It’s no secret that audiences are streaming more premium content than ever before. Movies, documentaries, crime, drama – Connected TV (CTV) has it all. And it’s not just the quality of content that attracts audiences. It’s the fact they can choose what to watch, whenever they want, be it at home or on the go.
Now, we’re not saying linear TV has had its day. But, with the explosion of streaming platforms offering audiences flexible access to the premium content they crave, the trend shows audiences are shifting to CTV: European viewers we surveyed in 2023 said they watched 44% more streaming TV and 47% less traditional TV compared to the previous year. All of which means marketers must think smarter about their TV campaigns, using both linear TV and CTV to reach audiences.
Here are three ways our platform can help make your TV campaigns a hit.
1. Measure incremental reach effectively
As you shift budget from linear to CTV, you may worry that you’re simply reaching the same audiences on both channels. With incremental-reach measurement, we can help you see if you’re reaching duplicative or net-new audiences not available on linear TV.
When it comes to measurement, we offer an objective, marketplace approach. We partner with many third-party providers that specialise in measuring incremental reach compared to linear TV. With this data, you can make informed decisions about the success of your overall TV strategy, instead of looking at the different channels in silos.
2. Manage frequency and reduce wasted spend
While linear TV is great for reaching a wide audience, it lacks the ability for you to control frequency across households. As a result, you may increase frequency on linear TV in the hopes of reaching new households, which can lead to wasted spend (and a poor viewing experience for customers).
As a digital channel, CTV gives you far more control, enabling you to manage frequency down to the household level. This means you make sure your CTV buys are not over-indexing to just frequent TV viewers – or making potential customers tired of your ads.
By consolidating your CTV buys on our platform, you’ll be able to manage frequency holistically across all CTV publishers (virtually impossible when buying CTV through direct publisher deals). By doing so, you can offset the higher CTV CPM relative to linear TV and likely achieve a more efficient cost per household.
3. Implement an omnichannel approach
You want to know just how valuable and impactful your TV campaign is, right? Well, by running CTV as part of an omnichannel programmatic ad strategy on our platform, you can do just that.
When adopting an omnichannel approach, you can use our powerful household identity graph to connect your marketing strategy to your TV strategy, gain a holistic view of your consumers and see the role CTV plays in their path to conversion or action.
In fact, you’ll find a range of tools on our platform that can help you optimise towards your KPIs, prove the effectiveness of your campaign and gain insights you can apply to future campaigns, such as our Frequency savings report, as well as a publisher-level analysis to show benefits of publisher consolidation to compare incremental reach performance – all of which means you’re likely to get a better return on your investment. Which will keep your stakeholders happy.
Keen to learn more about CTV on The Trade Desk?
Reach out to your dedicated account manager today!