How CTV attribution delivers performance metrics—even with an ‘unclickable screen’

Although linear still accounts for the vast majority of TV ad spend, connected TV continues to gain ground, with advertisers allocating increasingly more budget to the growing channel. According to a new survey by MNTN, CTV is the only platform that shows consistent, notable growth: 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). Matt Collins, MNTN’s director of product marketing, joined the Ad Age Media Summit, Oct. 3-4, in New York, to discuss the evolution of linear and CTV attribution as well as the best model for tracking performance metrics on “unclickable screens.” (Watch video below.) A ‘fundamentally different medium’ Whether you’re looking at linear TV, connected TV, social media or paid search, Collins said, what marketers want to know boils down to a simple question: What was the impact of an ad exposure to change in behavior? “Look at what’s currently possible in the world of linear attribution—it’s actually never been better and more refined,” Collins said. “But in looking at all those refinements, we’ve come to recognize that we’ve gone about as far as we can go [with linear attribution], and it’s evident that what’s coming next will surpass it.” Despite increased competition for developing a new currency, Nielsen’s panel-only currency still dominates linear TV measurement. But with a presence in only 50,000 of some 120 million households in the U.S., Collins pointed out, they’re capturing less than four-thousandths of a percentage of possible viewers. “It is impossible today to be able to capture and understand what happens in every household, which means it’s impossible to really know the impact of an ad on what happens in that household,” he said. “CTV is a fundamentally different medium and marketers would be wise to approach it differently.” The right questions to ask Because CTV is essentially a digital channel—albeit one with an unclickable screen—reporting extends beyond linear’s delivered impressions to show key performance metrics such as return on ad spend (ROAS) and cost per acquisition (CPA). CTV can also track performance by creative, geo, audience and network to provide a full-picture understanding of your campaigns. Conversely, CTV’s digital nature can also present hurdles for advertisers who are new to the space. To ensure that measured outcomes can be accurately attributed to CTV, Collins recommended that advertisers work with vendors who can have a system that can separate and de-duplicate the inbound traffic that comes from digital channels to provide a filtered, precise view of the impact of all your media channels. Collins suggested that marketers should ask three questions to guarantee they are taking full advantage of CTV screens: 1. Is my ad viewable? It's impossible to measure when people get up to go grab a soda from the refrigerator or look away from the screen, but at the very least it's possible to know that an ad is visible on-screen. 2. Can I adjust the attribution window, i.e., the time between when an ad exposure happens and when an attributable action occurs, such as visiting a website or opening or downloading an application? Can I adjust that, or am I bound to what a vendor is telling me I have to accept from their approach? 3. Can I single out and identify traffic that came from social, traffic that came from search, that traffic came from CTV? Can I organize and see that in a single source of truth transparently? Doing so is possible today, Collins said. “Self-serve CTV platforms such as MNTN are built for performance marketers. MNTN is fully integrated with Google Analytics, which allows marketers to customize GA4 to be able to see CTV alongside their other marketing channels.” CTV’s halo effect Advertisers who ran CTV campaigns with MNTN not only increased performance in that channel but also boosted the effects of concurrent paid search, social and email campaigns. Using MNTN’s first-person data, advertisers who ran paid search campaigns with CTV saw conversion rates increase by 1.64% after 30 days; the CR increased by 22.27% after 90 days. “The numbers get stronger and stronger over time,” said Collins. “As ads get more audience reach, consumers see them more, and you start to see a nice uptick in CR.” Advertisers who ran paid social campaigns concurrently with CTV saw a 4.19% CR increase after 30 days, and 8.52% after 90 days. Those who ran email campaigns with CTV saw a 17.58% CR increase after 30 days, and 37.35% after 90 days. “You’ll see the right results if you are strategic about managing the two big levers that every marketer has available to them: creative and audiences,” Collins says. “It is worth investing in making a great campaign—’great’ meaning however you define your result—focusing on audience and creative. And if you do that right, and if you’re running concurrently with search and social, you can see results.” About MNTN MNTN builds advertising software for brands to drive measurable conversions, revenue, site visits and more through the power of television. MNTN Performance TV is the world’s first and only Connected TV advertising platform optimized for direct-response marketing goals. It redefines what advertisers can do with television, giving them the power to tie performance directly to their TV campaigns.

How CTV attribution delivers performance metrics—even with an ‘unclickable screen’

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