With advertising budgets under pressure, how can advertisers get the most out of CTV? Melanie Hoptman (lead image), COO of LiveRamp provides insight on how brands can make CTV work for them.
As the TV ecosystem undergoes a massive transformation, advertisers are increasingly looking towards connected TV (CTV) as a means of getting greater advertising impact from a more efficient spend. Across the TV spectrum, advertisers are dedicating greater budgets towards it to take advantage of its ability to measure actual media consumption, connect directly with desired audiences, and improve conversion rates.
But while CTV is becoming a hot commodity there are also challenges, and effective planning and measurement across media are vital. Fortunately, there’s a few things advertisers can do to make the most of CTV and extract the greatest value for their advertising spend; create value exchange, put audiences first, establish better partnerships, and implement effective measurement.
Creating value exchange
Technology has given people more choice of how and where to view content, and consumers expect more from advertisers and media companies. In every media format, as the first step it’s important to build out a first-party data audience-development strategy through a value exchange – and CTV is no different.
The media landscape has changed rapidly and dramatically, and the power has shifted to who has first-party data. Meeting consumers’ expectations for their online experiences can deepen first-party relationships but it requires commitment from the advertiser to ensure they are continually delivering value to the customer. Done right, these first-party relationships will lead to better personalisation, activation and measurement, ultimately leading to great ROI.
Put the audience first
First-party data lends itself to building identity, and creating a comprehensive view of the consumer. In the fragmented advertising ecosystem – and within CTV’s fragmentation in particular – identity helps to develop an omnichannel view of consumer touchpoints, which can then help marketers to craft the ideal touchpoints to enable optimal customer experiences.
As advertisers plan a holistic, omnichannel approach to advertising, identity will power a better cross-screen experience, enabling marketers to activate data everywhere their target audiences are to ensure they’re maximizing their campaigns.
Target audience should inform advertisers’ planning, audience activation, and measurement.
Establish better partnerships
However, even the best first-party data strategy can be enhanced – with more data.
Advertisers can reach beyond the four walls of their data to establish innovative partnerships, and leverage new technologies – including, but not limited to, data collaboration. Advertisers should seek next-level partnerships for CTV that go beyond traditional audience segments. Data collaboration is the next iteration of these partnerships.
Among other things, data collaboration enables marketers to leverage first- and second-party data to identify target audiences, and enhance them with additional datasets. Ethically sourced partner data can help to develop more complete audience profiles, enabling marketers to fill in customer details that were previously unavailable using only first-party data.
Data collaboration can also help to connect cross-screen data safely and easily. Marketers should be able to pull actionable insights from cross-screen video partnerships using data collaboration, measuring beyond the starting points of reach and exposure to track true business outcomes.
Leveraging identity in measurement
Building on this measurement point, simply relying on the dated metric of ratings, or siloed measurement strategies, make it nearly impossible for advertisers and media owners to reach their goals. In today’s market, there will be an increasing demand for measurement that ties to real-world results, like in-store transactions and online conversions.
In CTV, marketers can leverage identity to generate better insights and outcomes. Identity can not only power person-level and household-level counting for more accurate reach and frequency measurement, it can enable an omnichannel view of consumer touchpoints, enabling marketers to connect ad exposures to business outcomes and conversions.
