In the arena where traditional broadcasters like NBC and CBS stand toe-to-toe with streaming giants like Prime Video and Hulu, the advertising playbook is largely being rewritten.
A new age of television and media consumption has begun — one where linear and streaming platforms coexist, compete, and create new possibilities for brands across the globe.
For the everyday marketer looking to jump aboard today’s TV advertising wave, the following guide provides everything your brand needs to know about linear vs. digital platforms.
70-something years ago, advertising on TV looked a lot like this: You’re watching a regularly scheduled program on a television network (if you were lucky enough to be able to afford a TV), you get a few ad breaks during commercial slots, and you hope your show returns as quickly as possible — unless you were buying what was being sold. Broadcast and cable were pivotal to the average American family, and if you wanted to catch your favorite show like I Love Lucy, you’d better hope you were sitting in front of the TV at 9pm EST after dinner on Monday night.
Over the years, television sets became more affordable and TV networks expanded rapidly, leaving more viewers tuning in and more advertisers racing to the big screen. The “Golden Age” of TV advertising prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s, and advertisers began creating iconic and memorable commercials that became part of pop culture.
Flash forward 60 years, and the TV advertising model has largely reinvented itself with the advent of new tech like on-demand, DVRs, TiVo, and streaming services. Now, viewers can actually choose whether or not they want to watch an ad, with many binge-watching their favorite shows and fast-forwarding through commercials. And with so many shows to watch, advertisers must also adapt to keep viewers’ attention in a saturated content market.
While this new way of TV advertising might make reaching the masses and keeping their attention more challenging, it certainly hasn’t become impossible — it’s just gotten a different look.
Today, TV advertisers are investing in both linear and digital TV, a two-in-one combo that packs the perfect punch for any campaign.
Yes, mass ad spend has shifted to digital in recent years (Insider Intelligence projects U.S. spend on digital video will surpass $25.09b in 2023 alone), but traditional TV advertising is still one of the most effective ways to create awareness about a product or brand. Advertisers across the country remain well aware of this actuality, with linear ad spend also set to reach a striking $61.31b this year.
Both forms of TV are tried and tested tactics to reach consumers, and in fact, many households view it by means of traditional TV and streaming services. According to Marketing Charts, data from Nielsen’s Q4 2022 research revealed the average U.S. adult spends a whopping 294 minutes per day with TV, whether through TV-connected devices, cable, or broadcast.
If you didn’t already guess, that’s an incredible amount of screen time that brands can capitalize on to reach their ideal buyer.
TV is broadly categorized under two larger umbrellas: linear TV and streaming TV.
Linear TV is the traditional form of broadcast television, where content is viewed on a predetermined schedule (TiVo still counts, but this is called time-shift linear where viewers can watch programs at a later date.) When talking about TV advertising, there are two main forms of linear TV, broadcast and cable. Each refers to the way content is aired, either broadcasted or via cable box, a paid-for service.
Within this linear landscape, there are two distinct types of advertising, those on a national and local scale. This means a certain percentage of ads are dedicated to national commercial spots, with a smaller percentage dedicated to local commercial spots.
It’s common for advertisers to incorporate both broadcast and cable into their strategy, but choosing national or local advertising depends on the advertiser’s size, audience, and ultimate campaign goals.
Linear TV has been a favorite among advertisers for decades, mainly due to its unique advantages not seen with other mediums, such as:
In the dynamic realm of modern entertainment, streaming has revolutionized how we consume traditional television content. It occurs on CTV devices through an over-the-top (OTT) method, meaning that video and audio content is delivered entirely online.
While there are countless streamers, apps, and digital ways to consume television, not all are available for advertising. For example, some platforms may choose not to invest in AVOD (advertising-based video on demand) models, and even those that do tend to have a lower frequency of ads than traditional TV.
Unlike traditional linear TV, on streaming devices, advertisers are directly targeting households 1:1. And because it’s digital, there’s ample opportunity to track performance and connect data to understand ad campaigns.
Streaming TV advertising has been all the buzz in marketing circles, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic acted as its main catalyst in the 2020 lockdown days. For many marketers, this way of TV advertising is favored for its diverse capabilities, including:
Linear TV is a powerhouse channel for driving unprecedented reach and boosting top-funnel brand performance, while streaming is a high-growth avenue to target your audience and drive conversions.
What does this mean for the modern-day marketer? Tapping into the true power of TV advertising lies at the convergence point of both linear and digital.
Viewership is still evenly split across streaming and traditional TV, meaning advertisers will beat out competitors by reaching their consumers at every touchpoint across linear, CTV, and digital.
There are many moving pieces and parts involved in any marketing strategy, much less one that takes into account both linear and digital TV. But with these best practices from the team at Digital Remedy, you can unlock a world of success in every ad and on every platform:
The future of digital advertising is a cross-channel approach, and it’s our goal at Digital Remedy to provide our clients with a competitive, linear, and CTV performance marketing-driven strategy that is 100% holistic.
With Digital Remedy, agencies and advertisers can run all linear media through us across national and local broadcast and cable. And by utilizing our TV insights platform, you’ll have access to real-time linear TV data, giving you the power to measure and optimize your campaign all in one platform.
Because performance TV marketing is at the heart of what we do, we also enable brands to activate across linear and digital channels — the ultimate solution to creating a comprehensive media strategy that guarantees outcomes.
Interested in learning more about how our linear and streaming TV capabilities can work for you?
Speak with a member of our team for more expert insights, and sign up for our Trends and Insights newsletter to always stay in the loop.
Despite what the 21st-century surge of cord-cutters and cord-nevers may lead you to believe, linear TV and the long-stay impact of its advertising capabilities won’t be headed for demise anytime soon.
There’s no doubt that the era of streaming and OTT/CTV is well upon us—reaching 142 million adult viewers across the globe—but abandoning the traditional TV marketing method might just lead to more campaign losses than gains.
Like most things in marketing, the best TV advertising efforts exist in a unit, and a diversified strategy—using both CTV/OTT and linear in tandem—keeps your brand relevant, in touch with your most valued leads, and seeing greater results.
A decades-old household staple, linear TV boasts a history of success at driving scale and delivering a broad reach for advertisers.
In recent years, however, the industry has experienced a significant disconnect, leaving many marketers looking to tack on other mediums to their strategy, particularly digital and CTV/OTT.
The age of converged media strategies has been a long time coming, and it’s not just because there are more opportunities than ever to get your brand known. Challenges in today’s linear TV landscape are taking marketing teams back to the drawing board, especially when faced with roadblocks like:
The evidence supporting convergence media approaches is here, and the figures are more than telling. According to a MediaScience/Effectv study, viewers exposed to TV and digital ads—versus digital ads alone—spent 3x more time with the ads, had a twice better brand recall, and rose their purchase intent by 15%.
But the power of combining CTV and linear is still unfolding, and advertisers going into this year’s first multi-currency upfront still cite fragmentation and measurement as top challenges in the converged TV space. Despite the industry’s current pain points, forward-thinking marketers are still embracing the potential of what a convergent media strategy can do, what its future holds, and how it can fit into their budget.
Ad dollars are moving, and what’s behind the migration is the eager marketer ready to capitalize on the impact of convergent media.
While search and social, mobile apps, and digital display continue their reign as the preferred channels for direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketers—receiving the largest shares of ad dollars in 1H 2023—a growing number of brands are shifting budgets to support increased spending on CTV/OTT.
In fact, 65% of those investing in CTV/OTT advertising in 1H ’23 report it being their first time funneling dollars into the channel, and over half (57%) of all marketers opting for this digital solution will spend more on it than this time last year.
By allocating extra budget to performance TV, advertisers have a leg up in not only staying competitive and reaching a highly targeted audience but also remaining insightful of their campaigns’ true impressions.
Because of the combined, rich data of performance TV and linear TV, over two-thirds of DTC marketers are leveraging CTV/OTT campaign insights to influence and optimize their linear strategies—and hail bigger results.
TV insights deliver the data you need to refine your marketing efforts and make more informed decisions on the who, what, how, when, and where of a successful campaign. Using these linear and CTV/OTT performance insights, you can enhance your advertising strategy and better resonate with your audience in three different ways:
Whether your main goal is fueling your branding, performance, or both, determining the best ways to go about your strategy is made possible with comprehensive TV insights, particularly when it comes to ACR technology.
The everyday smart TV is one of the primary propellors of granular TV insights. With automatic content recognition (ACR) technology built into these devices, smart TVs are able to identify nearly any content—including linear and CTV—playing on-screen and serve as grounds for immense data collection, helping advertisers with:
Although the total number of ACR-enabled TVs currently on the market is unknown, Vizio accounts for over 21m devices as of April 2023, signaling that marketers have plenty of ACR data sources to tap into for their CTV and linear campaigns.
CTV/OTT without data-driven linear TV advertising (and vice versa) is like developing a media buying plan without an experienced media planning strategist in your corner.
It meets the mark, but at what cost to your campaign?
These complimentary marketing tactics are best when leveraged together, and it’s not just because they reach a much wider audience. When you prioritize the combined power of a convergent TV strategy, you can:
It’s easy to fall into the trap that the cord-cutting phenomenon is positing—linear TV is on the decline. However, current viewing numbers suggest that we’re not quite there yet, and ditching traditional TV is only jumping the gun since it accounts for just under 50% of daily views. It still remains a highly saturated medium, and by keeping it in the modern era marketing landscape, advertisers are able to maximize their spending in more ways than one.
When you embrace the capabilities of both performance and linear TV, you’ll boost the data at your fingertips, the reach of your campaigns, and the relevance of your brand, all while staying in touch with industry standards.
CTV viewership and adoption continue to grow, and with it comes a proliferation of Performance TV, from ad-supported and subscription models to a hybrid of both.
Using TV insights through Digital Remedy, you can optimize your buys across digital by taking into account real-time linear TV data, increasing transparency in your TV buys, finding those hard-to-reach audiences, and measuring more effectively. With our customized digital media buying solutions, we’ll help you tap into your most telling insights and drive your future campaign strategies in ways that deliver the highest return on your investment.
Even more, advertisers can now run their linear media with us, bringing TV planning, activation, and measurement all under one roof. Listen to our RVP, West Coast, Mike McLaughlin expand on why and how Digital Remedy helps advertisers converge their linear and CTV strategy.
Ready to take your TV campaigns to the next level? Speak with a member of our team to learn more.
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.
Are you looking for the next frontier in performance marketing? Now you can drive sales, subscriptions, and leads with CTV advertising and access a full analytics suite through Digital Remedy.
If you’re a marketer, you’re probably juggling a million tasks, and learning how to use a complicated tool isn’t one of them. Our performance CTV solution allows advertisers to plan, buy, measure, and optimize CTV campaigns in a user-friendly self-service platform.
We’re changing how marketers manage their CTV campaigns. Digital Remedy allows advertisers of all sizes to build campaigns in under five minutes and track all the real-world actions those campaigns drove, all in a single platform.
Access your campaign management screen to see everything in one place. Providing a deeper dive into performance, your custom dashboard allows you to track every conversion event at the most granular level. See how each publisher, creative, device, geo, or audience is delivering or track performance over time.
Want to get even more detail? Check out the distribution tab to see what’s driving those actions by geography or even by channel, We offer always-on incrementality analysis, where we can tell you exactly how much more likely someone is to take an action if they’re exposed to your CTV campaign. Easily export in a PDF and focus on what matters—the performance.
Interested in learning more? Speak to a team member! Be sure to follow Digital Remedy on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram for the latest updates.
A movement of possibility for CTV/OTT advertisers is coming, and it’s hitting full force in 2023.
Whether you’re just making the jump to CTV or looking to improve your overall campaign performance, a new year on the books marks new ways of winning over your audience.
To the average TV fanatic, the shift from linear programming to digital streaming won’t be making any groundbreaking headlines in 2023. For over a decade, CTV has consistently created waves in the steady stream of modern media, redefining how, when, and where we tune into this week’s top-charting shows and films.
As the number of cord-cutters surges, digital marketers are just now taking the hint. Getting an ad placed during Amazon’s Thursday Night Football carries a lot more weight than a strategy sealed off to the age of OTT.
In 2023 alone, CTV ad spending is expected to reach $26b—up $5b from the past year.
Between Disney+ and Netflix’s move to ad-supported streaming in late 2022, there have never been so many opportunities to get your ads seen and your brand known. But as any digital marketer knows, no advertising strategy wins the deal unless it’s agile to emerging trends in the industry.
Since the dawn of marketing, creativity has been the saving grace for advertisers trying to cut through the clutter of a noisy media landscape. With the average consumer’s attention span resting at just eight seconds, the performance of an ad has everything to do with how well it resonates with its viewers.
While Prime Video, Paramount+, and Netflix pool more and more eager marketers to CTV, an innovative ad-buying strategy is no longer optional for brands who want to see real results with their campaigns. To stand out from the rising competition, marketing moguls are embracing creativity not just within their messaging but also in the types of ads they choose to purchase.
Interactive ads, in particular, have seen considerable success as they’ve been adopted into performance TV strategies. According to data from Innovid, interactive ads boast a 3.5% higher engagement rate and capture audience attention for 85 seconds longer than traditional streaming ads.
There are many different ways to have your audience interact with your brand beyond the dreaded blank stare at the screen. In recent years, some of the most popular trends that have taken hold of the industry include:
Unlike standard TV, CTV ad buying is flipping the script on the traditional passive user experience. Forbes sums up this emerging trend perfectly: The more engaging the advertising, the longer the viewer’s impact—and the higher the chance that your brand remains top-of-mind when it matters most.
As streaming TV advertising becomes more competitive and expensive, marketers need to measure the success of their campaigns to maximize their ROI. Luckily, programmatic ad platforms offer a boatload of data on the status of CTV campaigns, from top-of-the-funnel metrics down to conversions by the number.
Historically, some of the most common metrics tracked in performance TV advertising have been those that sit at the top of the marketing funnel. Whether it’s the cost per completed view or the number of households reached, measuring CTV performance has largely remained geared towards metrics that move the needle on brand awareness.
Looking into 2023, performance advertisers are now leveraging metrics with a more telling focus: consumer behavior after viewing an ad. As the ring bearer in the marriage between TV and the Internet, CTV can track lower-funnel metrics untouched by linear programming, such as:
These lower-funnel performance metrics allow marketers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns in terms of customer acquisition, engagement, and retention. That way, you can track how much you’re spending to acquire views, what your return on ad spend is, and the lifetime value of your customers.
It’s a digital marketing no-brainer: To meet your target audience where they are, you need to understand them first.
From paid search to OTT, consumer data such as demographics and contact information has long been used to create a more informed and intuitive campaign. But where advertisers have previously relied on second and third-party data to obtain their insights comes a new industry standard—first-party data.
Within any marketing medium, first-party data is data that you collect from your audience without any middleman. It’s the most reliable, credible, and trustworthy data you can gather because it’s overseen entirely by you. And because it’s proprietary to you, your competition won’t get the chance to create personalized campaigns based on your findings.
Some of the most common ways first-party data is collected include:
With privacy policy changes raining down on the advertising industry, it’s never been more important for marketers to gain their information from a consenting audience. Even Google plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by 2024 to better protect its searchers from invasive data collectors looking to make big bucks.
As the ad tech industry moves toward data obtained on the inside, marketers now have increased opportunities to get to know their audience and establish more trustworthy relationships first-hand.
With more OTT platforms rushing to adopt ad-supported tiers, more options are being unveiled for advertisers looking to make their way to the big screen. But despite this influx in opportunity, advertisers worldwide are picking up on the idea that not all inventory is created equal.
CTV/OTT inventory is professionally developed and curated content that couples broadcast TV quality with full-screen creative ads. When it’s considered premium, it’s just that—premium-grade, professional content designed to reach the right audience at scale.
Because streaming TV has risen to the title of one of the world’s largest markets, a fragmented landscape has left room for greater brand safety risks. Brand owners can no longer afford to put their full trust in open exchanges since their ads can run almost anywhere, risking heavy blows to their reputation and financial status.
To combat ad fraud, more marketers are working with CTV advertising partners that leverage premium inventory. When you launch your campaigns through a trustworthy provider, you can ensure that your ads are being run in brand-safe content, protecting your efforts from unwittingly doing more harm than good.
In the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape, it is vital to have a strategic media planning partner on your side to ensure success in your campaigns.
At Digital Remedy, we provide comprehensive digital media solutions to help you navigate the complexities of today’s rapidly-changing CTV environment. We combine our extensive industry knowledge and expertise with cutting-edge programmatic ad platforms to create custom digital strategies and powerful campaigns that drive results.
Whether looking for a turnkey solution or more hands-on guidance, Digital Remedy has the experience and resources to help you achieve your unique goals.
Reach out to us today to learn more about how we help you stand out from your competition.
The ad tech industry is an ever-changing, increasingly-competitive, fragmented space, full of acronyms, complex tools, ad networks, and lots of data. With the ever-changing nature of the industry, it’s important to remain one step ahead.
2022 brought a lot of growth to the ad tech space, showing no signs of slowing down heading into the new year. The ongoing digitization trend and the rise in spending to improve workflow and productivity of employees is expected to fuel the market growth in the coming years.
The increasing investments into the flourishing advertising industry are further expected to influence the market demand.1 While 2023 will bring even more growth, advertisers will be looking for more capabilities around measurement and optimization and ROI generation.
Looking back at the industry this past year, advertising revenue grew by 6.5%.2 Despite the economic downturn, large ad spend declines were limited to certain markets and are not reflective of the overall industry’s health. It seems that through 2022, large advertisers are still growing revenue, unemployment remains low, new business opportunities remain steady and digital media is still growing.
As we head into 2023, a notable trend emerging is the forecasted growth of connected TV—which should see double-digit increases next year and account for one-third of total TV spend by 2027,2 as it continues to steal dollars previously allocated to linear investments. TV advertising as a whole will grow by 1 to 3%2 over the next five years, reflecting how much certain traditional investments pull down the category as a whole.
With ad spend predicted to have positive growth, it’s vital to make sure your ad dollars are being allocated correctly. Working with an experienced media partner to optimize and measure ad performance in real time should be an investment brands are willing to make going into 2023.
What should advertisers and agencies expect in 2023? Here are some predictions from the Digital Remedy Team:
As streaming continues to grow in popularity, so too has “subscription fatigue,” the sense of being overwhelmed by the amount of content available. Audience media consumption will continue to shift, which will not only be a challenge in the CTV space next year as consumers rotate through streaming services but also across all media platforms. Due to this shift, brands need to be agile with their strategies, which should be powered by data such as audience insights and campaign performance.
Data is at the heart of the business, and advertisers and agencies that are not leveraging it will be at a disadvantage. OTT platforms have access to owned audience data on what is being watched within their networks, as well as when and how they’re watching. And while there’s a lot of room for more detailed audience insights, the data they have now can allow streaming platforms to utilize data-powered content strategies that are more likely to resonate well with audiences.3
The rise of ad-supported streaming on CTV is an opportunity to deliver real, measurable outcomes and will continue to become a focus for marketers in 2023. Streaming giants such as Netflix have announced ad-supported subscription tiers with favorable pricing in exchange for advertising within content. This year, ad-supported streaming will generate $19.1b and by 2024,2 marketers will spend $29.5b on CTV advertising. With all of the new inventory, the streaming space is becoming increasingly competitive. Advertisers have more ways to reach consumers than ever before, leveraging targeting and performance reporting is key to ensuring ad dollars are being utilized.
While brand awareness is critical, many marketers focus on driving (and measuring) bottom-funnel actions, such as website visits, in-store visits, and purchases. Improvements in measurement for upper-funnel media are coming fast and furious. These improvements are showing that lower-funnel media can have branding impacts, and upper-funnel media can have performance impacts that will be highlighted heading into 2023.
For more on Performance TV, check out our report.
CTV has been increasing in popularity with advertisers, but with the economic downturn, advertisers will focus on channel diversification in 2023 and follow their target audiences more closely wherever they’re watching. Consumers today are using many different screens and devices for streaming media, and advertisers need to make sure they are keeping this in mind. Running cross-channel campaigns can create touch points throughout the customer journey that will keep their brand top of mind.
A successful performance CTV strategy has a lot of moving parts. Utilizing real-time measurement to drive decisions and focus media budgets on the highest-performing channels will be a key CTV strategy to pull into 2023. To be effective, marketers must meet audience expectations for personalization, which means taking a dynamic and agile approach with targeting and execution.
Contextual targeting, which enables marketers to target users online based on contextual signals rather than third-party data, offers far more privacy for individual web users, and this is critical as we move towards a world without cookies. This means targeting the right user at the right time on the right channel with a personalized contextual message—without third-party data tracking.
First-party data infrastructure will be crucial for effective brand advertising. We see this marketing trend continuing, helping advertisers provide targeted experiences to key consumers through audience segmentation and smart audience management with the help of technologies.4
For more on the privacy-focused future of advertising, check out our talk.
With the goal of optimizing ad spending for ROI, marketers want to save time and money to ensure efficiency. That being said, many differing situations require varying needs when it comes to advertising platforms. Self-service platforms enable advertisers full control, where transparency is right at the tip of their fingers. When advertisers have the freedom to book their own campaigns, not only do they get an intimate, full-control experience, they also have the “natural” space to trial different aspects and elements within their campaign process. This includes budget, targeting, and creative adjustments.
For more on our self-service OTT platform, speak to a member of our team.
Backed by over 20 years of experience in the ad space, Digital Remedy is a leading digital media partner for advertisers looking to maximize their advertising efforts. We provide unique targeting tactics to extend reach beyond linear, connecting with the right audience, in the right mindset, as well as granular attribution and reporting to understand the true impact of every variable within your campaign.
Digital Remedy offers performance-focused solutions, where brands gain access to a sophisticated reporting dashboard to monitor their campaigns on multiple channels, and real-time insights to optimize towards the KPIs that matter most. In addition to optimization, and granular, transparent bottom-funnel reporting, Digital Remedy provides a new standard in tracking, transparency, and results that will maximize your marketing efforts and optimize your 2023 ad budget.
Ready to turn these trends into actionable concepts for your 2023 media plan? Speak to a member of our team.
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TV viewership has dramatically changed. With declining linear TV audiences, and an industry shifting its focus towards Over-The-Top (OTT) and Connected TV (CTV) streaming services, advertisers are reallocating budgets to dive into this growing platform. Not only are more people using CTV, but time spent with this medium is also increasing. There have never been more options for what to watch and how to watch it.
Non-pay TV viewers will soon outnumber pay TV viewers. By 2024, 123.8m people will view pay TV, versus 143.6m who will have cut the cord, instead streaming content and watching live TV on distributors like Hulu + Live TV and YouTube TV. These shifts in viewership are opening up different ways for advertisers to target and reach TV watchers.
In this blog, we’ll cover everything advertisers need to know about YouTube TV (if you’re a viewer looking for more info on YouTube TV, go here) and how to leverage YouTube TV ads through Digital Remedy as part of your OTT mix.
We’ve all heard of YouTube, but what is YouTube TV? First launched in April 2017, YouTube TV is a subscription streaming service—known to advertisers as a vMPVD (Virtual Multi-Platform Video Distributor)—that provides an alternative to traditional cable. Available nationwide, YouTube TV lets subscribers watch live TV from 100+ broadcast, cable, and regional sports networks (in English and Spanish), in addition to video-on-demand (VOD) shows, YouTube Originals, and trending YouTube videos. Subscribers can upgrade their viewing experience with premium networks, sports, Spanish, and 4K plus add-ons for an additional monthly cost.
As of July 2022, YouTube TV has more than 5m accounts — making it the U.S.’s biggest internet-based pay TV service. In addition, it’s the fifth-biggest U.S. pay-TV service (after Comcast Xfinity, Charter Spectrum, DirecTV, and Dish).
YouTube TV service currently does not have an ad-free version, so all subscribers see ads. YouTube TV advertising is a form of OTT (over-the-top) advertising. OTT advertising is delivered directly to viewers over the internet through streaming video services or devices. With YouTube TV, advertisers can tap into one of the most premium CTV inventories to reach target audiences at scale, with robust data, optimization, and transparent reporting.
Not everyone who watches YouTube on their TV is a subscriber of “YouTube TV.” The YouTube app is already baked into or available for free download across many Smart TVs and streaming devices. The YouTube app enables viewers to watch all their favorite content on the largest screen in their house at no cost, while “YouTube TV” requires a paid subscription.
YouTube TV currently supports two types of ads:
This platform’s most significant advantage over cable TV is its Artificial Intelligence, which recommends content depending on the user’s preferences. Through advanced targeting, users can easily be targeted by:
Topic targeting lets brands reach people interested in content related to their products and services, whether travel, food, music, or something else. Topic targeting applies to non-skippable in-stream ads, and bumper ads served on YouTube TV.
With YouTube TV, ads can show up in a few different places:
This allows ads to be placed in relevant slots for target consumers as they already engage with the YouTube environment.
YouTube TV has become a valuable channel for advertisers looking to connect with the right audience at the right time and boost awareness among new consumers. YouTube TV advertising:
For more information, check out our Why YouTube TV video.
With YouTube TV, Digital Remedy offers advertisers and agencies of all sizes the ability to play within the walled garden and get the most out of their streaming campaigns. To learn how to get started, speak to a team member today.
In March 2021, Amazon secured a 10-year deal with the NFL to exclusively broadcast 15 Thursday Night Football games and one pre-season game every year on their streaming service Prime Video and live streaming service Twitch—a moment of success parallel to lifting the Lombardi Trophy.
According to AdAge, Amazon expects around 12.5m people across the U.S. to tune in every Thursday night.
This deal is the NFL’s first partnership with an all-digital platform—marking a historical change in television media buying advertising.
After calling Fox home for the last four years, Thursday Night Football is set to bring a revolution in the sports streaming sector. This change may take some adjusting for an audience spanning multiple demographics and age groups who have already put in a lifetime of viewing America’s games.
But for Jeff Bezos’ e-commerce giant, this switch to streaming offers an advertising and sales business model never seen before.
With this deal, Amazon now offers advertisers a trifecta of benefits with the ability to reach a wide audience with quality and measurement capabilities no other platform can offer. According to Nielsen, the NFL drew 17.1m sets of eyes on average for each regular season game in 2021. This number of viewers will allow Amazon to fill in existing gaps in their advertising portfolio that still rely heavily on targeting customers in the moments right before purchasing.
Amazon will now be able to provide advertisers with purchasing metrics on behavioral information and sales at crucial television viewing moments. For example, Amazon can now offer NFL partner Gillette valuable information about the number of products they sell on the Amazon store when Gillette ads are played during Thursday Night Football.
This type of access to detailed metrics is one of the many reasons why sports leagues across the globe are trending toward streaming platforms.
Between Prime Video, Peacock, ESPN+, Apple TV, and Paramount+—the battle for sports streaming rights rages on like The Greatest Game Ever Played. But this clash is handled in boardrooms instead of being fought in an icy Yankee Stadium.
While streaming’s business model was once the antithesis of live viewing, these global media giants are now poised to take over the live sports space in the coming years.
Streaming platforms are buying national sports leagues’ broadcast rights faster than initially imagined, and the amount they are willing to spend seems like an afterthought. In 2021, NBCU’s Peacock bought the exclusive rights to broadcast the WWE on their platform across the U.S. for $1b.
Apple paid $2.5b for a global partnership, with the MLS giving them the exclusive rights to broadcast every single MLS game on their streaming network.
Additionally, the NBA’s television contract with Disney and Turner Sports is set to expire during the 2024-25 season—leaving another opportunity for streamers right around the corner. In fact, Amazon has long been cited as a potential bidder—and every week it defies expectations with TNF, that theory becomes more of a reality.
Along with Amazon’s new deal with the NFL, they have also signed a three-year contract with Nielsen to measure their audiences across Twitch and Prime Video during their stream of Thursday Night Football.
This allows Amazon to provide advertisers with the same data sets Nielsen uses for other league broadcasts—making the comparison for potential ad buyers much simpler. In addition to these metrics, advertisers will also have access to data from Amazon’s self-produced metrics that give insight into engagement, brand awareness, and sales.
By offering a combination of metrics, Amazon provides an elevated form of digital media buying that traditional media may soon be unable to compete with.
According to Yahoo Entertainment, Amazon’s new streaming deal with the NFL is all about collecting ad data. As part of their new agreement with the NFL, it’s reported that Amazon gets to sell two minutes of ads per hour. The ads are non-skippable and use a full-screen format. Amazon has already sold ad packages that cost $2.8m. As of now, it is still being determined how many minutes of ad space are included in each package.
But with this price tag comes Amazon’s ability to track sales data—allowing advertisers to know how many people purchased or looked up their product on Amazon after their ad aired.
With an audience as in tune with what they are watching as sports viewers, this kind of targeting offers excellent value.
In streaming or television marketing, there are few greater audiences than sports viewers. When you purchase advertising space during sporting events, you are providing consistent exposure to your product over a 2-4 hour period to an audience genuinely captivated by what they are watching.
Additionally, sports accounts for 34% of all viewing by adults between 18-49, according to ADU.
With such a high number of people watching attentively every week, advertisers can’t afford not to include sports marketing in their media buying plan.
According to Nielsen data, Amazon’s Thursday Night Football opener brought in 13m viewers on Prime Video and an additional 2.3m viewers on Twitch. That’s a whole lot of people that media planners can reach with their advertisements, especially because streaming offers more flexible viewing opportunities than traditional media. Prime Video gives NFL fans the ability to watch games from anywhere and everywhere on their smartphone—allowing advertisers to reach a larger and more diverse audience.
Since 2012, cable providers have lost 25m subscribers, according to Zippia. And with the NFL routinely dominating ratings—there have been 15.355m viewers in week one of the 2022 season alone. The ability to market to cord-cutting NFL fans on Prime Video is an advantage you can’t do without in your media plan.
Like most CTV platforms, Prime Video gives advertisers access to in-depth analyses of audience behaviors. From what products they have on their Amazon Watchlist to what shows they recently watched on Prime Video, Thursday Night Football on Amazon gives advertisers unique insights they can use in their media planning strategy and leverage in future marketing decisions.
For example, recent data from Amazon Ads shows that Thursday Night Football viewers were interested in product categories such as home improvement, sport-related merchandise, toys, groceries, and pet products. Amazon Ads data also showed that their audience is 55% male, with 25% percent of viewers being between 25-54 years old.
Access to this level of information allows advertisers to create targeted ads that reach and resonate with valuable audiences, especially ones that are difficult to reach otherwise.
Prime Video allows advertisers to track sales data in new ways—giving them access to in-the-moment buying habits. By tracking viewers’ sales data, advertisers have the opportunity to market to them for specific products they know they are interested in—ultimately driving more desired outcomes among key consumers.
At Digital Remedy, our team of digital advertising experts is committed to media buying excellence and unparalleled client service. We offer fully managed service, including a seamless media process to deliver operational efficiencies, access to premium inventory sources, and a closed loop, full-funnel attribution solution—eliminating the stress of managing the complex elements of media buying and planning.
Our Flip platform can help you to buy, manage, optimize, and measure your OTT campaigns—whether for Thursday Night Football or the latest Hulu original series.
Through our strategic partnership with Amazon, Digital Remedy allows advertisers and agencies to:
For the latest updates regarding our media offerings and partnerships, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Now is the perfect time to be one of the early adopters of this largely untapped advertising platform. Take your OTT campaigns to the next level with Digital Remedy.
Contact a member of our team to learn more.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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 Sales, TJ 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+.
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.
