting. Then, advertisers can apply their learnings to their other channels that may not provide the same level of insights, targeting their top-performing CTV audiences.

CTV’s benefits also extend to creative testing and development

CTV’s extensive data can also be helpful when it comes to creative. “We are all familiar with A/B testing. As digital marketers, we always try to leverage this feature or functionality across all the other digital channels. Now you’re able to do that for your TV advertising,” Javidan-Nejad explained. These creative results can steer the overall creative direction. CTV offers near real-time reporting, which means advertisers will see results in time to iterate before their next round of creative development. This data can also help prioritize top-performing creative across other platforms.

Pairing the insights gathered from the audience segment reporting and creative A/B tests can lead to even deeper insights. Advertisers can better understand which creatives work best for specific audiences and use these insights to fuel future creative ideation. Then they can maximize the use of highly-targetable social channels to make the most of these results.

Watch the Full Webinar

Connected TV can help B2B advertisers generate new demand and provide detailed insights that can be applied across the ad mix. To hear more about how to make the most of this often undervalued solution, be sure to check out the full webinar here.