OTT Measurement: 8 Metrics & Benchmarks to Track Success

by The MNTN Team

Min Read

An over-the-top (OTT) advertising strategy allows marketers to deliver dynamic television ads to their target audience via streaming platforms. OTT offers a number of advantages over traditional television advertising methods, most notably its ability to track ad spend to real results.

OTT measurement data points can be used to understand the efficacy and impact of your campaigns. Here are eight OTT metrics you need to be paying attention to.

1. Impressions

Impressions are the fundamental building block of any OTT campaign. They represent the number of times your ad is displayed to viewers, making them the primary metric for measuring the reach and visibility of a campaign.

Tracking impressions helps you understand the scale of your ad’s exposure. A high number of impressions indicates that your ad is being seen by more people, which is crucial for brand awareness.

Keep in mind: impressions are not unique views. Each time a person sees one of your streaming ads, it counts as an impression. If the same user sees your ad five times, that would count as five impressions.

These data points alone don’t tell the whole story, either. You need to piece them together with other insights to see the completed puzzle.

To maximize the quality and quantity of your campaign impressions on any platform, you’ll need to ensure you’re targeting the correct audience(s). OTT platforms, in particular, have advanced targeting options that help your ads reach viewers who are most likely to be interested in your product or service.

2. Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate tracks the percentage of consumers who perform a desired action after seeing your ad. The most common conversion is a purchase, but you can set others as your conversion criteria, depending on your brand’s needs, such as signing up for email content or downloading an app.

In any case, your conversion rate is a direct indicator of your campaign’s effectiveness in driving meaningful action. A high conversion rate means your content resonates with viewers and compels them to interact with your brand.

With that in mind, you must ensure your ad content has a clear call-to-action (CTA) and uses engaging imagery to boost its conversion rates. If you are directing users to visit a specific page or site, make sure that the content is user-friendly and optimized, as well.

3. Cost Per Mille (CPM)

Your CPM refers to the cost of garnering 1,000 impressions of your ad (“mille” is the French word for “thousand”; “M” is also the Roman numeral for 1,000). It is an OTT metric that helps you understand the cost efficiency of your campaign in terms of reaching viewers and allows you to assess the financial efficiency of your ad spend. A lower CPM indicates that you’re reaching a larger audience for less money, which is ideal for making your budget go further.

In this case, you’ll want to focus on refining your audience targeting and bidding strategies to keep costs down, but don’t limit your audience too much, as you may find yourself missing out on opportunities to connect with prospective customers. Use data to identify the most cost-effective times and platforms to run your ads on.

4. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Your CPA measures how much you spend to acquire one customer or lead. Monitoring cost per acquisition helps you calculate and gain a better understanding of the ROAS of your campaigns. A lower CPA means you’re acquiring customers at a lower cost, which helps maintain healthy profit margins.

However, much like impressions, your CPA alone only tells a part of the story. For example, let’s say your CPA is low, but you aren’t hitting your conversion rate goals. While your CPA may be within acceptable thresholds, you aren’t translating your ad spend into enough conversions, which could be driving down your ROI.

5. Viewability Rate

The viewability rate measures the percentage of your ad impressions that are actually consumers seeing your ad. For an ad to be considered viewable, it typically needs to meet certain criteria, such as being 50% in-view for at least two seconds. If a person skips it within the first second, the ad play wouldn’t count as a view.

A high viewability rate ensures that your ads are not just being served but are actually being seen by the people you want to target. Conversely, a low viewability rate indicates you’re wasting your precious marketing dollars and have a limited campaign impact.

Place your ads in high-traffic, premium content environments. And avoid placements that are prone to being skipped or ignored. Use ad formats and creative design to capture and hold viewers’ attention.

6. Completion Rate

The completion rate measures the percentage of viewers who watch your ad to the end. It is an OTT metric that is particularly important for video ads, where viewer engagement is a key goal. The higher your completion rate, the better your odds of making a positive impact on your audience. Low completion rates indicate many of your ads are being skipped.

Keep your content short and sweet to increase its completion rate. Snappy, 15-second ads are great at holding users’ attention and getting your message across.

7. Audience Reach

Audience reach represents one of the most important data points associated with OTT and CTV advertising. It helps form a clear picture of the volume of households your ads will potentially reach.

Not all OTT advertising platforms provide such granular reach details, but MNTN Performance TV is an exception, delivering detailed reach data via MNTN Matched. Our proprietary solution also allows marketers to target audiences based on both intent and reach. Once you’ve built your audience using keywords (just like paid search or social), our system sorts those consumers into high intent, medium intent, and maximum reach buckets and automatically allocates your budget to maximize performance. MNTN Matched puts the power of AI and a high degree of both transparency and control into the hands of marketers.

8. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Lastly, your return on ad spend (ROAS) is a big-picture OTT metric that helps you understand how your ad dollars are being used and whether they are generating the expected ROI. A high ROAS means your campaign generates significant revenue relative to its cost. It also demonstrates that you are using your budget wisely.

If your ROAS falls below expectations, start digging into the more granular OTT measurement metrics listed above to figure out why. Chances are that a few minor tweaks to your campaign will lead to a notable improvement in your ROAS.

For example, you may need to adjust your audience targeting criteria to get your content in front of more relevant consumer groups.

MNTN Performance TV: Leaders in CTV Attribution

Proper OTT measurement helps tell the story of your campaign’s reach and efficacy. MNTN Performance TV builds on the sought-after attribution characteristics of OTT platforms while providing you with even more actionable data to guide your campaign efforts. And MNTN Matched offers insights into reach and audience intent so that you can target individuals with a high likelihood of converting.

You won’t resort to guesswork when you’re building your campaigns. You’ll have the confidence that comes with knowing you are reaching the ideal audience at the perfect time in their decision-making journey. Partner with the CTV attribution experts by requesting a demo of MNTN Performance TV today.

OTT Measurement Metrics: Final Thoughts

OTT measurement is a critical aspect of campaign management and optimization. The data points outlined above will help you paint a complete picture of your campaign’s reach and effectiveness.

However, you can gain even more data about your campaign by partnering with an innovative CTV platform, like MNTN. Unleash the potential of your CTV ad campaigns and start reaching your ideal audience today.