The Verdict Is In: CTV is the Future of Law Firm Advertising

5 Min Read

TV advertising is smarter, measurable, and fully targetable now thanks to Connected TV. It has completely changed the playing field for advertisers—so what does that mean for law firms like yours?

When you think of law firm ads, you could be forgiven for mentally snapping back to a very specific memory: cheesy jingles, gags or gimmicks, bad acting, and title cards that look strikingly like a John Grisham paperback. And of course, most of these ran somewhere between 10 am and 1 pm on weekdays, unintentionally advertising to a core demographic of sick schoolchildren home for the day—not the most likely of potential clients.

But much like our laws are constantly updating and changing, so too does the world of advertising. Your law firm isn’t stuck in the ‘80s and ‘90s anymore—why should your ads be? Today, top firms have figured out a way to be more strategic with their ad dollars and reach the exact audience whenever they want—all without ditching the power and prestige of TV advertising. Welcome to the world of Connected TV.

Objecting the Old Methods

Let’s say you’re a workers’ compensation attorney. When running ads on broadcast (also known as linear) TV, you’d ideally be targeting at-home employees, recovering from an injury possibly from an employer’s OSHA violation. The problem is, once that person is injured, they’ve likely already started to seek out legal counsel. Anyone else in your target audience demographic—employed, adult—is probably either working or sleeping from the night shift. And if they did catch your ad, how likely is it that they’ll remember your name and phone number if they need it? The moment they get hurt they’ll likely do what anyone else does—Google search the nearest attorney.

So that leaves the retired and children home sick from school as your likely candidates to be watching daytime TV. And with the advent of streaming, both are less likely to be watching reruns in the middle of the day over streaming their own entertainment. Even if you’re a firm with a larger budget that can afford ad inventory throughout the evening, you’re just spending more money still hoping to be seen. That means you’re casting as large of a net as possible to catch as many fish as you can—and having to throw most, if not all, back. It doesn’t take a long deliberation to see how this isn’t the most efficient use of your ad dollars.

Making the Case for Connected TV

You wouldn’t write opening remarks that aren’t very clear—you try and create a laser-focused argument to efficiently make your case. Your advertising game needs to have the same precision strategy. With Connected TV, you’re not stuck with inventory in the middle of the day or on networks where people aren’t watching. Instead, every ad placement is prime-time; day or night, whenever and whatever your target audience is watching, your ad gets in front of them. And with 213.7 million viewers watching CTV every month, for an average of 80 minutes a day, that’s a lot of audience eyes.

Unlike linear TV’s wide-net strategy, CTV allows your firm to target the most relevant viewers. To go back to the workers’ compensation example, rather than airing ads on linear TV and hoping they’re seen, you could create a target demographic that consists of adults who are actively employed, working in specific industries, that also reside in your immediate geographic location. To make another example, personal injury firms could sort audiences based on search activity for auto body repair shops, or business lawyers could target new business owners in their zip code.

The benefit is immediately clear: you’re zeroing in on your next client, delivering an ad that’s specific to their personal situation. To go one step further, you could customize your ads relevant to each type of audience you’re targeting, creating a more personal and exclusive touch that linear TV couldn’t. For the larger firms, you could even deploy multiple ads specifically customized for each of your specific practices. That personal touch makes CTV ads shockingly effective—60% of viewers enjoy shows with ads customized to their tastes, and 80% of viewers are more likely to pay attention to CTV ads than linear.

But just like every legal firm doesn’t offer the same services or quality, Connected TV advertising platforms range in scope and ability. 

Why MNTN Is the Perfect Partner

We’ve talked about how CTV drives performance through precision targeting, not wasting impressions, and cost efficiency. Buy MNTN Performance TV takes it one step further with the largest U.S.-based audience in CTV—giving you access to over 120 million households. But it’s not just about audience size. Some of the top ways MNTN helps law practices are through:

• Living Room Quality: MNTN Performance TV gets your ad associated with only the most top-tier networks, ensuring you’re more likely to be seen, mitigating the risk of fraud, and tying your practice closely with the hottest shows of the moment.
• Affinity-Based Targeting: Performance TV takes targeting even further by allowing you to reach potential clients who have never engaged with your firm—but have a strong interest in your services or your competitors’.
• Creative Optimization: MNTN Performance TV automatically analyzes and optimizes your ad’s targeting thousands of times a day, ensuring your campaign delivers the best outcomes based on your specific goals. 
• Cross-Device Verified Visits: MNTN’s proprietary attribution model tracks the viewer’s experience from when they first watch your ad to when they visit your website and fill out a contact form—regardless of whether they use a household computer, smart phone, or tablet—to help you track engagement and convert clients.
• Customizable, Real-Time Reporting: Get fully transparent, 24/7 access to campaign performance—and choose what metrics and KPIs matter most to you. See what’s working, what isn’t, and optimize or update creative on the fly to get better results.

Closing Arguments

Yesterday’s traditional, linear TV tactics no longer cut it in today’s more competitive legal landscape. CTV and performance marketing strategies have forever changed the way law firms interact with prospective clients—saving practices precious money and ensuring they’re seen by the viewers they covet most. And premier CTV platforms like MNTN Performance TV take it one step further by maximizing the platform’s true potential through state-of-the-art targeting and measurement solutions. Request a demo today to see how Performance TV can elevate your practice.