What You Need to Know About Other Brands’ CTV Campaigns

4 Min Read

It’s no secret that Connected TV has changed the advertising game for good, redefining how we think about delivering advertisements to targeted audiences on television. But as more brands embrace Connected TV, some clever brands have learned how to use it to think outside the box and redefine their advertising metrics.

To learn some of these changes that marketers are making with CTV, MNTN and Digiday teamed up to survey 123 brands and agencies to discuss their experiences with CTV over the last year – and to learn what their teams plan to do in 2022. Join MNTN SVP of Customer Success Alexa Tierney as she breaks down the survey results, discusses opportunities in the coming year, shares how CTV has changed brand and performance marketing expectations, and more.

Here’s just a little of what will be discussed. 

“It’s No Longer a Question of Should I Run CTV?”

Most of the brands and agencies that talked to Digiday and MNTN did not just start using CTV for advertising – they had been on board for some time. 55% of respondents said they started shifting their marketing budgets to CTV as early as 2018 – and as Digiday reports, that was noticeable in last year’s upfront season.

According to Tierney, “…if I look at the past year, CTV in the marketing mix has become something that’s no longer a question of, ‘Should I run CTV?’, but, ‘How and where am I running CTV, and what am I doing from a strategic point of view with it?’ The reality is that three years ago was the early adopter stage for CTV; today it’s nearly essential. Brands that haven’t made the shift to CTV yet can’t afford to fall further behind.

Shifting From Social to CTV

With brands shifting their ad dollars to CTV over the last several years, where is this market allocating occurring? Respondents listed two primary sources – linear TV and, perhaps more surprisingly, social media. Taking money away from social media is bound to raise a few eyebrows – didn’t the channel see a heightened spend in 2020? The reason for the shift is simple but important – the repurposing of video content, along with iOS 14 changes to mobile app tracking, have led to significant changes in strategy. 

According to Digiday, advertisers are choosing to combine social video into longer-form edits and using the power of CTV to deliver them to targeted audiences. Beyond the focus on advertising, the survey found that CTV’s role in strategic planning is also growing. An astounding 89% of respondents listed CTV advertising as significantly important to their omnichannel advertising strategy – helping them shape campaigns across a variety of channels.

Challenging Branding and Performance Expectations

As CTV continues to evolve how advertising functions, it’s also changing how performance and brand marketers see their roles – and interact with each other. CTV’s ability to both raise general brand awareness and drive viewers to a website to convert is mixing television’s traditional awareness approach with a performance. The result is a hybrid awareness-performance model that is transforming advertiser approach and strategy.

While 46% of our respondents were running pure-awareness CTV campaigns, it’s clear that a hybrid brand-performance approach is rising in popularity – it followed close behind at 35%.  While performance and brand teams are converging, marketing KPIs tend to remain awareness plays – a majority list both brand awareness and impressions/views at their top indicators to measure CTV success. As the CTV hybrid model continues to evolve, undoubtedly so too will the performance metrics that brands use to measure success. And as marketers become more accustomed to the reporting feedback loop CTV offers, time will tell if those performance metrics challenge awareness’ dominance. 

Want to Get Started? Here’s Your (Free) Ticket

Our survey with Digiday uncovered even more vital information for brands – including challenges and opportunities in 2022 and how brands can best build a CTV team of their own. We’ll share all of this, along with tips for developing KPIs and navigating the brand-performance hybrid model in our webinar with Digiday.