From Campus to Career: How CTV Advertising Can Help You Connect with College Graduates

With college graduation fast approaching, consumers are gearing up to celebrate the college grads in their lives. A look at the numbers is telling — the NRF’s latest report forecasted nearly 6 billion spent on apparel, electronics and other gifts during the season.

To make the most of the occasion, brands and advertisers must find the best way to reach these shoppers, namely CTV advertising. In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits of CTV advertising for the seasonal trend and how it can help you create effective and engaging campaigns.

The Challenge for Advertisers This Graduation Season

A successful campaign for the graduation season does not come without challenges. Take the high cost of advertising during this holiday, for instance. Competition for ad space across industries, from CPG brands to travel and leisure to moving companies, drives up prices, making it difficult for smaller companies or those with limited budgets to effectively reach their target audiences.

Additionally, with so many companies and brands vying for consumers' attention, it can be hard to reach the right target audience, hence a lot of ads might be seen by the wrong target audience and not generate the desired results. This can make it difficult for advertisers to effectively reach their target audiences and achieve their desired results.

What’s a marketer to do? This leads us to our next point.

Gift Givers Are Watching Streaming TV Ads

Streaming is now the single most popular channel for TV consumption in the U.S., according to Nielsen, attracting more viewers than not only traditional broadcast and cable, but also more time spent than social media, gaming and music. And when it comes to advertising, adults in the U.S. pay more attention to streaming TV than another media channel, eMarketer found, thanks to the full-screen presentation, immersive experiences and non-skippable ad formats.

How CTV and Streaming Advertising Can Help Advertisers Reach The Right Audience

Streaming and Connected Television (CTV) advertising combines the reach of traditional television with the targeting capabilities of digital advertising, allowing advertisers to reach a large and diverse audience with a high level of precision and efficiency.

What’s more, streaming and CTV offer advertisers specific capabilities that are superior to other media, such as addressable targeting, deterministic measurement, campaign flexibility and speed, performance-led optimizations, cost-effectiveness and audience engagement. And when it comes to return on investment, streaming TV delivers a 30% higher ROI than all other marketing channels, including digital video, digital display, paid search and social, according to Analytics Partners. Streaming and CTV advertising can also provide a more premium, safe environment for brands, which can help build trust and credibility with potential customers.

How CTV and Streaming Advertising Complements Existing Digital and Social Strategies

But CTV advertising isn't just effective on its own. Streaming and CTV campaigns can be a cost-effective complement to an existing online, social or digital advertising strategy or media buys for Valentine's Day. By using a multichannel approach, brands can reach potential customers through a variety of platforms, increasing the chances of their message being seen. Additionally, CTV advertising can provide measurable results, allowing advertisers to track the effectiveness of their campaigns and adjust them as needed, making the most of their advertising budget.

Simulmedia’s Unique CTV Advertising Solution for this Graduation Season

Simulmedia’s TV+© is the only streaming TV advertising platform designed to prioritize an advertiser’s needs. Here’s how we can help this season:

• Our technology allows us to build your audience target by who they are, how they’re watching and what they’re watching so we can confidently reach them at the most high-engagement, high-attention moments and at the most efficient cost.
• Our direct integrations with virtually every ad-supported streaming service, publisher and app  – plus every linear network and channel – allows us to place your ads in premium, brand-safe environments with full transparency into where you’re running.
• To ensure maximum results with minimal waste, we deduplicate audiences and manage frequency across ad-supported streaming services so you’re not overdelivering your message to the same viewers.
• Our team of experts and TV veterans manage all aspects of your campaign from start to finish.
• We provide more granular measurement of the KPIs that matter to you than you’ve ever enjoyed before while our dedicated Simulmedia team optimizes your campaign for continuous improvement throughout your flight.

In conclusion, as a marketer, CTV advertising should definitely be considered as part of your graduation season advertising strategy. It offers a wide range of benefits, including precise targeting, engaging ad experiences, and measurable results. Plus, it can effectively complement your existing online, social or digital advertising strategy or media buys. By using CTV in conjunction with other channels, you can create a more cohesive and consistent brand message across all channels and reach your target audience in a more effective way.

Find out how Simulmedia’s unique TV+® platform for TV and streaming advertising provides unified access to premium linear and CTV inventory across all networks and publishers. Request a demo or email us at advertise@simulmedia.com.