Search, Social & Connected TV: Why Connected TV Is the Next Big Ad Opportunity
This post was sponsored by SteelHouse. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
Ask any digital marketer, and they’ll tell you there are a couple of channels that they just can’t do without.
The first is paid search, which lets you capture qualified users right when they’re showing intent and interest in your offering.
Can you guess the second one?
If you guessed social, you’re right.
With social ads, marketers can leverage a ton of targeting data to serve ads to users who match their ideal audience, which makes them far more likely to convert.
Both of those channels are essential for any marketer looking to make an impact on their bottom line.
What do they have in common? Well, a number of things.
- Precise targeting.
- Good user experience.
- Great performance.
For most mature marketing organizations, however, these channels eventually reach a tipping point.
There comes a time when any additional budget spent only leads to diminishing returns.
For marketers looking to spend budget and see an enormous impact, they need to look elsewhere – they need to look to Connected TV.
Connected TV is the next great performance channel because it shares the same core strengths as search and social. It comes equipped with:
- Precise targeting capabilities.
- A great user experience.
- Strong performance that can be reliably tracked.
Let’s dive into what makes Connected TV an effective performance channel.
Connected TV Is a Growing Performance Channel
You can’t drive performance if you don’t have an audience to pull from.
Thankfully, people are changing the way they’re watching television – and that’s good news for advertisers.
According to eMarketer, more than 195 million Americans will stream Connected TV programming this year. Those numbers are expected to keep climbing as more viewers make streaming a bigger part of their entertainment mix.
When you combine Connected TV’s increased adoption with its advertising capabilities, you get a recipe for performance.
Connected TV is a far departure from traditional TV advertising; there’s no guesswork when it comes to targeting and reporting. It combines the quality user-experience of television (i.e., unwinding on the couch with their favorite shows) with the data-informed approach of digital advertising.
You can target your exact audience using either first or third-party data, then track who saw your ad and the actions they take afterward – whether it be a site visit, a conversion, or any number of vital metrics.
And this all pays off with performance.
Based on a review of SteelHouse Performance TV + Audience Extension campaigns, we saw a significant performance in key metrics over the course of 2018:
- 1.51% average impression visit rate.
- 6X average ROAS.
Not only is Connected TV effective at driving users to your site, it’s also great at prompting conversions.
We’ve seen its ability to move vital metrics that lead to a real impact on a brand’s bottom line – and it’s convinced us that Connected TV will grow into the next great performance channel.
Connected TV Is Part a True Cross-Device Experience
Connected TV has proven to be effective at getting users to visit advertiser websites and convincing them to convert – especially if a brand’s message is kept top of mind across multiple channels and devices.
Ad recall is one of Connected TV’s strengths – ads streamed on television generate 32% more ad recall than the next closest device – which means viewers are more likely to notice and engage with related content they see elsewhere.
SteelHouse Audience Extension is designed with this in mind.
Here’s how it works: once a viewer sees your ad on Connected TV, it then automatically serves related ads across display and mobile to that same viewer.
It achieves something that is vital for any advertiser – it delivers a consistent and coherent message that stays with users wherever they spend their digital time.
Keeping viewers engaged with your brand message is key, and Audience Extension helps deliver that one-two punch.
If you’re looking to maximize your impact, be sure to integrate Connected TV into your overall marketing strategy in a way that complements your other ad efforts, and deliver a coherent message that stays with viewers.
Connected TV is the Big 3rd Budget Opportunity
It’s time to start looking at Connected TV as a performance channel, because it is one.
That’s why we created SteelHouse Performance TV.
It’s measurable in Google Analytics (exclusively through SteelHouse at time of publication) so you can measure it right alongside the rest of your performance channels.
And with SteelHouse’s fully customizable reporting suite, you can get insight into metrics like site visits and ROAS as well as network-level reporting that shows you who is seeing your ads on which streaming channel.
This level of insight gives you more vision into who is engaging with your ads and where, and can better help you understand where your audience is watching.
Connected TV combines the experience of television with the precision of digital – and that’s a big deal for advertisers.
Traditional TV has always been seen as a branding play, but those days are over. You can drive reliable performance from television ads.
We’ve seen the results, and we’re excited to see even more as we continue to create exactly what performance TV means for the industry at large.
It’s just a matter of time before advertisers see ads streaming over Connected TV as the third big budget opportunity.
Television has been transformed into a performance channel – into performance TV – and that means a huge opportunity for advertisers everywhere.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by SteelHouse. Used with permission.
In-Post Photos: Image by SteelHouse. Used with permission.
