TV Is Amazing For Branding.

There are few branding opportunities like TV: a family gathered about the living room, watching their favorite show, attention focused on the screen. A commercial break comes on and you deliver the perfect brand message in all its audio visual glory to your rapt audience. OK, maybe between second screening, DVRs, and ad-free services like Netflix and Disney+, TV ads aren’t quite the portal into the home they once were, but they’re still an incredible medium for your message. First, you have that enormous screen, the focus of the room, cascading light and sound in every direction. Cell phones may be omnipresent, but they’re not doing justice to your brand in the same way that a 75″ OLED Ultra High Definition 4K TV is. Next, you have the ad itself: half a minute, unskippable, and dominating the entirety of the screen. This isn’t some promoted post instantly passed as your prospect scrolls mindlessly through their feed. Lastly, you have the context. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of junk on the internet. Sketchy websites, vulgar user-generated content, and an unrelenting swarm of banner ads of dubious provenance. Don’t get us wrong, appearing in the search results or alongside reviews when people are searching for information on your product is priceless, but targeting your demo just to shout ‘I exist’ via yet another banner they have to begrudgingly ignore? You can do better. And that better is Connected TV.

What Is Connected TV?

Connected TV (CTV) is the digital version of traditional TV advertising. Whereas with traditional TV you’re just loading up ads that go one way to whoever happens to watch, CTV is addressable. That means we can target individuals for our ads, just like we do with other forms of digital advertising. You’re no longer limited to buying TV by show, channel, or region. Put simply: CTV is that premium branding experience of the living room TV, but with all of the technology that makes digital advertising so powerful. In fact, forget the post title because the year to switch was a while ago. Instead, This Is The Last Year To Not Be Completely Behind The Curve On Your TV Ads.

Why?

Because during Covid the whole world sat at home and amongst other things, watched TV. A lot of TV. Digital TV. And marketers noticed. According to IAB data, CTV ad spend experienced 22% growth year-over-year in 2020 – its highest gain to date – while nearly three-quarters (73%) of CTV buyers shifted budgets from broadcast and cable to CTV this year.

What Should You Do About CTV?

First, shift those dollars ASAP, because everyone else is, and that means the price is going up. Like most other digital ads, you’re buying CTV via an ad auction, so more people bidding equals a higher cost per impression. Starting now means lower CPMs, better efficiency, and hitting those performance goals that much more easily. Second, you’re going to be kicking yourself for not doing it sooner when you see how much better it performs. Our Connected TV campaigns typically see 4%+ site visit rates and 1%+ conversion rates. Remember, these are TV ads focused on Brand messaging. The response rates are incredible – go compare them to your numbers – we’ll wait.

Also Good For Sales & Revenue

Not only does connected TV perform exceptionally well for branding, but it’s also an excellent direct response channel when run correctly. We see CPMs in the $30-$40 range which may sound high, but the corresponding site visits come in at the 3-6% range. With a typical display banner coming in anywhere from .08% to .4%, this means that our TV ads, the ones taking over the entire living room, are driving users to our client’s websites at 10X-50X the rate of digital display advertising. And those users aren’t coming to the site just to browse. Our campaigns are seeing conversion rates, conversions as in leads and sales, at between .5% to 2%. On the lower end of that range CTV is continuing to outperform typical display, but as we approach that 2% our campaigns are converting similar to high intent channels like search and referral! We see these types of numbers and we wonder why everyone isn’t running CTV. Hence the post.

Who Should Manage Your CTV

A performance media team specializing in direct response and making you money is who you need to manage CTV correctly. We’ll toss our hat in the ring. Like we mentioned before, TV used to go one way. You bought a show, network, region, and that was that. You could go through any traditional media agency and either your strategy worked or it didn’t, you saw lift or not. Archaic. But today we can use digital delivery to target the perfect customer. Instead of showing an ad to someone who’s the right age/gender/location to maybe want to buy your products, we can target those who are actively looking for what you’re selling. It’s a game-changer. And working with digital audiences, cookies, conversion attribution, bidding algorithms, and everything else that goes into making a digital ad campaign successful is best handled by professionals that live and breathe digital. That’s us.

Next Steps?

If you’re already buying TV ads, great. Let’s get you some Connected TV ads. If you’re not, but brand awareness is one of your goals this year, talk to us. We’re seeing incredible results for our clients – doubling and tripling brand awareness year over year, double-digit growth in traffic, sales, and revenue. CTV is an incredibly powerful channel when done right. Don’t go it alone, reach out, say hi, and see how Zozimus can help.