The OTT/CTV Space is Booming

Ad spending on CTV platforms continues with a projected increase of advancements and opportunities in the over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV (CTV) advertising space. As consumer viewing habits continue viewing streaming services ad dollars continue to migrate toward these channels as well.

 

The industry built tools to better target streaming audiences and measure their viewing behaviors, with the goal of providing the most compelling ad opportunities for marketers looking to connect with valuable consumers. Making up 10% of all digital ad spending, CTV ad spending is expected to reach $29.29b in 2024.1

 

Connected TV penetration in U.S. households continues to grow, as more households acquire internet-connected devices to watch content.2

 

CTV’s ability to merge the often separated performance and brand marketing worlds is redefining the digital advertising space as we once knew it. Given the immense ad opportunities that CTV/OTT offers—including precise, digital-like measurability and a high-quality viewing environment and the valuable audiences it draws in—and the significant investment in these channels, advertisers and brands are increasingly focused on proving the effectiveness of their OTT campaigns.

 

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

Through next-generation CTV ad platforms, marketers can now understand the CTV exposure-to-outcome impact of their ads. Given the large investment in this media channel, attribution—the process of assigning credit for conversions to various marketing touchpoints along the customers’ journey—has become a must-have for growth and performance marketers. This information is critical to creating more effective ad campaigns and boosting revenue. In measuring conversions following ad exposure for CTV, it’s important to understand which exposure caused the conversion to take place. For example, if a person sees an ad for Jersey Mike’s Subs on CTV and grabs their phone to do a quick search for the nearest location, then clicks on the link and places an order. This behavior will be attributed to Google, while in fact the search and the sale were 100% inspired by the TV ad. This faulty attribution dynamic has played out for years, resulting in hundreds of billions of dollars in valuation being hijacked by last-click digital companies.

 

While some attribution models use basic analytics data, they only provide a template and often fail to account for important steps in the marketing funnel. While last-touch attribution has long been the “go-to” measurement method, marketers now need to explore different attribution methodologies, given the increasingly fragmented media space and evolving consumer journey. The digital ad space needs to advance our understanding of single-touch measurement models, as they assign 100% of conversion credit to only one marketing touchpoint and often focus on only the first or last interactions, and adapt more sophisticated methods of analysis for campaigns. By leveraging different attribution methodologies, marketers can gain more in-depth insights regarding ad effectiveness to drive future marketing decisions.

 

It’s important to understand that attribution is a journey and the consumer journey is ever-changing. Today, a person can be exposed to a brand’s ad across numerous platforms and devices before purchasing. In fact, in the modern age of marketing across platforms, devices, and channels, the typical retail consumer requires an average of 56 touchpoints before making a purchase.3 It is important to assign proper credit to each touchpoint so that marketers can determine where their budget should be spent.

 

Leveraging Multiple Attribution Methodologies to Improve Campaign Performance

Our award-winning proprietary Performance CTV platform matches and tracks OTT/CTV impressions across premium inventory sources to real-world events, including site visits, store location visits, subscriptions, app installs, form-fills, purchases, revenue, and more to provide a more granular look at the consumer journey. We know, deterministically, at the household level, when someone is exposed to an ad and then takes action—whether it be digitally or physically. With our platform, advertisers can analyze exactly what’s driving desired results among consumers using multiple attribution methodologies.

 

Our Performance CTV platform takes attribution a step further, measuring every single touch prior to a conversion. Powered by innovative technology, the platform allows users to toggle freely between four different attribution methodologies in real-time to see exactly which touchpoints are driving the most leads, sales, installs, or visits among consumers. Advertisers have the ability to shuffle the distribution of credit according to the following attribution methodologies:

 

First Touch: All conversion credit assigned to the first variables that the converter was exposed to.

 

Last Touch: All conversion credit assigned to the last variables that the converter was exposed to.

 

Time Decay: Credit weighted more heavily across variables that the converter was exposed to as said exposures approach conversion (aka credit increases as time to conversion decreases).

 

Linear: Credit evenly dispersed across all variables that the converter was exposed to.

 

Our Performance CTV platform is the one-stop-shop for advertisers and agencies looking to transform data into actionable items that can be leveraged and improved upon in the future. By measuring and assigning credit to different variables in your campaign, our platform determines the true impact of each of them on any KPI—providing a new standard in tracking, transparency, and results via comprehensive attribution insights. Our platform then uses these insights to inform its media buying with a bidder that moves the budget toward the highest-performing campaign variables—lowering CPAs, maximizing ROAS, and making a tangible impact on a brand’s bottom line. Expanding your attribution methodologies will not only help refine your budget strategy but will have a lasting impact on your current and future ad campaigns.

 

 

 

Sources:

  1. eMarketer, 3/29/2023, “US Connected TV (CTV) Ad Spending, 2021-2027 (billions, % change, and % of digital ad spending)”
  2. eMarketer. 6/2/2023. “US Connected TV (CTV) Household Penetration, 2014-2023 (% of total TV households)”
  3. AdRoll, 11/05/21, “Why First-Touch and Last-Touch Attribution Are Out of Style”

As society shifts back to a new normal, travel and tourism are back stronger than ever. Travel demand shows no sign of slowing, with 55% of U.S. consumers saying leisure travel spending will be a top priority in 2023. The days of lockdowns and restrictions are over, and consumers are taking to the streets, airways, and open waters for business and pleasure.

Learn how to maximize your travel and tourism campaign performance by exploring key trends, understanding the current market, and, most importantly, who your customer is and how to reach them along their journey with these five tips:

1. Timing is everything. Segment your ideal consumer and when they are most likely to make their purchase. Could this be 6, 12, or 24 months out? It’s crucial to understand the unique customer journey and the impact on consumer behavior and their purchasing decisions.

2. Don’t underestimate the value of a holistic media strategy. From targeting to activations, every aspect is important to ensure maximum performance and outcomes. This includes understanding the key performance indicators specific to your brand, or your client and their campaign. By leveraging a full-funnel approach, you can work from awareness to consideration, then to intent, purchase, foot traffic, and finally, loyalty.

3. Leverage low-funnel attribution insights to make strategic, real-time optimizations against your specific KPIs based on conversion data. By utilizing this valuable data, you can pinpoint where to retarget audiences to re-engage them through video and display formats, delivering brand messaging in the right place, at the right time, and in the right mindset.

4. Creative matters! Cut through the noise and leverage high-engagement creatives to be seen by the right audience at the right time.

5. A performance-driven and connected approach is key. Marry strategy and activation, creative solutions to measurement, and derive insights to put the best foot forward for your brand or clients’ goals.

The State of the Travel Industry

Where U.S. Adults Intend to Travel Summer in 2023 (Source):

Travel Marketing Key Trends

1. Sustainability – We are seeing growth in ethical trips, supporting local businesses, and eco-friendly accommodations.

2. Authentic experiences – Travelers are distancing themselves from mainstream tourism, instead opting for unique, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. (Source)

3. “Workations” are now a thing – Remote workers are now blending business and leisure travel with destinations catering to their needs.

4. Solo traveling is on the rise – Statistics show a significant increase in the number of people traveling solo versus pre-pandemic.

Tour and Travel Marketing Strategy FAQs

How Does Digital Marketing Technology Help a Travel and Tourism Agency?

Digital marketing technology, like Digital Remedy’s digital media solutions, can simplify your workflow by centralizing every aspect of your travel marketing campaign.

Our omnichannel platform allows you to run high-performing campaigns specifically optimized for your audience. This gives you the flexibility to reach a college student making spring break plans with customized OTT advertising campaigns or honeymooners searching for the best European getaways on mobile.

And with 24/7 campaign monitoring, you can pivot when your campaign isn’t yielding your desired results.

Why Is OTT/CTV Advertising Essential for My Travel Marketing Strategy?

Simply put, connected TV is where consumers live.

From binge-watching the latest Hulu special to tuning into Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime, the people you want to reach with your tourism advertising campaign are using connected TV.

In fact, 80% of consumers planning a trip abroad or domestically within the next year watch ad-supported OTT, according to MRI-Simmons’ November 2022 Cord Evolution study.

Digital Remedy’s performance CTV platform allows you to target, buy, optimize, and measure your travel OTT campaigns with precision, all on one simple-to-use dashboard. Our state-of-the-art solutions can inform exactly what creative and which publishers are driving performance for your travel marketing campaign.

What Are the 7Ps of Tourism Marketing?

When creating your travel advertising strategy, you’ll want to start by understanding the basic components of tourism marketing, which helps you craft an informed campaign. Developed by professors at Comilla University and Stamford University Bangladesh, the 7Ps of tourism marketing are:

Elevate Your Travel & Tourism Advertising Campaign With Digital Remedy

With Travel through Digital Remedy, our point-to-point travel solutions drive sales, monitor variants in foot traffic patterns, and identify audience trends that best impact geo-centric sales results.

Our team of experts understands the market, having launched 100+ successful campaigns across 80 travel and tourism advertisers. We recognize that each type of advertiser is unique but can propel our experience in this category with (but not limited to):

We also have extensive experience with the customer journey and its impact on consumer behavior and purchasing decisions.

We apply a full-funnel approach to our strategies, including key outcomes such as:

Our Performance-Driven Approach

Our dedicated team tailors strategies depending on your goals:

Contact a member of our team to learn more about how our digital marketing platforms can take your tourism advertising campaign to the next level.

With the influx of new marketing channels finding their place in the modern digital age, advertisers worldwide are launching campaign after campaign across a broad spectrum of mediums, from Google paid search to linear and CTV.

There’s no doubt that this omnichannel approach does wonders for driving greater brand exposure and customer engagement. Of course, the more screen time you get, the more likely your most valued audience will see your message and decide to act, regardless of what that next step looks like for your specific brand.

But the rise of multi-channel strategies, and even those singular ones, also poses a pressing challenge to the everyday digital marketer: accurately tracking sales and conversions.

Fortunately, the right attribution model will deliver the insights you need to know exactly what is driving your consumers across channels — all the way from initial ad exposure to conversion.

What Is Attribution in Marketing & Why Is It Important?

Every digital advertiser benefits from not only determining how a customer came across their ad but also how they progress through the marketing funnel.

Because the average online customer journey now ranges from 20-500 touchpoints, it’s important to recognize that a lot of interaction happens before your customer decides to make a purchase.

With marketing attribution, you can go in-depth to fully understand the impact of different touchpoints along the customer’s journey — from beginning to end — and discover which channels contribute to a conversion.

These findings provide you with measurements of the successes and/or challenges of your campaign’s online presence and help you track your investment to determine your return on investment (ROI). When you leverage attribution models, you’ll have assistance outlining the resources you plan to use in future campaigns more effectively, helping you work towards the goal of actually increasing your ROI over time.

The process of attribution is not an easy undertaking for all, but it is crucial to understand. Without the right methodology, you’ll quickly find yourself in the dark with your campaigns, unaware of what’s truly impacting your brand’s bottom line.

Common Types of Attribution Methodologies

From last touch to time decay, different attribution methodologies offer their own distinct advantages.

That’s why using multiple attribution models is highly recommended for an accurate understanding of the customer’s journey in full.

But to reap the best benefits for your brand, you’ll need to select the right attribution models for your campaign, and that decision starts with acknowledging the specific use cases of each.

Last Touch Attribution

The most common attribution model, last touch, determines an estimate of a customer’s last touchpoint with your brand before making a purchase or signing up for a service. Often referred to as “last click” or “last interaction,” this model gives all the conversion credit to the final touchpoint and offers a highly granular glance at your marketing cycle’s conversion points.

Advantage:

Disadvantage:

First Touch Attribution

Just like last touch, the first touch model is another attribution methodology that assigns 100% of the conversion credit to a singular interaction a consumer has with your brand. This time, however, emphasis is placed on the first touchpoint a customer has with your company, with the main idea being that the initial interaction was the primary selling factor.

Advantage:

Disadvantage:

Linear Attribution

Unlike last and first touch, the linear model is a multi-touch attribution methodology, taking into account several touchpoints along the customer journey. What’s more, this methodology doesn’t just consider all the ways in which a customer interacted with your brand — it also splits conversion credit equally across each touchpoint, offering a balanced look at your marketing strategy in its entirety.

Advantage:

Disadvantage:

Time Decay Attribution

Similar in nature to the linear model, the time decay methodology assigns credit to all of the marketing channels that led to a conversion. However, unlike the evenly distributed credit provided by the linear model, time decay places more weight on the later touchpoints, with credit lessening — or decaying — as you look further back into the customer’s journey.

Advantage:

Disadvantage:

Best Practices With Attribution

Attribution is the math and science of digital marketing, and it’s not always easy to navigate right off the bat.

To effectively leverage attribution data and boost your chances of conversion success, it’s best to:

Start Maximizing Your Digital Campaigns With Digital Remedy

As the digital landscape continues to advance, marketers need to stay ahead, and those that master campaign measurement with multiple attribution methodologies will be best positioned for success.

To fuel your future media budgets and marketing decisions, it’s critical to identify what channels are driving conversions and understand how your channels work together to influence those conversions.

With Digital Remedy as your media partner, we’ll help you determine the best attribution model(s) for your campaigns with specialized optimization, incrementality, and halo effect methodologies.

Speak with a member of our team to learn more, and check out our full video on YouTube.

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As the direct-to-consumer (DTC) space becomes increasingly competitive, marketers are under constant pressure to understand campaign performance and prove the value of their efforts. Now accountable for driving outcomes through their campaigns rather than building general awareness among consumers, many brands are rethinking their media mix—exploring new channels that can effectively deliver on their campaign goals and maximize their budget.

Digital Remedy partnered with Dynata, the world’s largest first-party data company, to field a marketing-focused survey with the goal of gaining a deeper understanding of DTC marketers’ top priorities, current campaign practices, and media partner preferences.

Download our report, which provides valuable insights, including:

For the latest industry trends and insights, check out our blog and sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.

Whether you’re a DTC marketer just getting started in the CTV/OTT space or looking to take your current campaigns to the next level, Digital Remedy is here to help. Discover how your brand can garner greater brand impact, generate more outcomes, and turn TV into a powerful performance channel. For additional information, visit www.digitalremedy.com/ott-ctv or schedule a demo to see our award-winning platform in action.

Get the Report

Through sophisticated measurement capabilities, marketers can now understand the CTV exposure-to-outcome impact of their ads. Given the significant investment in this media channel, attribution—the process of assigning credit for conversions to various marketing touchpoints along the customers’ journey—has become a must-have for growth and performance marketers. This information is critical to creating more effective ad campaigns and boosting revenue. In measuring conversions following ad exposure for CTV, it’s important to understand which exposure caused the conversion to take place.

Through incrementality analysis, we can evaluate all the conversions that wouldn’t have happened without our media. But in many instances, other media channels had an influence. In fact, every touchpoint your audience has with your campaign influences a conversion—no matter the partner or channel.

If a Digital Remedy campaign played a part in a conversion that involved other media exposures, clients want to understand how the exposure to Digital Remedy played a role in improving the efficacy of the media. In this case, the OTT campaign influenced the conversion, but the second partner’s attribution modeling wouldn’t take that into account, and it would get full credit for the conversion. 

All media works together. None of your advertising works in a vacuum. Conversion reporting/attribution is only one of several ways to analyze whether specific media is working for you. With halo effect analysis, clients can understand the campaign boost Digital Remedy is providing. If we played a part in a conversion that involved some other media, we’re essentially improving the efficacy of that media type with our own media.

What Is Halo Effect?

Incremental channel lift, or halo effect, is a way to measure the boost in performance of your search, social, and affiliate channels provided by your CTV campaigns. In other words, the halo effect shows how much more likely someone is to convert if they see CTV ads AND any of your search, social, or affiliate ads versus ONLY seeing ads on those other channels.

Halo effect analysis takes a more holistic approach to attribution, focusing on incremental conversions across media channels and campaigns. With this analysis, you can connect your CTV spend and see just how much of a boost these campaigns are providing for all of the other media you’re running.

How Does It Work?

Rather than having to take credit for the direct performance of our media, we are able to assign that credit and take indirect credit instead through halo effect analysis. Search lift, social lift, affiliate lift, native lift; you name it, all of this can be done through this same process. 

Benefits of Halo Effect with Digital Remedy

Leveraging halo effect analysis through Digital Remedy, advertisers can measure the true incrementality of their marketing initiatives and refine their campaign mix to deliver a better ad experience for their customers (and better results for their business). Benefits include:

Speak to a member of our team to learn more.

The Balancing Act: Awareness vs. Performance Marketing

Performance marketing has grown in popularity over the last decade, as marketing budgets have been slashed to maximize return on investment. While brand awareness is important, many marketers are focused on driving (and measuring) bottom-funnel actions, such as website visits, in-store visits, and purchases. Improvements in measurement for once-considered upper-funnel media are coming fast and furious. These improvements show that lower-funnel media can have branding impacts, and upper-funnel media can have performance impacts.

What is Performance TV?

In short, more measurable real-world results and more granular reporting for marketers. Performance TV allows marketers to deliver ads to target audiences, measure campaign performance, and attribute bottom-funnel results. Two main benefits of performance TV are the ability to:

  1. Deterministically or definitively, track conversions from your campaign
  2. Optimize those campaigns away from what doesn’t work toward what does—to drive better performance

Performance TV advertising is done through connected TV (CTV) devices that help to attribute and report on those campaigns. Performance CTV provides a unique opportunity for marketers to reach highly-engaged audiences.

The Rise of CTV

CTV offers the high-impact, brand storytelling power of traditional TV plus the targeting, analytics, and interactivity of digital to provide a compelling environment for audiences to engage with messaging alongside premium content.

“Linear TV and CTV are converging; however, similar to the shifting holiday season, which is promoting earlier shopping each year, that doesn’t mean it has made what to buy, where to buy, and whether or not you have the best deal clear for media buyers (and consumers), which is the case for advanced TV.”

Matt Sotebeer, Chief Strategy Officer, Digital Remedy

For brands looking for new ways to maximize their marketing efforts, CTV is the perfect channel.

“We’re seeing brands start to gear up for Black Friday and Cyber Monday and look toward new channels to leverage. CTV is definitely top-of-mind for these advertisers as long as their investment can be backed up by performance. This makes attribution and optimization on this channel more important than ever.”

– Ben Brenner, VP of Business Development & Strategy, Digital Remedy

CTV’s ability to merge the often-separated performance and brand marketing worlds—including its inherently addressable nature—is redefining the digital ad space and giving marketers a way to take their campaign measurement to the next level.

How Digital Remedy Can Help

Finding the right performance CTV partner can make all the difference in optimizing your media strategy and maximizing ROAS in this fast-growing, highly-profitable market. While many ad tech vendors offer different solutions, not all of them have the full scope of resources to make the most of advertising on this medium. Digital Remedy offers first- and third-party data integrations, direct access to premium OTT publishers, real-time optimization, and granular, transparent bottom-funnel reporting through Flip, our performance OTT stack.

Digital Remedy provides comprehensive campaign performance reporting and data-driven capabilities to help advertisers and agencies connect with target audiences at the best time.With Flip, brands gain access to a sophisticated reporting dashboard to monitor their campaigns and real-time performance insights to optimize towards the KPIs that matter most. Flip provides a new standard in tracking, transparency, and results, including:

With these valuable insights, marketers can make more effective optimizations and investment decisions—to effectively grow their business and drive measurable campaign performance by leveraging the biggest screen in the home to deliver brand messaging.

Download the full report for full insights, including myths surrounding CTV. Interested in learning more? Watch our Digital Dish episode or speak to a member of our team.

CTV viewership has exploded. To take advantage of the channel’s surging audience, e-commerce and retail brands are making CTV a key part of their advertising strategy. CTV allows brands to apply an audience-first, data-driven approach to TV similar to other digital channels. However, as ad strategies continue to become more CTV-reliant, brands need greater clarity on performance and ROI. Our proprietary performance CTV platform, Flip, provides that clarity to e-commerce and retail advertisers.

Tying CTV ad impressions to app installs, site traffic, in-store visits, cart amounts, and more

Flip connects mobile location data with CTV ad impressions to help brands granularly understand campaign performance, attribution, and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). Flip helps advertisers and agencies accurately and granularly measure CTV campaign effectiveness. The platform provides an easy-to-use dashboard that shows CTV buyers exactly which campaigns are working across which devices, publishers, demographics, and more – all in real time. Using proprietary software, Flip can tie ad impressions to app installs, cart amounts, and site visits. The platform can even match a CTV impression to an in-store visit when that device shows up in a physical store, uniquely tying digital impressions to physical actions. With its full-funnel attribution capabilities, Flip traces every CTV impression to a conversion and sheds light on ROAS as CTV investments grow.

“With Flip, we’re able to connect real-world sales events to CTV impressions to let retailers know, definitively, that someone was exposed to their CTV ad, and then visited their site or made a purchase. We’ve set our sights on elevating CTV to a fully accountable performance media channel — driving real-world results for our clients by allowing them to activate against their data or third-party data to maximize return on ad spend. Flip has answered the call for a new benchmark for measuring campaign success, even on platforms that don’t have a lot of transparent reporting, and we’re thrilled to extend it to e-commerce and retail brands.”

Head of Activation at Agency Partner

Flip is the cornerstone of our full CTV/OTT offering, helping digital ad buyers optimize targeting, tracking, and campaign management across multiple platforms and devices. Now, e-commerce and retail clients can leverage and unlock real-time insights, measure the true impact of campaigns and optimize to drive results. With Flip, e-commerce and retail marketers can:

“As the industry aims to keep pace with consumer demand for personalized experiences in an economic environment where every dollar counts, measurement and performance have become critical metrics for retail advertisers. We’re ecstatic to extend Flip’s capabilities in the retail and e-commerce sector and remain committed to providing a holistic solution by which advertisers can unlock and optimize real-time insights, measure campaign effectiveness, and drive valuable results.”

– Matt Sotebeer, Chief Strategy Officer at Digital Remedy

To learn more about Flip, visit www.digitalremedy.com/flip or speak to one of our team members to book a demo and see the platform in action.

In July 2022, Digital Remedy was a gold sponsor at GROW NY, a two-day event at the Knockdown Center in Queens, NY which offered growth-focused talks, panels, and workshops for DTC, ecommerce, and retail brands. At the event, our SVP of SalesTJ Sullivan, sat down with special guest Sophie Duncan, Senior Director of Performance at ByHeart, to discuss how growth-focused marketers can leverage performance CTV to increase their customer base and take online sales to the next level. Additionally, the team debuted the beta for our new self-service performance TV campaign management platform, Flip+

Tune in to hear more about: 

If you want to see more, you can watch the entire discussion here!

Interested in learning how you can start driving (and tracking) bottom-line results? Schedule a custom demo to see our award-winning CTV performance platform in action today. Be sure to follow Digital Remedy on LinkedIn and Twitter for the latest company updates and upcoming events.

The CTV/OTT space presents many advantages for B2B marketers, including clear targets, ideal buyer profiles, and precise targeting strategies. However, B2B marketers are feeling increased pressure to prove the value of CTV/OTT in reaching their target audience and without the right digital attribution, it can be tough to prove success and maximize return on ad spending (ROAS).

TJ Sullivan, SVP of Sales at Digital Remedy was recently featured in MarketingProfs, where he discussed digital attribution in the OTT/CTV space. Specifically, TJ outlined five ways to succeed with CTV/OTT, improve ROAS, and boost your bottom line:

Use multi-touch attribution

Multi-touch attribution for CTV/OTT gives you the ability to see the customer journey beyond just first- and last-touch—which is especially crucial for B2B marketers looking to understand the full customer journey.

Factor in incrementality

CTV/OTT metrics let you dive into the details to understand which tactics moved the needle with the right people in the right way. Factoring in incrementality lets you see the real picture by taking all attributed conversions and filtering out ones that the campaign didn’t directly drive.

Match strategy to sales insights

Good B2B marketers know how to recognize buy signals—those actions and behaviors that indicate a prospect is ready to buy. Being able to recognize those “telling” signals and match them to the strategy—optimizing creative, targeting, and placement to drive those signals—is a key advantage in CTV/OTT advertising when it’s done right.

Use actionable CRM data to segment and target

The beauty of CTV is that it enables real-time optimization of ad buys in comparison with Linear, which means you are able to move your budget toward the publishers, creatives, dayparts, audiences, and geographies that are working to drive the most action to fully maximize your spend.

Use real-time feedback to target in real time

When you combine multi-touch attribution with real-time performance metrics, it creates a powerful platform to fully optimize targeting and content delivery.

Work with a trusted partner to achieve success 

While it may be relatively new to some marketers, multi-touch attribution must become a top priority, as it allows you to not only identify the specific touchpoints throughout the consumer journey that triggered the desired action, but also leverage valuable performance insights to optimize future campaigns. With the Flip OTT performance platform, Digital Remedy is making it accessible and simple for brands and marketers at all levels to win in the OTT/CTV space. To learn how you can leverage alternative attribution methodologies within our award-winning CTV platform, visit www.digitalremedy.com/flip.

Check out TJ’s full insights on MarketingProfs and be sure to follow Digital Remedy on LinkedIn and Twitter for the latest updates.

Key Takeaways

 

 

 

 

CTV/OTT Will Continue To Lead The Digital Ad Space

As marketers continue to see diminishing returns on search and social, and a shifting privacy landscape within the duopoly (Facebook and Google) forces changes in media spend, growth marketers have begun turning to connected TV (CTV), not for branding, but for performance. There is plenty to be excited about for the future of streaming. As we move forward, we will see more brands becoming extensions of social, putting more dollars towards the CTV/OTT space, and introducing more creative, enhanced, and templated ad units. The industry will see real innovation on the creative front—as that has been a significant challenge for smaller brands getting into this channel. We’ll also see brands building out higher-quality creatives in a faster way. The future of CTV advertising will more heavily leverage non-intrusive, innovative ad formats.

CTV ad spending has far exceeded predictions and will continue to grow next year (and years after). CTV ad spend will reach $19.1b this year, up 32.3% from 2021.1 Ad spending rebounded in a very strong way in 2021, and marketing budgets have returned to normal. This is in part due to the launch and expansion of new ad-supported streaming services. CTV ad spend pricing has increased throughout the last year, which has in reaction, increased overall spend. CTV ad revenue growth will decrease slightly, following the huge spike, however, CTV ad spend will gain share of overall digital ad spending through 2025, passing 10% by 2024. The future of CTV ad spending is bright—more than doubling in 2025 to surpass $30b.1

CTV viewership increased across all generations this year compared to 2020. Gen Z and Millennial users will continue to increase through 2025. YouTube is the number one OTT platform in the U.S. when it comes to penetration among OTT video service users, with market share of 95.5%. YouTube CTV viewers grew almost 63% last year and surpassed the 50% threshold for the share of viewers who watched YouTube content on CTVs.2 In addition, YouTube was found to be the number two streaming service when comparing total hours spent watching content on CTVs in the U.S.

 

The Threat of Ad Fraud Will Remain

Ad fraud detection and measurement will be extremely important because the demand for inventory will outweigh the high-quality supply. Most CTV inventory is bought and sold through private markets, which prevents fraudsters’ ability to fake ad impressions. However, the demand and price of CTV inventory is increasing which results in two scenarios:

1. Advertisers are attracted by the lower pricing in the open market

2. Fraudsters are attracted by the high demand and premium they can charge on fake inventory

Last year, Pixalate, a firm that monitors ad fraud, estimated that more than 20% of programmatic OTT and CTV ad impressions were served as invalid traffic.3 Given the significantly complex ad environment, fueled by ever-changing technologies, it’s nearly impossible to eliminate fraud completely. However, there are certain steps advertisers can take to protect their brand and their budget—ensuring exposure to fraud is minimal and ad spend is directed where it’s intended. As CTV fraud increases in scope and sophistication, it’s critical for marketers to work with trusted partners that have the experience, knowledge, scale, and ability to identify and block new threats as they emerge. Check out our recent report to learn more.

 

The Introduction of More Sophisticated Attribution Methodologies

Models for marketing attribution have been used for many decades, but as the needs of customers have changed and companies have undergone digital transformations, marketing attribution has evolved. The roots of marketing mix models (MMMs) can be traced back to the 1950s. As campaigns become more complex in today’s multichannel world, accurate campaign measurement and attribution has become a major struggle for advertisers and agencies, and, unfortunately, many lack the time and resources to do so. Not to mention, a list of long-standing measurement and attribution problems that plague marketers, including a lack of standardized metrics and definitions across traditional and digital TV and video, issues with basic data accuracy and infrastructure, a lack of organizational alignment, and the difficulty of understanding and validating attribution models.

The truth is, attribution is evolving and advertisers need to reevaluate the methodologies they are leveraging to ensure they are assigning credit accurately. While innovations in attribution have brought the focus away from video completion rate (VCR) and toward return on ad spend (ROAS) and cost per action (CPA) metrics, those goals are merely scratching the surface of CTV measurement. Many performance marketers are looking to optimize their CTV campaign performance, but don’t know where to start. The ability to track a customer journey and measure ad impact is incredibly powerful, especially for today’s agile marketers that are laser-focused on managing and optimizing their spend with flexibility in a changing environment. Moving forward, advertisers who expand their attribution methodologies will help refine their budget strategy and ensure a lasting impact on future ad campaigns.

The Role of First-Party Data

The most important shift in digital marketing to pay attention to right now is the emerging utilization of first-party data. This data is defined, collected, and owned by the brand itself and can be more accurate and timely than that from external sources. Until opting out, these are your customers, and they have chosen to share their contact information and purchasing choices with your business. Third-party data regulations are preventing tracking, companies are needing to shift their efforts. 42% of U.S. data users will increase spending on the use of first-party data. This shift was forced due to changing regulations on third-party cookies that are being collected. With consumers increasing concern about how and what data is being collected, companies are going to need to shift how they obtain data. The highest-performing companies are taking note and starting to utilize first-party data, which will not only be a new buzzword but the foundation and future of the marketing world.

First-party data actually achieves the highest return on investment (ROI) of all data types, and most marketers actually believe that first-party data provides the best path to true customer understanding and therefore to better performance.4 Working with an experienced media partner will ensure a smooth transition to a cookieless future.

Looking Ahead

While hindsight might be 20/20, forward thinking will allow brands to stay competitive and be prepared for the inevitable shifts in consumer preferences, media consumption, and more. One thing is certain, working with a partner that specializes in diversified digital ad strategies and offers innovative technology can be a lifesaver in today’s dynamic environment. To discover how Digital Remedy helps advertisers and agencies of all sizes navigate the ever-changing digital ad space, visit www.digitalremedy.com.