Connected TV

New Report Shows Connected TV’s Major Role in Brand’s Omnichannel Strategy

We partnered with Digiday to survey over 123 brands and agencies to learn more about their experience with Connected TV.

4 Min Read

If If there’s one thing that you should take away from reading this story, it’s this quote from MNTN Senior Director of Customer Success, Alexa Tierney, “Connected TV in the marketing mix has become something that’s no longer a question of, ‘Should I run CTV?’ It’s ‘How and where am I running CTV, and what am I doing from a strategic point of view with it?” We teamed up with our friends at leading industry publication Digiday, to co-author this downloadable report, which summarizes findings from over 123+ brands and agencies. However, we know your time is valuable, so we’ve put together a few of the key points from the report for you to enjoy. 

Wait, They’re Pulling Budget Out of Social?

Money follows eyeballs, as they say. While the shift to streaming (from a viewer perspective) isn’t anything new, advertisers have only recently started moving their ad dollars there, too. The majority (55%) of respondents started shifting their investment to Connected TV in the last one to three years – not to mention, the channel is claiming a significant share of marketing budget in the year to come.

“CTV took from everybody,” said one anonymous agency executive. “It took from linear folks. It took from traditional digital partners. That’s where we know the eyeballs are going, and the dollars have to follow that.” Linear TV has been on a steady decline as viewers cut the cable in favor of on-demand viewing. But what is even more interesting is that a large number of advertisers are pulling away spend from social media, which we know is a key player in the digital advertising circles. This finding illustrates that the rest of the industry is catching onto the fact that Connected TV advertising plays in the same arena as its digital advertising counterparts, like search and social. In fact, almost all survey respondents identified Connected TV as a strategic pillar in their omnichannel marketing strategy.

Are Performance Marketers the New Brand Marketer – or Vice Versa?

Performance and brand marketing have typically been treated separately, with the former focusing on advertising metrics and driving ROI and the latter on brand awareness and customer engagement. But, who said that these two had to be mutually exclusive? Fast forward to today, and the lines between the two have blurred. Connected TV advertising has proven that both of these teams can play in the same sandbox, and unlike other forms of digital advertising, branding can become a performance moment. “That was a game-changer for us, seeing that we aren’t only driving awareness, but lower-funnel tactics as well,” said Myles Dacio, Senior Marketing Manager at Allergan.

The survey findings found that the hybrid model (a mix of brand and performance teams) were in charge of their CTV marketing efforts, as shown in the chart below. We have no doubt that this number will continue to grow as more and more brands catch onto this opportunity, where they can combine the branding impact of television with direct-response goals without having to rely on multiple platforms to get them there.

“…Advertisers have made conversion optimization a priority for their CTV campaigns. Brands have come to realize that they can prompt viewers to visit their website and convert…in addition to raising brand awareness. This revelation has brought television out of the pure awareness arena and into a space that is mixed with performance-focused goals,” explained Ali Haeri, Vice President of Marketing at MNTN. Television, once considered an ‘awareness-only’ play, is that and so much more. Platforms like MNTN Performance TV are an end-to-end solution to help brands get their OTT campaigns live in a matter of days, and are equipped with all of the tools to help hybrid marketers tie their campaigns to quantifiable goals. And yes, you can even A/B test your creative using the platform to determine which creative elements resonate best with your audience.

So, what’s next up on the horizon for Connected TV, and for brands that have dipped their toes in but not yet taken the plunge? Well, without completely disclosing our own product roadmap – here’s a hint from Chris Contreras, Senior Vice President of Customer Success at MNTN: “We want to move more towards database decisioning in a format that is impactful to customers and their experience in wanting to purchase a product.” And, from the advertiser side, Tierney suggests that “advertisers should come with challenges that they want to solve for and work with their tech partners to map out how they can set up testing roadmaps to solve it.” Download the full report for the rest of the findings, but in the meantime watch this space as we’re only getting started.

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