Connected TV: Three Things Marketers Need to Know
Image source: Photocreo Bednarek.
As the television ecosystem continues to explode in complexity and viewer choice, here are three ways advertisers can stay a step ahead.
1. Utilize first-party data across all of your TV buy
Don’t just think about using data in digital video — advertisers now can use it in connected and linear television too. When doing so, marketers need to ensure that their first-party data is representative of their intended target audience and that third-party data is high quality. It’s a good idea to run tests with different types of data, such as taking third-party and first-party data head-to-head with different tactics and measuring the outcomes. Services like Adobe’s segment validation can help advertisers understand the composition of their digital segments — from an overall quality, viewership, and demographic perspective — and determine if the segment should be used in data-driven TV. It’s not enough to just slap on segments to a TV campaign and call it a day. Ensure the data you’re using is high quality and differentiated, and that you’re purchasing inventory in a new, more accurate way.
2. Define and align your measurement across all screens – including linear TV
Don’t put TV in a silo — it’s the biggest and best part of your buy. Keep it front and center and measure it on the same measurement footing as your digital buy. You want to make sure that if, for example, store traffic and tracking purchases are your number one goal that you’re measuring that across your entire buy. TV measurement has evolved to the point where marketers don’t need to use directional insights for TV anymore, you can include deterministic TV exposures in conjunction with the rest of your digital buy. This allows you to ensure you’re looking at the biggest part of your buy with the same set of eyes and thoughts that you would with digital. The insights can be truly eye-opening.
3. Become more fluid in your planning and optimization
As viewers become increasingly comfortable with digital TV and slowly move away from linear, it’s important to figure out where your audience lies and then make better allocations. Don’t just broadly place things on the TV, but be a little more fluid depending on where your target lives. If you’re Diet Coke, for example, and you’re trying to reach everyone from 18 to 75, don’t just buy 18-75 on TV, turn it into two campaigns, across multiple formats, and measure them concurrently. Use connected TV to focus on the younger audience and linear TV to focus on your older audience. Afterward, you should review the two campaigns both individually and combined, with the help of a partner that can put them on the same currency to understand total reach and frequency across all screens and the halo effect one campaign may have on the other.
*This article originally appeared in Advertising Week Trends Report 2019