Unveiling the Spectrum: Navigating Through Different Types of CTV Campaigns

For advertisers who work in Connected TV (CTV), crafting a successful campaign involves understanding the nuances of the customer journey and tailoring a CTV strategy accordingly. Let's embark on a journey through the layers of CTV campaigns, exploring how marketers strategically navigate the upper and lower funnels to achieve optimal results.

Casting a Broad Net: Strategies for Upper-Funnel Campaigns

Upper-funnel campaigns act as the dynamic launch pad for building brand awareness and engagement. Here, marketers strategically cast a broad net to captivate attention and forge an extensive audience base. An effective approach to crafting upper-funnel campaign strategies involves thoughtful consideration of the target audience and the promoted product or service. By answering key questions about these elements, you lay the foundation for a well-rounded and impactful campaign.

As you navigate these questions and their respective answers, consider their amalgamation. This process might yield diverse strategies for multiple upper-funnel campaigns, each tailored to resonate with specific aspects of your audience and product or service.

What are the geographic priorities and constraints of the campaign?

Determining your campaign's geographic priorities and constraints is a pivotal step, whether you're making a grand entrance with a brick-and-mortar store in the Chicago metropolitan area or strategically concentrating advertising efforts in Northeastern major metropolitan areas where your restaurants flourish.

Geographic targeting, often called geotargeting, ensures your message resonates within specific markets or city centers. This approach is particularly beneficial for brands with a regional focus, allowing them to concentrate their efforts where it matters most. For CTV advertisers, understanding what geotargeting is and how it can elevate your campaigns becomes pivotal to crafting targeted and impactful strategies.

With geotargeting, precision is the key. Different geotargeting strategies allow marketers to fine-tune their approach based on specific geographical parameters. Marketers can narrow their audience down to designated market areas (DMAs), cities, regions, zip codes, and more. This granular level of targeting becomes crucial when a product or service is only available in specific parts of the country. Geotargeting, in essence, ensures that advertising efforts are not squandered in areas where the product or service cannot be serviced effectively.

Example: Consider a local restaurant chain utilizing geographic targeting to reach potential customers within a 10-mile radius. By promoting daily specials and exclusive offers, the restaurant maximizes the impact of its CTV advertising, resonating specifically with the local audience.

How would you demographically describe your target audience(s)?

In defining your target audience demographically, moving beyond conventional boundaries is crucial. While age and gender are common considerations, the spectrum of demographic data is vast, encompassing marital status, household size, ethnicity, income level, education, professions, and more. Many products, in fact, cater to multiple target audiences, each with unique demographic characteristics and distinct values tied to your product. The level of specificity or broadness in your approach hinges on the nature of your product and the nuances of each audience segment.

For some products, a broader approach may prove advantageous, especially when aiming for mass appeal. Targeting broad demographic groups, like adults 18+ or parents with kids, becomes a strategic move to maximize reach and establish a foundation for widespread brand recognition. Conversely, when a product is designed to resonate with distinct and diverse consumer groups, fine-tuning your demographic targeting becomes paramount.

Example: Imagine a skincare brand with a product line tailored for both young adults battling acne and mature individuals combating signs of aging. In this scenario, a nuanced demographic targeting strategy involves tailoring ads to reach both age groups distinctly. By doing so, the brand speaks directly to the unique concerns of each demographic, fostering a deeper connection and resonating more effectively with its diverse consumer base.

What behavioral characteristics does your target audience(s) exhibit?

When delving into your target audience, it's essential to transcend conventional demographic constraints. Your customers are intricate beings, reflecting a kaleidoscope of behavioral characteristics—personal intricacies like affinities, hobbies, and interests; behavioral nuances encompassing lifestyle, habits, and propensities; diverse consumption habits like ownership, purchase behavior, and brand preferences; and even experiential stages that encompass past behavior, life moments, and micro-events. Let's encapsulate this rich mosaic of human subtleties under the term "behavioral characteristics."

Deciphering and harnessing these diverse behavioral characteristics unlocks the potential for finely-tuned outreach strategies, forging a profound connection with your audience. It's not merely about demographic labels; it's about unveiling the triggers that spark their consideration of your product.

Example: A travel agency collaborates with a third-party audience provider. By tapping into the provider's insights, the agency targets individuals immersed in extensive research about various European destinations. This strategic alignment with behavioral characteristics ensures that the CTV campaign resonates with aspiring European vacationers, effortlessly promoting the agency's enticing and affordable packaged trips to diverse European destinations.

What types of content genres make sense with your product or service?

With the demise of third-party cookies, achieving accurate behavioral targeting is becoming increasingly challenging. Fortunately, genres can serve as effective proxies for audience profiles, offering a workaround in this evolving landscape. For instance, individuals passionate about home decor might find themselves engrossed in home makeover shows, while those eyeing new kitchen aids might gravitate toward cooking shows.

With targeting dynamics shifting, CTV contextual targeting becomes a beacon for marketers seeking precision. Aligning your brand with specific content genres that resonate with your target audience provides a contextual relevance that transcends traditional cookie-based approaches. This strategic immersion places your brand seamlessly within the consumer's chosen narrative.

Example: Consider a fitness brand utilizing CTV contextual buys by sponsoring health and wellness content. They can do so by working within publishers’ genre-specific private marketplaces. By intertwining its message with content that already captivates viewers focused on well-being, the brand not only ensures contextual relevance but also establishes a genuine connection within a shared narrative. This strategic alignment enhances the impact of the brand's message, fostering a deeper resonance with the audience.

What viewing behavior do your best customers exhibit, and can we find more like them?

Answering this question may seem daunting, but fear not—collaborating with a trusted partner like Simulmedia can illuminate the way. Just drop us a note, and we’ll show you how.

Take a moment to ponder your digital footprint, from your main website to microsites and apps. At a fundamental level, placing a pixel on your site or leveraging your Mobile Measurement Partner to profile app users opens a window into the TV consumption habits of your audience.

For more precision, especially if your site boasts significant traffic, we can delve deeper. Imagine understanding the TV viewership behavior of individuals who have added items to their shopping cart—a level of specificity that transforms targeting strategies. Additionally, your CRM holds a treasure trove of data, allowing us to profile the TV viewership behavior of customers in your database.

Once armed with the profile of an anonymized pool of your visitors or customers, we can employ the power of lookalike modeling. This strategic approach involves identifying new prospects exhibiting similar behavioral patterns, effectively expanding your reach with precision.

Example: Picture an online fashion retailer utilizing CTV lookalike modeling. By targeting audiences mirroring the TV consumption patterns of their most loyal customers, this retailer not only expands its customer base but does so with surgical precision, ensuring the outreach aligns seamlessly with the preferences of their existing audience.

Are There External Factors, Such as Seasonality or Weather, That Make Your Product More Appealing?

Understanding the impact of external factors like seasonality and weather is crucial for an effective CTV advertising strategy. Seasonal and weather targeting provides a powerful way to stay relevant by aligning your CTV campaign with consumer needs influenced by seasons or weather conditions. It enhances personalization and focuses your CTV advertising efforts by allowing you to tailor your CTV buys based on the regions or times where your product is most relevant. Additionally, it enables adaptability by allowing you to respond to changing consumer behavior in real time.

Example: A travel agency might use CTV advertising to promote sunny destinations during especially cold days during the winter months, or a streaming service could highlight cozy content on rainy days. By leveraging external factors in CTV advertising, marketers can tailor campaigns with precision, ensuring maximum impact and relevance.

Who Are Your Competitors Currently Reaching with Their Advertising, and Does It Make Sense to Target Them as Well to Increase Your Share-of-Voice?

Understanding your competitors' reach in advertising is crucial for devising a strategic campaign that enhances your share of voice. While it might be challenging to gauge a competitor's reach in their shared target audience, reaching out to us can provide valuable insights.

Once you have your hands on these insights, conquesting campaigns come into play. By strategically targeting the audience your competitors are reaching, you not only disrupt their share of voice but also increase your own visibility among potential customers. You can tailor your approach based on market conditions — a red ocean strategy involves dialing up spend in specific DMAs where competitors dominate the share-of-voice, intensifying the competition. On the other hand, a blue ocean strategy focuses on DMAs where both you and your competitors have a low share of voice, presenting an opportunity to capture market share in less contested territories.

Example: Consider a scenario where a new streaming service aims to challenge an established competitor. By employing a conquesting campaign, the newcomer strategically increases its CTV advertising spend in DMAs where the competitor holds sway. This red ocean approach not only disrupts the competitor's dominance but also elevates the newcomer's share of voice, making waves in the competitive landscape.

Creative and Media Strategies: Crafting the Message

Diversifying creatives for different audience segments, paired with optimizing media plans, enhances the effectiveness of upper-funnel campaigns, by ensuring a dynamic and resonant message that captivates diverse viewer preferences.

Example: A car manufacturer tailors its creatives differently for families, adventure seekers, and tech enthusiasts, optimizing media placement for maximum impact.

Metrics in this phase focus on reach and frequency, aiming to keep the brand top-of-mind and capture early interest in the sales funnel. They often can extend to mid-funnel metrics, such as site visitation or app installs.

Precision Targeting: Strategies for Lower-Funnel Success

In the lower funnel, where the goal is to transition prospects into valued customers, precision targeting takes center stage. This phase hinges on refined strategies, directing efforts towards high-intent audiences and actions that propel conversions. A powerful tool in this arsenal is CTV retargeting, a strategic approach that capitalizes on the familiarity already established with potential customers.

CTV retargeting operates on the principle that targeting those who have visited your site or app yet haven't completed a purchase and those who have encountered your CTV ad but haven't taken action yet can significantly amplify conversion efforts. The effectiveness of retargeting lies in capturing the attention of individuals who have already shown interest, ensuring your brand remains top-of-mind during their decision-making process.

Example: Consider an e-commerce platform leveraging CTV retargeting. For those who visited their site without making a purchase, a strategic retargeting campaign nudges them towards making a transaction, gently reminding them of the brand and encouraging them to return. Simultaneously, for those who have seen their CTV ad but have yet to take action, a well-timed retargeting effort keeps the brand in their consideration set. It's a delicate balance, avoiding over-frequency while strategically using retargeting to remain present in the consumer's mind at the critical moment of purchase intent.

Metrics in this phase focus on lower-funnel metrics such as successful purchases and transactions or leads generated from form fills.

The Harmonious Symphony: Crafting a Holistic CTV Strategy

The key to CTV success lies in orchestrating a balanced approach across the entire customer journey. While optimizing for lower funnel conversions is vital, neglecting the upper funnel can stifle long-term growth. Crafting a holistic strategy sustains growth by continually feeding the marketing funnel with new prospects and awareness.

In conclusion, CTV campaigns are a multifaceted landscape, offering marketers a spectrum of strategies to capture and engage audiences across different stages of the customer journey. By tailoring campaigns to each phase, marketers can unlock the full potential of CTV advertising, creating a seamless and effective brand narrative.

Ready to dive in? Reach out to one of our experts to get started.