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.
With the lines between branding and performance marketing blurring, the days of archaic, one-size-fits-all ad campaigns are over.
Creating an OTT/CTV performance campaign that works and works well relies on a number of things, but what trumps the list in 2023 may be more holistic than what we’ve seen in past years.
To ensure your connected TV advertising efforts are optimized for success, you need to know what makes an effective performance marketing strategy aligned with today’s best practices.
When starting a connected TV campaign, marketers face a choice: Is this a branding or a performance campaign? Not that the two are wholly mutually exclusive—a branding campaign will have a performance impact and vice versa—but the choice between the two will determine the primary campaign objective.
With a branding campaign, your main goal is to build brand equity—establishing your value proposition regarding your reputation, values, quality of offerings, and trustworthiness, all in the minds of your customers. This type of marketing is mainly used to raise awareness about your overall brand, or it can be an effective way to generate hype on the product level, particularly when it comes to a new launch.
These campaigns involve slow-burning strategies, and their return on investment may not occur immediately—rather, taking weeks, months, or even years to witness real results. Along the way, however, you can track KPIs to measure how well your brand is resonating with your audience with metrics like engagement and interaction.
On the flip side, performance marketing aims to improve brand performance and impact real-world outcomes like sales, leads, or site traffic. Digital marketers who choose this type of media planning strategy have high hopes of guiding their audiences through the marketing funnel all the way to conversion. Performance marketing implies 2 key facets:
With high-volume lead generation and quick, easily trackable ROI, performance marketing is favorable for immediate results or when budgets are tighter, where every out dollar must correspond to an equal or greater amount in. Powered by personalized messaging, clear calls to action, and compelling ad ideas, these campaigns encourage viewers to respond directly to the ads in ways that drive bottom-funnel KPIs.
Traditionally, branding and performance have existed as two completely separate disciplines: Branding as a long-term strategy; performance as a short-term one. Branding to drive perception; performance to drive demand. Branding as a trust builder; performance as a sales pitch.
The list goes on.
Fortunately, the gap between brand and direct response marketing is starting to close, and advertisers are no longer left scrambling to pick a side of the coin.
Measurements for what were once considered upper-funnel media channels are starting to improve, highlighting what many advertisers may have missed all along: Lower-funnel media can impact branding, and upper-funnel media can impact performance.
Brands are now paying equal attention to how they tell their story and the ways they target and measure their true impact.
Bridging the gap no longer entails a drastic shift in mindset—there’s an art and science to both that can never fully merge. But a clear alignment of the two will bring about a holistic, granular understanding of the effects of your cumulative investment, considering the nuances of every stage of the buyer’s journey.
When marketers combine the data, technology, and benefits of the two once-opposite disciplines, they can craft strategies with both long-term brand awareness and measurable outcomes.
Savvy marketers know that bringing an ad idea to life isn’t just about the desired outcome—it’s also about the right creative. With the average person seeing an estimated 6,000-10,000 ads a day, cutting through the clutter is no easy feat unless your ads are made to be remembered.
Whereas linear TV was once the traditional branding channel, recent advancements in ad tech have brought newer, more innovative opportunities to deliver an incredibly engaging audience experience.
OTT/CTV, in particular, offers the high-impact brand storytelling power of traditional TV coupled with the targeting, analytics, and interactivity of digital. These capabilities create a compelling environment for audiences to interact with messaging alongside premium content, helping to drive conversion rates.
When launching a creative strategy that works for your brand and advertising goals, it’s important to segment your marketing channels by funnel level and different messaging strategies based on customer touch points. You’ll need to plan to allocate your spending based on:
The right creative strategies look different for every marketer, and they aren’t built overnight. But with knowledge of the industry’s best practices, you can ensure your strategy is up to code, speed, and the standards of your target audience.
A performance marketing strategy that combines the best of both worlds—branding and direct response—can be a shot in the dark if not executed correctly. To avoid blindly firing into the abyss, you need to cultivate an expert media buying strategy that hits the target without misses.
Some of the industry’s best practices to keep in mind as you navigate a multi-dimensional performance marketing strategy include:
Discover how incrementality analysis helped our QSR client determine which creative messaging drove the highest incremental lift. From these insights, the client shot additional video spots that aligned with the high-performing messaging.
Performance means different things to different marketers (and has traditionally been associated with direct response). At Digital Remedy, we believe in having a solid base for delivering performance, no matter the KPIs (upper- or lower-funnel)—meaning more outcomes and more ROI for our clients.
We’ve spent 22+ years building and evolving the best performance solutions in the market—while providing a new standard in tracking, transparency, and results via comprehensive attribution insights.
Performance is at our core. Our omnichannel performance branding solutions enable advertisers and agencies to effectively activate, measure, and draw insights across the right channel to drive a stronger impact and performance outcomes.
We recognize the importance of understanding the complete consumer journey so that no marketing funnel stage is ever optimized in isolation. Your consumers’ attitudes and behaviors are bound to change—meet them where they are with a flexible, agile approach and platforms that evaluate your most effective journey to purchase.
Speak with a member of our team to learn more about how we can help you maximize your OTT/CTV performance strategy today.
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.
What experts consider “modern advertising” can be traced back to 17th-century London, where advancements in printing press technology led to immensely popular weekly newspapers that carried advertisements.
Since then, advertising—and the technology that acts as its catalyst—has been in constant evolution.
From print and radio to linear TV and OTT streaming, the ad tech atmosphere has been continuously reimagined and revamped since its early European days.
In the 2020s, advertising technology (ad tech) is set to take another leap as advancements in digital media continue to surge.
Projected to reach $42088.3m by 2027, the market for ad tech is reaching new heights, and with higher peaks comes new industry standards for digital ad buying. For the digital marketer, there have never been so many ways to connect with the right audience in the right place—at the right time.
The ad tech space is vast, increasingly competitive, and constantly changing. If you work at a digital media buying agency, it’s essential that you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and track shifts in consumer preferences (including buying behavior and media consumption habits) to help inform future marketing decisions.
Here’s a look at what to expect in the upcoming year.
CTV ad spending is projected to grow by 14.4% in 2023, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported in their 2023 Outlook Survey. This trend is paralleled by the decrease in traditional television subscriptions, as streaming services surpassed cable in market share for the first time ever in July 2022.
Along with this growth, some digital marketers expect CTV to evolve in other ways as well. For instance, ads featuring interactive QR codes are set to become more and more prevalent. This user-friendly adaptation will allow potential customers to interact more easily with a brand on their phones versus a clunky smart TV remote.
Podcasts mix the high-level content of radio with the targeting and data capabilities of digital ads—making them one of the key stars of future advertising technology. As of November 2022, there are 383.7m global podcast listeners, and that number is expected to increase to 424m by the end of the year, Demand Sage reports.
With their widespread popularity—especially among younger audiences—and their ability to deliver trusted messaging, everyone from Microsoft to politicians is using their digital ad-buying power on podcasts.
Podcast advertising’s ascension is showing no signs of slowing down, with podcast ad spending expected to grow another 8% in 2023.
With 5.11b unique mobile users across the globe and the average user spending 3.5 hours a day on their mobile device, it’s no wonder more and more brands are creating campaigns specifically for mobile.
Users can do almost anything from their mobile devices, and increasingly busy lives mean less time spent scrolling on laptops. Even while binge-watching TV, viewers are often multi-tasking on their mobile devices — whether by scrolling on social media or scouring the Web for the latest holiday deals.
As mobile traffic for grocery shopping, paying bills, and making doctor appointments continues to rise, digital marketing campaigns will follow suit. And with the uptick in user multi-tasking, it’s never been more important to hold a target audience’s attention with multi-channel campaigns that leverage mobile’s ever-evolving potential.
Interactive ads give shoppers a say in how they consume advertisements and purchase products. While CTV campaigns that allow consumers to interact with advertisements have become common, interactive audio ads have had yet to flourish—until now.
The rise in popularity of Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and other smart speakers has given way to more and more brands diving into the interactive audio landscape.
Interactive audio ads allow listeners to verbally reply to ads that interest them without pausing their streaming audio—bringing in a new age of hands-free engagement. For example, say a potential consumer is listening to a podcast on their Amazon Alexa, and an interactive audio ad for Dove Soap plays; that consumer can reply to the ad by asking Alexa to add the product to their Amazon cart.
While interactive audio ads might not be commonplace just yet, their potential can be seen from miles away.
According to Xenoss, the in-game advertising market is set to grow from $7.6b in 2022 to $17.6b in 2030. This growth is partially due to the fact that the Interactive Advertising Bureau has updated its guidelines for intrinsic in-game advertising for the first time since 2009.
This update has led to many major brands dipping their toes into the in-game advertising waters. For example, Microsoft is building an ad platform that will allow brands to advertise on free-to-play Xbox games, Business Insider reports.
Sony’s PlayStation and Amazon’s Twitch also plan on building their own platforms for in-game advertising. These new advertising platforms, along with gaming franchises like Fortnite participating in in-game sponsorships, are creating the next wave of business advertising ideas.
As important as it is to stay up-to-date with digital trends, it’s even more essential to work with a media partner that specializes in diversified digital ad strategies and offers innovative technology to maximize your campaign impact.
Digital Remedy offers agencies a full-fledged digital arm powered by our tech-enabled platform solutions developed around their biggest pain points—from strategic buying and planning through execution, real-time optimization, and transparent reporting within a live dashboard. Digital Remedy’s performance-driven solutions, AdReady and Flip, allow digital marketers to centralize every aspect of the media management process—creating optimized campaigns with trackable metrics that show real results.
To discover how Digital Remedy helps advertisers and agencies of all sizes navigate the ever-changing digital ad space, speak to a member of our team.
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.
The reliable benefits of traditional linear TV marketing and the precise targeting capabilities of Connected TV (CTV) advertising are both critical strategies for performance marketers looking to stay competitive. Whether they’re tackled separately to target granular audiences or unified to empower cross-channel performance, knowing the pros and cons of each is critical to any digital TV campaign.
CTV is the medium through which Performance CTV advertising is accomplished. It’s the connecting device that allows marketers to deliver and report on their performance marketing campaigns. CTV is also a form of OTT, the online video/TV content delivery method that typically serves through on-demand, “over the top” streaming on traditional television providers.
CTV devices include:
Television is evolving, and connected devices are transforming the way we watch TV—over 70% of the U.S. population will own and use a CTV device by 2028. CTV ads combine the high-impact brand storytelling of traditional TV with the targeting and analytics capabilities of traditional digital marketing channels. Reaching users through streaming and smart TV devices is a digital advertising opportunity marketers simply can’t afford to miss.
CTV advertising is on the rise. Connected TV advertising ad spend is predicted to grow up to 42.4 billion dollars by 2027. This increase in CTV ad spending can be attributed to the many advantages of advertising on internet connected devices, including:
In recent years, CTV has become a successful performance marketing channel thanks to its ability to engage users, serve interactive ad formats, and effectively measure campaign performance in real-time.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) can vary depending on your CTV marketing strategy. Performance CTV gives marketers the ability to deliver targeted messaging to TV audiences and measure lower-funnel metrics—attributing the results of their campaigns—such as:
Growth-focused advertisers benefit most from Performance CTV because it gives them freedom and more capabilities in their marketing campaigns. While it might come as a surprise to some, customers also benefit from CTV. Being shown ads specifically marketed to their interests makes it easier for customers to purchase products or services that are useful to them instead of sitting through ads they don’t care about.
CTV advertising is backed by success. According to Insider Intelligence, CTV ad spending is expected to reach $43.59 billion by 2026. If the money spent indicates the platform’s success, then this return on ad spend is proof it’s thriving. According to a study by The Trade Desk, 87% of marketers believe that CTV advertising is at least as effective, if not more effective, than traditional TV advertising.
The crucial difference between CTV advertising and linear tv advertising is that traditional TV is programmed, watched, and scheduled through cable or satellite, while the internet powers CTV. This connection enables Performance CTV to measure and target audiences through any performance channel.
Traditional TV marketing sometimes feels like a shot in the dark for advertisers—there’s no definitive way to measure results, leaving marketers to rely on broad reach, frequency measures, and post-campaign lift studies.
Another key difference is that a scheduled show lineup often predetermines traditional TV program viewing—whereas Performance CTV allows users to pick and choose what shows they want to watch, when, and where. This helps advertisers know when and where to deliver ads. CTV allows marketers the flexibility of delivering ads that are catered to specific user buying behavior and sensibilities. Visibility is key!
Performance CTV advertising is designed to deliver measurable results and allows marketers to serve targeted ads to viewers who stream video content via internet connection on CTV (connected TV) or other streaming devices.
In years past, it was nearly impossible to measure the performance of television ads in relation to their target audience, but with CTV, advertisers can push TV ad buying into the future by tracking campaign conversions in real-time.
Performance CTV advertising combines the creative punch of traditional television advertising with the in-depth analysis and measurement of digital marketing. Take this example of a successful Performance CTV campaign: Amazon’s ten year deal with the NFL that permits their streaming platform to broadcast Thursday Night Football exclusively.
Amazon’s video platform Prime allows brands to see directly how their advertisements impact buyer habits in the Amazon store. For example, when an Old Spice commercial plays during Thursday Night Football, Amazon can tell Old Spice how many people saw their ad, the exact demographics of viewership, and how many people searched for Old Spice products in the Amazon store after the commercial aired.
Not every CTV-enabled platform has its own massive online shopping platform as well—but taking advantage of the digital reach of CTV no matter what the platform has clear advantages when it comes to user insights. Learning how creative campaigns perform and impact audience engagement across digital channels is invaluable data for any performance marketer looking for cohesive campaign strategy.
Why not both? Combining the power of traditional linear tv ads with robust CTV strategy is the future of performance marketing. Leveraging both methods allows advertisers to definitively track campaign conversions and then optimize those campaigns towards the channels driving engagement.
Performance TV is a powerful advertising strategy—especially when leveraged alongside other digital marketing tools. Digital Remedy works closely with growth-focused marketers to leverage performance TV to effectively drive real-world results and maximize ad spend/campaign performance.
Our digital marketing platforms centralize each aspect of the media management and activation process, allowing you to easily track your metrics. With full-service account management and support, you can expertly increase your audience scale with ease: connecting your brand messaging to the right audiences with relevant content at just the right time. Get in touch with a Digital Remedy team member and learn more 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.
As the weather gets colder, holiday digital marketing campaigns are just heating up. For digital marketers and the businesses they serve, the holiday season is the most profitable time of year.
According to RIS news, annual holiday retail sales will increase between 4% and 6% during the 2022 holiday season, with sales projected to total between $1.45t and $1.47t.
As a digital marketer, it’s your job to get customers to add your products to their holiday wishlist—so that you get a share of these profits.
But contrary to popular belief, you don’t need millions of dollars to run a successful holiday campaign.
Equipped with research on 2022 holiday shopping trends and insights, you can beat economic challenges this season and optimize your holiday media buying strategy.
As shoppers expect inflation to continue through the holidays, saving money on purchases is top of mind for many. This, along with ongoing supply chain issues, has led to consumers buying early and spending less.
These unideal buying circumstances will lead to consumers looking to take advantage of early deals—like Cyber Month and Black Friday—in efforts to avoid last-minute inconveniences such as shipping costs and scarcity of goods.
For these reasons, you should roll out your client’s unique selling propositions and promotions earlier than ever before.
In the age of Amazon and eBay, most might assume online shopping is dwarfing retail, but in the last few years since the pandemic, this hasn’t been the case.
After 2020, when people were confined to their homes and relied on online holiday shopping, consumers are now eager to get out and get deals in person.
Still, both forms of shopping will be highly profitable this holiday season—with potential online discounts and sales playing a significant role in what form of buying consumers choose.
2022 is the first time Amazon held Prime Day twice in one year. An annual discount event launched in 2015, Prime Day gives Amazon customers a 48-hour window to take advantage of thousands of sales on their website.
Experts believe these convenient online deals will continue to stimulate the e-commerce market and heavily influence buying habits.
Even with all the benefits online shopping offers, brick-and-mortar stores will still account for a significant percentage of holiday sales. One of the main reasons is that consumers are worried that supply chain issues will cause their online orders not to arrive in time for the holidays.
Our 2022 Holiday Season Trends & Insights report shows that omni-screen consumers create unique opportunities for connected TV campaigns, with a third of customers saying they shop online while watching TV.
Combine this with the more than 80% of 25-54-year-olds that are CTV users, and you can see why knowledgeable digital marketers are using CTV campaigns to reach their target audiences this holiday season.
With worries about supply chain issues causing buyers to make purchasing decisions earlier than in years past, it’s essential to formulate your campaign strategy early and test it months in advance.
It’s also recommended to launch a pre-holiday brand awareness campaign to ensure your audience is familiar with your product before it’s even time to make purchases. This will allow you to get a head start on your competition and see which media channels your target audience responds best to.
Consumers are on the hunt to save wherever they can, whether that’s on shipping costs or product price points.
Limited-time offers—especially online and in CTV campaigns–compel consumers to purchase early because they create a sense of urgency.
This sense of urgency, combined with an increased interest in saving, creates an opportunity for you to increase sales revenue and boost your brand awareness.
Pro tip: Keep your offer simple and easily accessible. If consumers have to go through a multi-step process to secure your offer, they are less likely to convert.
For example, offering your promotion through a QR code in a connected TV commercial is a great way to promote your holiday deal, especially among audiences who are watching with phones in hand. With performance OTT platforms, your KPIs are also extremely trackable—helping to make your campaign flexible throughout the holidays and ensure your ad dollars are being spent most effectively.
When done correctly, your holiday marketing campaign can have benefits that last long after the snow melts away.
If you design a successful advertising campaign, you will gain new customers who are familiar with your buying experience.
According to Digital Marketing Community, these customers you retain will have even more value in the following year’s holiday campaign. Their familiarity will make them even more inclined to convert on other offers.
As a digital marketer, your holiday season may often feel like a stressful run-around—with late nights spent tracking campaign performance and retargeting to ensure you see results—but you deserve a gift just like everyone else.
Digital Remedy offers a full suite of ad solutions that can provide you with advanced targeting capabilities and comprehensive performance reporting. Specific capabilities our platforms offer include:
Digital Remedy’s solutions can be your Swiss Army Knife this holiday season—helping your agency or brand to navigate the ever-shifting advertising trends.
Speak with a member of our team to learn more about the capabilities our platforms offer.
