Connected TV (CTV) adoption has been steadily increasing in recent years. Currently 82% of U.S. households have at least one internet-connected TV. But despite CTV becoming widespread as a mode of media consumption, many marketers—especially B2B marketers—are hesitant to add CTV advertising to their media mix.
There are plenty of common misconceptions that are holding marketers back from this channel, but these can be overcome through education as well as test-and-learn opportunities. Meanwhile, let’s look at the many actual benefits that this engaging channel offers.
Targeting precise audiences
With its data-driven approach to measurement and targeting, CTV advertising is the perfect channel for marketers who are looking to differentiate themselves from the competition. B2B marketers can work with a multichannel demand-side platform (DSP), leveraging CTV to reach precise audiences, measure campaign performance and strengthen their full-funnel strategy.
CTV provides the targeting that B2B marketers are looking for due to the specificity of available customer profiles. Since CTV campaigns are run through a DSP, they have access to the same audience segments available with other programmatic buys. This includes B2B-specific audience segments as well as very niche groups. This is becoming more attractive to B2B marketers because their campaigns require very specific targeting that is not achievable with linear TV.
Ad spots are purchased when a viewer matches the indicated desired audience, and creative messaging then appears in full-screen, highly viewable environments. Viewers watching CTV are more engaged because they’ve made the active choice to watch the programming, and they don’t have the option to fast forward or skip any ads.
Because of this, CTV creates strong brand recall, a valuable advantage since sales cycles tend to be longer with B2B, and there is not always a direct click as the conversion point. In many cases with B2B campaigns, advertisers are working to build brand awareness and recall so their prospects become familiar with the product or service that is being offered. By having access to a channel that not only reaches audiences who cannot skip advertisements, but also connects with those who cannot be reached through traditional TV or cable subscriptions, the advertiser has a better opportunity to demonstrate the value of the product and influence recall.
Additionally, CTV viewers have often “cut the cord,”—cancelling their traditional TV or cable subscriptions—so using CTV enables advertisers to reach these increasingly elusive viewers.
Superb measurement, attribution
The benefits of CTV advertising extend well beyond its targeting capabilities. B2B advertisers can unlock data that was impossible to obtain from linear TV because CTV offers more precise measurement and attribution. Marketers can proactively learn who is interacting with and viewing their CTV ads. They can then optimize and retarget accordingly.
Unlike linear TV, CTV enables marketers to retarget users based on impression, or by any of the quartile marks of video viewership. For example, a B2B marketer might retarget users who have completed the CTV ad with a display or native ad that drives them to a demo request form. For another strategy, B2B marketers could retarget users with a display or native ad to continue to drive messaging and product affinity through value-add messaging. In B2B, access to a user from the top of the funnel to the bottom is crucial to being able to optimize the user's journey.
B2B marketers are also trying to reach individuals who make purchases on behalf of or for their business or organization. CTV’s data-driven targeting and measurement capabilities enable these marketers to target the highly specific needs, challenges and interests of those organizations. And it provides better audience efficiency, reduces media waste and greatly eliminates the noise of reaching irrelevant viewers and households.
Expressing brand personality
Another benefit of CTV advertising is the medium itself. It’s differentiated from other programmatic media because of its visual and audio format. This engaging format enables marketers to connect with the right viewers to elicit a positive emotional response from that target prospect segment. In B2B campaigns, marketers can use the audio-visual medium to express brand personality and tell brand stories that create a lasting and memorable impression on the audience. As I noted above, this is very important for establishing the brand recall that is so valuable to B2B marketers.
Lastly, B2B marketers can leverage CTV’s unique benefits as part of a full-funnel strategy. CTV is known for its ability to reach viewers on a mass scale, making it ideal to include in an upper-funnel strategy. It can be used as an awareness format that delivers messaging to as many people as possible. Marketers can then leverage those top-funnel impressions in their full-funnel strategy to create a holistic viewer experience.
CTV advertising offers enhanced targeting options and inventory selection, along with real-time reporting. With CTV, it’s possible to leverage similar campaign setup and targeting as other programmatic media buys, which means B2B marketers can assess progress against goals and metrics while a campaign is live. This precise performance tracking, combined with CTV’s upper-funnel suitability, is exactly what B2B marketing requires. In other words, now is the time for B2B marketers to get on-air with CTV.
