TV advertising has always been about understanding the consumer so you can engage them with the most relevant content. However, it’s getting more and more complicated every day as human attention spans grow shorter and the number of content platforms increase.  

To stay competitive in this noisy media landscape, you need to understand exactly what resonates with your target audience so that you can maximize ROI and optimize content.

In the previous blog, we talked about how TV advertising remains a relevant marketing channel and what the landscape looks like today. To help you figure out to best leverage TV as an advertising channel, we are covering these four trends:

  • The impact of new attribution metrics on the measuring TV
  • The rise of addressable TV
  • How a cookieless future impacts advertisers
  • Adding TV to cross-channel marketing strategies
  • TV attribution tools and assessing the cost

Trend #1: The impact of new attribution metrics to measure TV ads 

In recent years, we have seen new types of attribution models emerge that make it possible to provide proof of performance metrics for linear channels (i.e., radio and television). The pandemic saw a shift in advertising dollars towards digital channels because of their clear view into ROI, helping justify spending during a time of tightening budgets.

Radio and television advertising suffered because of their historical lack of performance metrics. But that shift is starting to swing back the other way thanks to addressable TV and broadcast-to-web attribution. For the latter, broadcasters can probe the lift on an advertiser’s website, tying it to a specific TV ad that ran. 

Previously, this was challenging to track. But now that advertisers can track the efficacy of their TV ads more clearly, they can have the confidence to spend more money efficiently and identify opportunities for improvement. Combining this with addressable TV, advertisers now have more than ever greater insight into how they are impacting the people on the other side of the screen.

Trend #2: The rise of addressable TV

Addressable TV is a form of advertising in which content creators can reach viewers based on criteria such as geographic location, age, gender, and other factors. The interactive nature of addressable TV allows advertisers to measure its effectiveness by not only determining how many people saw their ad but also whether those people made a purchase or took some sort of action after seeing it. This actionable data is what allows for an attribution metric, which determines how effective a specific marketing effort was at turning viewers into customers.

The benefits of addressable advertising include:

  • Enables advertisers to narrow their scope of targeting to a target demographic using either set-top box data or first-party data.
  • Deliver more relevant content and messaging, increasing engagement and make viewers more likely to remember and respond to a message
  • Makes it easier to test different messages while spending less money on wasted inventory space

Addressable marketing will play a crucial role combating the negative ripple effects caused by a cookieless world for advertisers and marketers alike.

Trend #3: A Cookieless future for advertisers

According to an Invisibly survey, 70% of respondents do not agree with companies tracking them for marketing purposes. While many have prepared for a cookieless future, there’s still roughly one third of practitioners who aren’t ready. Advertisers will be left having to rely on better targeting methods and in a way get back to basics. Well what does that mean?

It means making sure that content aligns with their audiences. The pandemic shuffled audiences across the board. As a such, brands will have to in a way refabricate for their transformed consumer base and ensure that content aligns with them at every engagement.

Trend #4: Adding Traditional TV to cross-channel marketing strategies

Cross-channel, or multichannel, marketing isn’t necessarily new. Marketers have always tried to reach their target audience across multiple channels. The ones that achieve success know how to narrow down and focus their efforts on the channels that produce the best results for their brand.

While there was a shift away from TV, driven by a lack of metrics to validate budgets, that shift has already started to recede. And with the move towards a cookieless world, TV will become an opportunity channel for those looking for new channels that are less impacted. Combined with addressable TV, the channel can be a nice addition to a cross-channel strategy.

TV attribution tools and a look towards advertising costs

TV attribution has suffered from not having modern tools to validate campaigns and the efficacy of ads. Veritone Attribute, an AI-powered web-to-broadcast attribution solution, has helped major media brands and small stations retain and win more ad dollars. Through its intuitive dashboard, advertisers can prove the performance of an ad with data in near-real time, helping them prove to clients their ROI.

With this capability, stations can now unlock customer relationships with data. Rather than leveraging a single message, they can help advertisers improve and optimize campaigns by tracking the lift of an advertiser received on their website after an ad has run. In doing so, their clients can tailor their future messages and double down on the ones that are resonating. This helps them validate the cost of advertising with advanced TV attribution metrics, a topic we’ll cover in more detail in the next blog.