As the weather grows colder during the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans will choose to stay indoors rather than patio dining, outdoor market shopping and brewery hopping that they became accustomed to during the summer and fall. With winter months limiting in-person social meetups, we expect to see phone, computer and TV usage continue to rise.
This is important for your paid social and display strategies: how can you effectively target consumers watching TV or other devices as they check their phones while streaming this holiday season?
Display and paid social channels’ capabilities are vast and one area on the rise is Connected TV (CTV). Brands should keep this opportunity top of mind and view CTV as a part of their strategy because nearly 90% of viewers move sequentially throughout the day to a second device.
CTV has become popular with streaming services such as Hulu, Amazon and Roku. It creates advertising space for brands that can speak to their viewers and develop audiences that span across screens.
“Over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV (CTV) top the list of changes in personal media consumption due to COVID-19 with 80% of people reporting increased use of streaming services per Advertiser Perceptions. So it should be no surprise that CTV ad requests are up 105% according to Beachfront via TV Rev,”said Aaron Goldman, CMO of the software company MediaOcean.
At Blue Moon Digital, we can easily add on CTV buys through our display channel offerings either programmatically or through a direct buy with a CTV partner. These strategies are targeted and customized to reach any number of different audiences that you are looking to find in a new and different way. These types of buys are informative and measures engagement in a new way that indicates when responses are the highest alongside certain TV programming.
We also have some exciting ways to connect display CTV buys with social strategy through our Paid Social tool MediaOcean. This tool allows us to truly hone in on the 2nd screen mentality and target users on their social channel based upon the CTV or TV content they are consuming and target them in real time as they are watching actively on a CTV device.
For example, if your viewer is watching a football game, they are likely to check their phone during halftime or commercial breaks. MediaOcean gives us the capability to target viewers of that game while the game is on a pause and serve them an ad on their phone, tablet or laptop device.
MediaOcean also has in-depth insights that can help give direction to display CTV buys. Within the tool, we can look at our client’s core audience and gain insights into which TV programming they are engaging with. We can use that information to target our social and display campaigns accordingly. This also can be a great way to test new audiences purely off their viewing behaviors. Does your ad resonate better with a die-hard Broncos fan who is watching the game, or with their partner who is sitting next to them glued to their Instagram feed?
Think about your own experience with CTV—you tend to see some ads on repeat as you binge-watch your latest show. There are tons of opportunities to get your brand into the mix and in front of active audiences. We cannot emphasize enough the open territory of running CTV ads and using cross-channel insights to make this strategy cohesive.
In a time of uncertainty, things can change quickly and it is best, as an advertiser, to be prepared to pivot and adjust program entities based on any changes that come during the holiday shopping season. We’re here to help. Drop us a line to set up a time to discuss how we can create a CTV strategy customized to your brand.
