In today’s digital landscape, connected TV advertising has emerged as a powerful and effective marketing strategy. With its direct-to-consumer approach, precise targeting capabilities and impressive results, CTV advertising offers brands new opportunities to connect with target audiences. Insider Intelligence reports that CTV ad spend will grow year-over-year by $5.5 billion in 2024. While CTV ad spend increases, marketers can expect a dip in linear TV spend as forecast through 2027. This blog post discusses the benefits, challenges and strategies marketers can utilize to harness the power of CTV advertising.
The shift from traditional linear TV to streaming services has opened the way for the rise of CTV. CTV devices, such as smart TVs, Xbox and PlayStation game consoles and other streaming devices, have become increasingly popular among viewers, leading to a decline in linear TV viewership. The challenge for marketers and brands is to meet their target audience where they are.
Benefits and challenges of CTV advertising
With linear TV, marketers mostly depend on broad demographic groups connected to broadcast dates. CTV allows marketers to target ads with first-party data to reach the proper audience. In addition to more precise targeting capabilities, CTV allows advertisers to get more precise audience locations by getting IP information that enables them to be hyperlocal about ad placement. These benefits have proved to be more effective with studies showing that consumers made more purchases from a CTV ad versus traditional or linear TV ads.
Other benefits of CTV include engagement and interaction with audiences, such as using barcodes to direct shoppers to a brand site, enhanced storytelling opportunities that allow for more narrative-driven ads and the ability to measure data to review effectiveness.
Although CTV has many benefits, some challenges to consider include ad fragmentation, privacy concerns and technical limitations. Ad fragmentation impacts CTV advertising effectiveness. Viewers are spread across a variety of streaming platforms and devices, which can lead to wasted ad spend and lower ROI for CTV campaigns.
Privacy concerns are another challenge in CTV advertising. As CTV platforms collect user data for targeted advertising, there is a risk of consumer backlash and potential privacy breaches. Advertisers must navigate the delicate balance between personalized advertising and respecting user privacy to maintain trust and avoid regulatory hurdles.
Technical limitations can include issues with ad delivery and compatibility. It can be challenging for advertisers to ensure their ads are displayed correctly across all streaming platforms due to different ad formats or technical requirements. Additionally, CTV devices may not support interactive or dynamic ads. These technical limitations can hinder the creativity and effectiveness of CTV campaigns, requiring advertisers to carefully consider the specifications and capabilities of each platform and device they target.
Effective strategies for CTV marketing
CTV advertising allows brands to adopt a direct-to-consumer and direct response approach, targeting audiences more precisely and engaging with them in a personalized manner and the added benefit of more creative ads. Content is king. Creating engaging and relevant ad content allows viewers to engage with the content. In addition, interactive ads that take advantage of the larger screens and high-definition capabilities of CTV devices to create captivating viewing experiences can be tailored to the viewer’s interests. This further adds to brand visibility and drives customer loyalty.
When creating CTV strategies, it’s critical to consider a multiplatform approach that integrates ads with other digital marketing strategies, such as search engine marketing, social media, email campaigns and influencer marketing. By integrating CTV ads with these strategies, brands can reach a wider audience and increase brand visibility across multiple channels. This will drive more engagement and conversions that can be monitored, and the data can be used to drive informed decision-making for future campaigns.
The future of CTV advertising
As the landscape continues to evolve and we enter a cookie-less era with increased data privacy concerns and regulations, CTV is a good option for marketers. Unlike traditional digital advertising, CTV delivers relevant ads without relying on third-party cookies. CTV uses household-level targeting based on IP address or device ID and this privacy-compliant data enables more sophisticated ways of reaching target audiences. Comscore predicts CTV ad spending will increase the most significantly in the coming year with web and mobile as preferred channels for performance marketing.
A consumer survey conducted by Amagi revealed that 61% of respondents were willing to watch free, high-quality content in exchange for ads. Among respondents, 39% said they were comfortable watching up to two minutes of ads for every hour of content, and 12% up to five minutes. This study further confirms that marketers should be incorporating CTV ads as part of their campaign planning.
Streaming services and the pandemic have accelerated the adoption of connected TV, making the switch even more important. With the rise of CTV, programmatic technology advancements and AI-driven tools, marketers have more opportunities to connect with their target audiences, track ad performance in real time and drive better campaign results. Compared with traditional advertising channels, CTV advertising enables campaigns to be cost-effective and yield high engagement.
As advertisers shift their budgets from linear TV to CTV and embrace the changing landscape of advertising, it is crucial to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies to remain competitive in the digital advertising space.
To learn more about the future and rise of CTV in marketing, register for our Marketing Tech Talk on February 27, 2024.
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