As marketers increasingly invest in connected TV advertising, teams are optimizing numerous aspects of CTV campaigns, including reach, frequency and audience segmentation.
To aid their efforts, advertisers have turned to various CTV platforms that offer automated and semi-automated tools to more efficiently refine, revise, fine-tune and redeploy their most successful CTV campaigns. According to a Digiday and MNTN survey, teams are using automation tools for various CTV campaign optimization tasks, including selecting network inventory, managing bids, adjusting frequency, audience targeting, updating ad creative and compiling campaign performance data.
“Connected TV advertising has changed a lot over the last few years,” said Imani Clark, director of platform experience at MNTN. “Today, you can revitalize a campaign with a few simple clicks, as opposed to the more manual processes and procedures that were in place with different teams in charge of optimization.”
How one career platform used audience data to optimize a CTV campaign
By moving away from those manual processes, CTV marketers are shortening optimization cycles as they generate surging returns.
For instance, a recruiting and career platform for technology professionals aimed to grow its business by launching multiple campaigns aligned to both B2C and B2B audiences. The platform worked with MNTN to accurately reach these various audiences to drive conversions while continuing to generate demand.
The effort began with a prospecting campaign aimed at the B2C audience of job seekers. MNTN’s Oracle Data Cloud integration allowed the brand to accurately target the appropriate viewers with messaging promoting the platform’s solutions. Once the initial campaign was underway, the team created a second prospecting campaign for B2B professionals using Oracle’s Human Resources professionals/decision makers audiences.
“With CRM targeting or first-party targeting, you can find audiences that are the most familiar with your brand and more likely to convert,” Clark explained. “That’s going to help you optimize the effectiveness of the campaign.”
MNTN’s system was set up to optimize the platform’s cost-per-acquisition goal, individually auto-optimizing each campaign thousands of times to exceed KPI goals. The client was able to use MNTN’s dashboard to view granular conversion-level data on the impact of the campaigns, with that same data being added automatically to their Google Analytics account to track alongside other campaigns.
The campaigns resulted in a 62% lower cost-per-acquisition and a 2.4 times increase in conversion rate. The cost-per-view was also 57% lower than the initial target.
“Given the economic climate, we want to make sure that we’re not just maximizing the ad dollars that we’re spending, but that we’re also able to point to concrete outcomes,” Clark said. “CTV platforms that have access to customizable and fully transparent reporting allow you to see your performance and report back to internal teams. This helps you defend ad budgets, justifying where your ad spend is going and even elevating the importance of marketing teams within an organization.”
How the Atlanta Hawks used automated workflows to optimize creative
In an instance of driving sales, the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks sought a way to drive qualified traffic to its site and convert ticket sales with CTV — including delivering ads on premium networks and effectively activating a sequential creative strategy.
The team used MNTN’s Oracle Data Cloud integrations to select audiences in geo-targeted areas. The Hawks had control of how the messaging was served. First, a CTV ad drove initial excitement, site visits and ticket purchases. After viewing the CTV ad, users were served omnichannel messaging with timely, game-specific CTAs to increase the number of tickets purchased. These omnichannel ads were regularly updated with timely information. Using narrative-driven CTV ads and time-sensitive reminders, the Hawks also activated a retargeting campaign to increase ticket sales among previous site visitors.
“Brands are optimizing campaigns to a variety of KPIs, from lower-funnel metrics like ROAS or CPA to engagement metrics like cost-per-visit,” Clark said. “We also test different ways to optimize creative and drive performance.
“The Atlanta Hawks updated their creative on a weekly basis in line with the games that were happening that week,” she said. “That was a really good way to see how engagement differed when audiences were getting these really tailored weekly ads as opposed to a more general ad and measuring the difference between the two.”
MNTN’s automated media buying technology optimized ad delivery, frequency and bidding in real-time to ensure every ad impression was served effectively to drive performance. The campaign achieved a 7x ROAS and a 24% site visit rate from viewers who saw the CTV ad and then visited the site.
Embracing an always-on approach to CTV campaign optimization
Automation allows teams to optimize more efficiently and at higher volumes and better personalize and analyze their campaigns — regardless of the tasks or campaign goals. With those automated tools in place, CTV campaign optimization continues to drive positive outcomes for brands and advertisers.
“Automation can act faster and move more quickly than we do with manual processes,” Clark said. “We’re allowing ourselves to move much quicker and make changes on a more nimble basis than we did in the past.”
Sponsored by: MNTN
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