CTV Advertising Opportunities for eCommerce Brands

Connected TV (CTV) advertising is a fast-growing digital advertising channel expected to exceed traditional TV in ad spending in the coming years. Statista predicts that by 2024, spending on CTV advertising in the United States will reach $30.1 billion. This growth is not surprising, as people are spending more time watching streaming TV and browsing the internet for products to buy. As a result, there is an increasing demand from brands to connect with potential customers in new and more effective ways.

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In this blog, we will explore Connected TV (CTV) advertising and how eCommerce brands can benefit from this evolving digital advertising form. In addition, you’ll learn more about ways to use Amazon’s Streaming TV ads for your brand.

Connected TV (CTV) and CTV Advertising

Connected TV (CTV) is a device connected to the internet that can stream digital content, including smart TVs with access to streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, external devices connected to a TV, such as Roku, Amazon Fire TV, and Apple TV, gaming consoles that offer streaming service apps, and suitable Blue-ray players. 

Faced with increased traditional TV advertising costs, and a growing number of streaming device users and online shoppers, more eCommerce brands are moving away from traditional TV advertising and investing in CTV advertising. While linear (traditional) TV is programmed and watched as scheduled on television through a satellite or cable network, CTV ads reach viewers via Connected TV. 

CTV advertising broadcasts video ads through internet-connected CTV using its digital features to offer more targeted, interactive, and measurable ad experiences than traditional linear TV ads. For eCommerce brands, CTV advertising is a cost-effective way to connect with target audiences and boost their digital marketing efforts.

Targeting and Personalization with CTV Ads

CTV advertising has higher audience targeting accuracy than traditional TV ads, leading to greater engagement and conversion rates. You can leverage first-party data from streaming devices and third-party data to target users with high precision. This can be done across age, gender, lifestyle, purchase behavior, and other parameters.

With CTV advertising, you can target audiences based on location, ensuring your ads reach viewers in specific locations. Also, utilize CTV ads to retarget users who have previously interacted with your website, encouraging them to buy.

Enhanced Ad Engagement and Creative

CTV advertisements can be highly immersive since you can create interactive and personalized ads, providing a more engaging and memorable experience. Viewers can interact with these ads to request more details, visit your website, or shop online. Shoppable ads enable viewers to purchase products directly from the ad without leaving the streaming experience. You can add QR codes to your CTV ads, allowing viewers to scan them using mobile devices and learn more about your brand and products.

Utilize high-quality video content to showcase your products in use, highlight features, and create compelling brand stories. You can stand out from competitors by employing CTV's innovative ad formats and interactive features. 

Real-Time Measurement and Analytics

CTV ad campaigns can be tracked in real-time, including metrics like impressions, clicks, view-through rates, and conversions, allowing immediate campaign improvements. 

Connected TV advertising provides detailed insights into viewer behavior, ad engagement, and conversion rates. This can help you refine targeting strategies and optimize CTV ad spend. Use advanced analytics to see how CTV ads contribute to your overall marketing goals, including sales and brand lift. 

Brand Awareness, Reach, and Customer Loyalty

With CTV advertising, you can reach a wider audience, making it a great option for new product launches and brand awareness campaigns. A strong brand awareness strategy includes creating ads with clear and enticing CTAs and connecting with audiences across various devices, ensuring consistent messaging and a broader reach.

You can use viewer data to offer personalized promotions and improve brand loyalty. Launching follow-up campaigns based on previous interactions will foster customer relationships and encourage them to purchase again from your brand.

Amazon’s Streaming TV Ads for eCommerce Brands

Streaming TV (STV) ads from Amazon Ads are full-screen, non-skippable video ads, typically viewed on the largest screen in a household. These ads can appear on video content such as TV shows, movies, and live entertainment, including Amazon’s Owned & Operated streaming content, like Prime Video, Freevee, Twitch, and Fire TV Channels. Best of all, you don’t have to sell on Amazon to buy Streaming TV ads.

STV ads can help you drive brand awareness and lead to the purchase intent, and additional performance metrics throughout the full funnel. Regardless of the KPI (awareness vs ROAS), this advertising tactic can help you reach engaged audiences through unique targeting capabilities in premium content, with data, insights, and measurable results.

Using Amazon DSP and AMC for Streaming TV Ads

Blue Wheel can set up Streaming TV ads for your brand to run across all supplies available within Amazon DSP either by grouping the inventory as a bundle or running a private marketplace deal with a specific publisher. 

When utilizing Streaming TV ads, we can leverage Amazon's first-party audiences, based on billions of observed shopping and streaming signals, to target CTV users. This includes various audience categories such as lifestyle, in-market, lookalike, purchase, streaming audiences, ASIN retargeting audiences, gender, and third-party ingested segments. Through Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), we typically observe less than 50% overlap between Streaming TV and non-STV (Display and online video) customers, ensuring a unique reach.

We can create audiences in AMC for remarketing to users who have already viewed a Streaming TV ad for a brand. Additionally, AMC custom audiences can be utilized to target users exposed to Streaming TV ads. With AMC, we can measure the additional reach generated by Streaming TV compared to Display, online video (OLV), or Search ads, as well as the synergies across all channels.

Programmatic Advertising and Brand Lift

CTV ad buying makes purchasing premium TV ad slots much more accessible than traditional TV ad buying. One of the primary advantages of purchasing Streaming TV ads programmatically is the ability to measure the success of your campaign. 

For brand-building Streaming TV campaigns focused on growing reach, key metrics to track include impressions delivered, unique reach, and video completion rate. With app-level campaign reporting, we can track the CTV apps where ad budget is utilized and measure various metrics such as CPMs, impressions, etc. Additionally, we can conduct a brand lift study to check a Streaming TV ad’s impact on consumer awareness, preference, ad recall, intent to purchase, and more.

Our Clients’ Streaming TV Ad Campaigns

‍Ariat, a Blue Wheel client, wanted to enhance brand awareness and implement a comprehensive full-funnel marketing strategy to attract new customers. We have approached this together in an innovative way to combine upper-funnel and lower-funnel tactics. Testing the efficacy of Streaming TV ads during Thursday Night Football (TNF) on Prime Video, we used high-visibility placement to capture the attention of a broad audience.

To understand and leverage how these upper-funnel tactics could drive returns further down the funnel, we utilized Amazon DSP to create remarketing audiences, targeting viewers who had seen the TNF ads with Amazon DSP ads. This strategic move ensured the initial brand awareness generated by Streaming TV ads was effectively converted into actionable lower-funnel engagement.

By combining these innovative advertising approaches, Ariat was able to bridge the gap between upper-funnel awareness and lower-funnel conversions. The campaign demonstrated how integrating Streaming TV ads with precise remarketing strategies can enhance customer engagement, bring in new customers, and drive tangible results.

Jack Black, an Edgewell portfolio brand, collaborated with Blue Wheel and Amazon on an exclusive venture to engage with a Thursday Night Football (TNF) audience via a Sponsored TV ad campaign. The advertisement featured a QR code that directed viewers to the DTC website, which included a unique landing page with a coupon code for tracking purposes. This traffic supported fueling DTC advertising campaigns at the bottom of the funnel. Moreover, the engagement garnered from the advertisement was leveraged in the Amazon DSP campaign.

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To Conclude

Many eCommerce brands use CTV advertising to benefit from its advanced targeting, engaging ad formats, measurement capabilities, and integration with broader digital marketing strategies. With the right advertising strategy, you can leverage CTV ads to increase brand visibility, connect with your target audience, and boost sales.

If you want to incorporate Connected TV advertising into your strategy, contact our Amazon Ads & Amazon DSP experts today!