How CTV is Making TV Advertising Accessible for All Budget Sizes

By Sam Garton

Long gone are the days of TV being a broadcast-only opportunity. With the rise of streaming and on-demand services over recent years, vendors have diversified their offerings. In fact, 34% of the UK’s preferred method of watching TV content is some form of digital streaming (YouGov). 

As marketers, this transition in viewing habits has opened up opportunities in leveraging Connected TV (CTV) to raise awareness and reach new audiences for clients – all without necessarily stretching the budget. 

 

Targeting with Precision

By being able to precisely target the desired audiences, Addressable TV gives marketers the opportunity to reduce wastage previously associated with broadcast TV. 

Recent developments in targeting capabilities across the TV landscape have accelerated, with the likes of Sky, ITV and Warner Bros Discovery enhancing their targeting beyond basic levels of demographics and location data.

Sky’s addressable solution is Adsmart by Sky, which gives marketers the power of CTV with a more traditional broadcast feel. To do this, Sky harnesses proprietary 1st party data mapped to leading 3rd party providers to target Sky viewing cards located in customers’ households. 

When an AdSmartable spot is identified on the 60+ enabled channels, the most relevant ad is delivered seamlessly, replacing the linear ad in the broadcast stream. This means ads in a broadcast environment can now vary household to household, with audiences shown the most relevant ads.

ITV have also made ITVX the focal point of their offering, with content being released exclusively before broadcast on the platform. This has driven the size of their digital audience dramatically with 40 million registered users in the UK. ITVX offers advanced targeting capabilities, such as contextual content, weather reactive and the ability to plug in first party data to retarget or upsell. 

Discovery has collaborated with a variety of data partners to develop Discover Aim, which gives marketers the ability to construct a number of audiences through combining behavioural data, interest data and content engagement. This gives campaigns the capacity to reach the ideal audience and reduce waste, therefore making them more cost effective.

 

No Asset, No Problem

Another major stumbling block that makes advertisers approach TV with caution is the lack of a shiny TV-ready asset which has passed all the industry body approvals. Usually, a TV ad placement is a 30 second long video with top quality visual and audio that would catch people’s attention, gauge their interest in the product, make it desirable then finish off with a call to action. This placement adds the extra cost of Clearcast approval before it can be broadcasted to audiences.

However, with Video on Demand services (VOD) Clearcast approval of the asset is not required to get it serving in platform. The video must still comply with the ASA regulations, but the cost of Clearcast approval is saved – making route to market a little bit easier (and cheaper).

CTV platforms have introduced a new asset that only requires a static image or GIF, ensuring visibility across all environments – be it catching up on your favourite show, morning commute or watching a film with the family.

This new median is the AdPause, which appears on VOD streaming services when the content being consumed is paused. This new placement is available across mainstream VODs such as Channel 4 and ITVX, as well as streaming services such as Discovery+ and Paramount+. In terms of value, CPM’s for the AdPause placement tend to be far more reasonable than a video placement as well.

 

How Can We Measure Success?

For most ATL awareness activities, especially TV, a well known blocker is ‘how do we know if the campaign was effective?’ Well, as CTV is digitally charged, the ability to measure success is easier than with broadcast TV. 

Most addressable TV providers have the ability to implement pixels on advertisers sites, and can therefore track incremental visits and conversions of people exposed to their ads. This, along with first-party reports from providers on audiences exposed to the ads, enables marketers to show direct impact from the activity.

At Tug, we’ve also developed some innovative tools to help effectively measure the success of ATL campaigns, including Lift Analytics. Lift Analytics correlates ATL spending and impression volumes against comparable metrics, such as search based data (Direct & Organic traffic on site, Total available PPC Brand Impressions), and KPIs such as conversion volumes.

In addition, we use our Real Impact tool, an advanced modelling tool, to provide monetary value to your campaigns. This tool provides the ability to understand performance and benchmark future campaigns by including external and industry-related factors within the model. The factors can consist of inflation, weather, customer promotions, and other marketing activity to support baseline performance prediction if ATL campaigns weren’t running. These controls can bridge the gap between offline conversions, tracking restrictions, and long user journeys to measure the full impact a campaign has on topline data.

Therefore, we can measure the difference, following the campaign going live, between our predicted performance without ATL campaigns, and the actual performance from our measured data including ATL campaigns, providing an accurate ROI.

Following use of the Real Impact tool, we can say with a strong level of confidence that activity showed an uplift in overall business revenue, or any other related target metric.

CTV has reshaped the way we view television, shifting it from a once high-risk, low-reward media channel to a powerful opportunity for brands. With its newfound accessibility, precise targeting, and advanced measurement tools, CTV not only enables brands to drive effective awareness but also allows them to measure success based on bottom-line results.