How brands are planning holistic TV campaigns to maximize effectiveness in 2023

Both platforms offer unique value propositions, with CTV providing more addressability and access to niche audiences, while linear TV provides access to large-scale audiences. So, to most efficiently reach their target audiences, marketers are thinking holistically about their CTV and linear ad spending as the new year approaches. 

In this Q&A, Tremor Video’s Chief Revenue Officer James Malins spoke with the Custom in-house agency at Digiday Media about how brands are leveraging linear TV and connected TV to meet their advertising goals in 2023.

With engagement growing rapidly on streaming platforms, how can advertisers efficiently maximize their campaigns across both CTV and linear platforms?

James Malins: As a baseline, all advertisers should be focused on frequency and cost — reaching their target consumers enough times to elicit the desired responses as efficiently as possible across platforms. Optimizing the distribution of campaigns across CTV and linear platforms will come down to the advertiser’s target audience. 

Brands shouldn’t be thinking about their target audiences solely in terms of demographics. Rather than older audiences here, and younger audiences there, it’s about identifying how broad or how niche the category is.

For instance, if an advertiser is promoting a product that appeals to the general public, allocating more budget to linear TV would be the most efficient way to reach their target audience because the cost per ad view is generally lower on linear. However, because it is less targeted if advertisers are trying to reach a niche target audience, there are wasted ad views.

What challenges are advertisers facing by conducting campaigns separately across linear and digital platforms?

James Malins: Failing to take both CTV and linear into account when planning leaves significant room for inefficiencies. By looking at these formats in silos, issues can arise, like managing campaigns in silos, including too many ad exposures to some users and completely missing others.

How does the state of the economy impact decisions for advertisers across CTV and linear?

James Malins: Given the current state of the economy, advertisers are under more pressure to gain the maximum value and efficiency from campaign spend. I anticipate this additional scrutiny will be an impetus for positive change as advertisers plan their cross-platform campaigns. There are actionable, insights-driven measurement tools that can help advertisers better understand the relative performance/impact generated by specific channels and devices, as well as the incremental audience reach that CTV, desktop or mobile video campaigns deliver beyond linear TV buys.

How can advertisers optimize their campaigns using cross-platform planning tools for CTV and linear? Are there any exciting innovations on the horizon?

James Malins: Automatic content recognition (ACR) has given advertisers the ability to better understand the content households are watching and on which platforms. Until recently, this valuable ACR data was held behind walled gardens, creating cross-platform targeting and measurement challenges for advertisers. Now platforms like ours are making those insights available to advertisers, so it is possible for them to better understand what consumers are gravitating towards on a household level and, as a result, decide the most efficient placement to reach the members of that household.

Consumers might have both cable TV and a Hulu ad subscription, so they are reachable in multiple places. The advertiser can then better understand the most efficient places to reach that household and then replicate that 122 million more times for each household in the U.S., based on figures from Statista. 

Sponsored by: Tremor Video