While it may seem counterintuitive given uncertainties with the economy and the industry, now is the perfect time for advertisers to innovate on their video investment planning with new strategies and tools.

With budgets being slashed and the marketplace growing more fragmented, it’s hard to locate target consumers, and it’s even harder to measure effectiveness. To combat these obstacles, advertisers need to stop relying on old tactics and start seeking new ways to optimize spend.

Sharpening the data strategy is a key step, but data alone won’t solve the issue; new tools and strategies are necessary to achieve effective investment results.

A recent LG study reveals that brands can end up spending more than half their budget to reach just 10% of the total audience available. Advertisers can’t afford to waste shrinking budgets on unchecked ad repetition in the current economic environment, much less thrive long term.

Brands need to stop playing defense and start going on the offense when it comes to how they plan and invest their TV dollars. By investing in technology that allows them to control who they reach and how many times they reach them, brands can stop wasting money and frustrating consumers with ad fatigue.

Why data alone is not the answer

The evolution of digital video has introduced a wealth of data into the media ecosystem. However, most advertisers are still employing old tactics for investment planning, despite the new trove of information they now have access to. Others may be eager to develop new media buying strategies and advertising campaigns based on the data, but are unsure how to deploy that data to drive better performance.

Brands need to stop playing defense and start going on the offense when it comes to how they plan and invest their TV dollars.

Advertisers now must incorporate AI-enabled technologies that can unify audience data across platforms for a holistic view. The television landscape has become too complex to build an effective investment plan without it. Loyal linear TV viewers watch over three hours of programming per day, but in Q1 2022, 94% of all linear ads reached the same 55% percent of households.

Without a cross-platform strategy and the crucial combination of granular data and technology, advertisers won’t be able to avoid reaching these same consumers too many times, while other target viewers will be missed entirely, and marketing KPIs will suffer as a result.

One-off tech deployments with a particular point solution won’t do the trick, either. Sure, you can optimize with a given vendor, but that alone only makes you “smart in a silo,” meaning you have perhaps optimized one particular buy, but not your total buy. To do that, you need a technology solution acting as the brain to unify the whole buy.

Premium video investment requires technology

In programmatic media, marketers have embraced a variety of tools and technologies to get the job done, including demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs), data management platforms (DMPs) and customer data platforms (CDPs). In the programmatic media ecosystem, data and technology help drive a better outcome, but in premium video, this same approach has yet to occur.

The paradox is that premium video represents the lion’s share of advertising budgets. The promise of CTV is about premium content that can be invested in, similar to digital. Today’s technology can help advertisers unify CTV spend with linear TV spend to reach more of a desired target an ideal number of times.

Advertisers already pay for technology in the programmatic ecosystem; in these uncertain economic times, it’s more important than ever to get that same kind of value in premium video by investing in the right technology.

Now is the time to innovate

Given this economic climate and the scale of audience fragmentation, organizing and measuring first- and third-party data requires smart technologies that can unify and deploy it at scale. Throughout the media buying process, data signals need to be merged with AI-enabled, privacy-compliant technology to make more informed predictions about consumer intent. This is critical to advertisers’ ability to effectively target high-value audiences in today’s TV ecosystem and stop wasting money.

Now is the time to embrace a technology-enabled, cross-screen investment plan as capabilities are available to do something about it. This is a win-win for not only consumers, but the brand’s bottom line.