CTV players hope importing social assets can lower brands’ barrier to entry

Execs at LG Ad Solutions believe that enabling those brands to run more ads originally made for paid social, or as part of their creator marketing activity, on CTV can coax them into spending more. The ad arm of the TV setmaker has been offering brands a “Social Sync” tool, which pulls ad creative from platforms like Pinterest, LinkedIn, and YouTube, and runs it on LG’s TV inventory. 

“There’s [a] category of advertiser that you know will struggle to get onto TV, and this is a way for them to access that environment,” said Ed Wale, vp, international at LG Ad Solutions.

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Advertisers like workwear brand Dickies have been using the tool, built with ad tech firm Spaceback, in the U.S. since its launch in May. Now, LG’s rolling out the solution globally. For brands with budgets small enough to be overawed by TV production costs (even programmatic requires video assets) — or which have pursued a performance-led strategy to date — the possibility they can run creative that’s already been proven in one environment again in another is tempting.

“Dickies is really investing in a social-first marketing approach. Investment in influencers, investment in creators and brand ambassador video content is really big for us… Being able to pull that content into the CTV space helps us step into that space without needing larger investments, from a creative standpoint,” explained Lindsay Burgor, senior manager of brand media at Dickies.

Burgor told Digiday the brand, working with its agency Backbone Media, had taken ads previously running on Instagram for a campaign highlighting Dickies’ clothing at retailer Target and used them on Hulu, Pluto TV and Vizeo inventory. Though assets were commissioned from creators and made for vertical video, the team edited them to take up the full width of a television screen, using the space to embed a QR code.

“We wanted to make sure we [were] closing [the] loop in that CTV space,” said Burgor. The 103-year-old firm is having a moment with fashion-forward shoppers, but still needs to appeal to core consumers more interested in how hard wearing its products are, not how good they look paired with a pair of sneakers. After steering clear of TV in the past, Burgor credited Dickies’ return to the channel to the Social Sync tool. She said she expected the company’s TV investment to rise further, without providing specific projections.

The solution is another attempt by CTV companies to reduce the barriers to entry for small and medium-sized advertisers formerly priced out of TV by production costs. In the last year, broadcasters and streamers alike have debuted a range of generative AI production suites aimed at solving that problem. Social Sync, however, allows brands to use ads already proven to work in another environment.

Though Burgor didn’t provide specific performance figures for Dickies’ campaign, a test commissioned by LG Ad Solutions relating to an unnamed brand found a campaign using Social Sync generated a range of positive outcomes including a 22% lift in brand awareness, a 26.1% lift in consideration, and a 24.2% lift in favorability.

That performance partially reflects audiences’ engagement with interactive elements, like the QR codes Dickies retrofitted into its ads. CTV ad formats are becoming more interactive than linear, driven by streaming companies’ efforts to court marketers who refuse to spend unless they can point to clear outcomes from their media investment.

At free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) network Fubo, for example, media spending on interactive formats has increased 218% versus 2024. According to a spokesperson, the number of campaigns using interactive formats is now five times higher than last year. Interactive ads generate an 8% lift in brand interest for advertisers, according to a survey of 700 consumers commissioned by CTV tech firm BrightLine.

It also reflects audience engagement with creator content in every environment they encounter them.  “Connected TV is just another format. Influencer driven content has always outperformed brand-driven creative, ever since I’ve been in this business,” said Mat Micheli, co-founder and co-CEO at Viral Nation.

Brands have ported assets made by influencers into non-social channels for years, largely on an ad-hoc basis. Creator agreements with brands sometimes include re-usage rights for that purpose. Creator agency Influencer, for example, recently ran digital-out-of-home campaigns featuring creator-made assets for Nike and Ben & Jerry’s in the U.S. and Germany, respectively.

It’s a tactic that’s more popular among advertisers without those brands’ firepower, noted Nik Speller, managing director, UK, at Influencer. “They’re [smaller brands] focused on driving insane levels of cost efficiency. They’re always looking for areas they can crunch down on, and content creation is one of those areas,” said Speller.

WPP agency Goat has worked with several clients to deploy creator assets on to programmatic inventory, via Amazon Ads, The Trade Desk and Google’s DSPs since last year. Clients include Arm & Hammer, toy brand Miko and tech firm Snapdragon. 

As a result, Goat clients are investing more of their media dollars and pounds with Amazon. A spokesperson for the agency told Digiday it had recorded a 35% year-on-year rise in Amazon media investment so far in 2025. LG Ad Solutions will, naturally, hope to benefit from a similar windfall.

Though big advertisers like Unilever are embracing creator marketing en masse, brands that already invest in bespoke TV creative may not find as clear a use for crossover solutions. “It seems to be a nice fit for cost-sensitive brands, whereas larger ad campaigns may not see the benefit yet,” noted Shattuck Groome, chief media officer at Mile Marker.

For Speller, however, it’s evidence that the creator marketing sphere continues to merge with other advertising disciplines. “The line between influencer marketing, traditional marketing and content creation has massively grayed,” he said.