Connected TV (CTV) is top of mind among marketers these days and for good reason. It’s increasingly evident that streaming targeting provides brands the opportunity to launch campaigns with real trackable success.
According to a new survey by MNTN, CTV is the only platform that shows consistent, notable growth in its percent of devoted ad budget: Nearly three-quarters (73.8%) of marketers and agencies say they increased CTV ad budgets from 2021 (13% of budget) to 2022 (16%), and plan to do so again in 2023 (19% of budget on average).
But what are marketers actually doing to take advantage of these expanding budgets? Our survey reveals that successfully launching and maintaining CTV campaigns does not require internal upheaval or even new hiring. It's easily adoptable and can slot into existing marketing strategies and teams through education and training, and without unnecessary expense, respondents say.
In the MNTN survey, we asked about the actions that companies and agencies have taken to design, implement and monitor CTV advertising campaigns. Leading the list, noted by half of all respondents (50.0%), was “adopting new advertising platforms,“ followed closely by “retraining existing staff” (47.8%).
Advertising’s faith in CTV also is reflected in another priority: informing stakeholders that CTV campaigns can deliver superior performance (46.7%). Ad budgets must be justified, and this indicates plenty of faith in CTV’s ability to do so.
What scored the lowest in actions taken to address the CTV revolution? Pulling up the rear were hiring new staff (37.2%), hiring additional vendors (35.0%) and restructuring marketing teams (21.1%).
Replacing existing ad platforms with better ones is tacitly understood as necessary to avoid missing the CTV boat, but there’s no need to turn your marketing team inside out. These findings underscore a rapidly-growing sentiment in advertising: That CTV is a financially sound decision for ad teams seeing their budget belts tighten.
There’s another, very valid reason marketers and agencies are prioritizing the retraining of existing staff into CTV-savvy experts: The perceived difficulty in identifying and hiring people with CTV advertising experience: 70% of survey respondents indicated it is either challenging or extremely challenging to find and hire people with CTV skills. Thus, the focus on in-house training.
Of course, the CTV landscape can be fragmented and confusing if you don’t know the lay of the land. What you do need is automation that gets you access to premium networks and inventory in one place, allowing you to run ads alongside quality content without having to take a piecemeal approach. You also need a platform that is intuitive and easily understood, making it easier on current staff tasked with getting up to snuff.
I’m pleased to see the determination of agencies and marketers in adopting new ad platforms to enhance their CTV efforts. MNTN’s software offers automated performance optimization and the ability to make data instantly actionable. This ensures that every advertiser’s campaign is spending their budgets solely in the service of hitting their KPIs. This in turn makes it an efficient and effective performance marketing channel.
Let’s look at this in action, with examples that illustrate neatly the findings of MNTN’s survey:
1. High fashion, high performance. A women’s clothing and fashion site was looking for an advertising solution that could keep up with its high-paced 2021 holiday plans, reach its target audience on CTV and accurately measure the results. With MNTN’s integration with the Oracle Data Cloud, the brand had access to more than 120 million households to drive scalable performance. Through retargeting, and with an in-house staff comfortable with a seamless dashboard, the campaign produced a return on ad spend (ROAS) that exceeded goal by 305%.
2. Small budget, big results. A leading retailer of award-winning performance products for outdoor and work environments had a limited budget to drive measurable revenue both online and at key locations. MNTN enabled the brand to geo-target viewers in cities and regions where it had physical stores. As various CTV advertising campaigns progressed, automated optimization occurring thousands of times a day drove ad dollars to where they would be best spent. The online-only campaign delivered a greater-than 13-times ROAS, a 4% site-visit rate and a cost-per-visit of just 49 cents.
3. New platform, new successes. A major automotive aftermarket parts provider was looking for a new way to raise brand awareness and motivate customers to visit in-store or online. It gave connected TV a try. Two top-of-funnel campaigns, one on batteries and the other on motor oil, ran exclusively on top-tier CTV inventory, reaching millions of households. The battery-focused campaign alone drove better than a 4-times ROAS, with a cost per completed view of only 6 cents. The motor oil campaign saw similar performance, with 2-times ROAS and a cost per completed view of just a nickel.
You don’t have to turn your marketing team inside out to succeed in CTV. Just take advantage of smarter targeting, constant optimization and stunning simplicity. Feel free to check it out for yourself.
