‘Value exchange’ between owners, publishers and viewers has shifted with the growth of CTV. Will Keggin looks at how ethical digital transparency must now be at the forefront of the adtech industry.
Connected TV, or CTV, is here to stay, and SMEs should get familiar with it. CTV is best defined as video content consumed on a TV screen but delivered via the internet. It is a great facilitator for free and premium, ‘freemium’, services such as YouTube and is a market that has skyrocketed in recent years. What started as a trend primarily driven by 16- to 34-year-olds has now reached the over-55 audience, with data showing that 53% of all households in the UK are subscribed to at least one streaming or subscription service.
Given the enormous growth in CTV, SMEs should learn how to leverage this burgeoning platform – and, simultaneously, understand how to do so while taking advantage of the distinct data and privacy advantages that CTV offers over linear and other forms of marketing.
The evolutionary jump of CTV
Critically, CTV advertising addresses some of the key pain points faced by traditional TV advertising.
Traditional TV consumption has been replaced by consumers’ modern media diets – consumption across many different types of content, including linear but also CTV, apps, and other media. If marketers enhance their campaigns with people-based marketing, they’ll be able to connect viewers’ journeys across different screens, and will be able to maintain a complete understanding of the viewer, helping them to reach their target audience at the appropriate times, via the optimal platforms.
Going even further, by leveraging people-based marketing for CTV, marketers can supplement their ad exposure data with conversion data. This makes it possible for marketers to measure when consumers who have viewed certain ads go on to engage further with the brand – through conversions like app downloads, online shopping or in-store purchases. Brands are now able to effectively gauge the real-world behaviour changes that result from their TV ads and invest in these with a renewed sense of confidence and strategy.
Extending benefits to consumers
Beyond the inherent flexibility of CTV, where viewers get to watch what they want, when they want to watch it, by engaging in people-based marketing, the benefits for CTV advertisers become benefits for viewers as well.
First, people-based marketing helps marketers to target real people, meaning that they’ll be able to prioritise the advertising and campaigns that are most relevant to the viewers. Marketers won’t want to waste resources or time on campaigns that have no chance of being of interest to the viewers.
Second, people-based marketing gives marketers a better picture of how consumers engage with their campaigns on TV, but beyond as well. This means that marketers can frequency cap – meaning, they can limit the amount of times a consumer and/or viewer will see their ads. Naturally this helps the marketers, since they’re no longer throwing away ad spend on duplicative views, but this also leads to a better experience for the viewers. While early CTV and streaming experiences may have been notorious for showing the same set of ads on repeat, marketers have much more control now to avoid these situations and create a better environment for everyone.
The end-result: marketers engaging in people-based marketing have a better understanding of who these people are, and how to reach them through CTV – but more broadly as well. By understanding how and where they’re engaging their audiences, they’re able to deliver more impactful experiences when they do engage – and as a result, maintain better relationships with these consumers.
Getting started with CTV
For companies that may be unfamiliar with CTV, or have not yet considered advertising on CTV, CTV advertising can be a way to improve marketing results as well as the overall experience that consumers have with your company’s advertising. However, people-based marketing is key to unlocking these results, and companies must make sure to leverage these solutions in order to fully reap the benefits.
With CTV growth likely to accelerate dramatically in the UK market in the coming years, understanding CTV and riding this CTV advertising wave may prove critical to businesses’ bottom lines.
