What Should Performance Marketers Know Before Testing CTV?

Last year, the IAB released a report that showed just how much money advertisers are pumping into CTV: In 2021, CTV ad spend grew to $15.2 billion and was estimated to increase to $21.2 billion in 2022. Consumer TV viewing habits are also changing: Over 80% of TV households have at least one connected TV device, up from 69% in 2019. The study also reported that “46% of adults in U.S. TV households watch video on a TV via a connected device daily.” Performance marketers should recognize the opportunity in front of them, become more familiar with this channel and launch tests that help them determine whether or not CTV could be a viable growth lever and revenue driver for their businesses. There are seven things in particular performance marketers should know before testing CTV advertising. Advertisers Want the Process of Buying CTV to Feel More Like Traditional TV Resist the urge to simply repurpose Facebook ad videos CTV creative needs to be optimized for the big screen, not for mobile devices. This means you won’t find success by using existing Facebook ad creative when building your CTV campaigns. Here are some tips for developing CTV creative: User-generated content like testimonials or selfie videos need to be framed horizontally or avoided altogether.CTV ads must be exactly 15 or 30 seconds in length.Your logo should be placed in the lower left corner for the entire ad.You need a strong offer and a clear call to action. Both should take up at least the final five seconds of the spot. Speak to your audience The most effective CTV ads are the ones that speak directly to a specific target audience. Your CTV creative should showcase your product or service in action or as a solution to a problem that your target audience segment faces. Viewers of your CTV ad should be able to recognize the core benefits of your product and what makes it different from competitors. To get these messages across successfully, call out key unique selling points in a text overlay, as well as verbally with the use of an actor on screen or voiceover artist. Spend enough to get the learnings you need When testing CTV ads, be prepared to spend a minimum of $100/flight/day. Ideally your budget will be higher, but this minimum allows you to capture learnings from your initial test and determine if it’s worth investing more budget into the channel. Just keep in mind: If your budget is in this range, you will need to limit your audience size significantly to generate enough frequency and action on your campaign. Get uber-specific with audience targeting CTV advertising targeting has improved greatly in recent years. Today, you can target just about every variable, including geographic (down to the metropolitan statistical area [MSA]), age, household income, interests and watching behavior. You can also upload a seed list to build lookalike audiences, much like in paid social. Here’s the best way to get the most out of the targeting capabilities that CTV offers: Identify where your best-performing audience segment resides and narrow your targeting to this region. By serving in just one market, you can determine if traffic and sales increase there versus other similar MSAs during the flight. This enables you to run a geo-matched market test, which will give you the data and confidence you need to scale and replicate across other markets. Lean into the power of frequency As a rule of thumb, you should aim for at least nine ad impressions over a 30-day period. Keep in mind: You’re targeting a household, not the individual, so occasionally your ad is going to serve when your target audience might not be in the room watching the content. This is why frequency is so important with CTV, even more so than other advertising channels. Allocate part of your overall budget for retargeting To get more ROI from your first CTV test, allocate 10-20% of your overall budget to a complementary display retargeting campaign. These will serve to viewers of your CTV ad who didn’t visit your site within three days of seeing your ad. For these campaigns, you’ll need three to five static display banners in standard IAB sizes: 300x250, 728x90 or 160x600 pixels. Be ready to track key performance metrics Before launching your first CTV campaign, make sure you are prepared to keep a close eye on campaign KPIs. You should be watching for: Direct navigation traffic pre- and post-campaign, and conversion of that traffic.Customer acquisition costs within several tight attribution windows (i.e. $250 within 24 hours or $200 within 72 hours).Site visits within 10 minutes of seeing an ad. Being able to track these metrics will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your CTV ad and also help you understand whether offers or calls to action need to be tweaked. Final thoughts The goal of your first CTV test should be to drive a lot of frequency with a segment of your target audience and see if you can observe a meaningful lift in direct navigation, organic or brand search traffic to your website. Of course, you ideally want sales as well, but if you can efficiently drive traffic to your site, you can create custom audiences using other platform pixels, like Facebook or Google, and retarget these users with additional reasons to buy. Nielsen’s Latest CTV Tool Aims to Sharpen TV Ad Targeting