Why Connected TV Is This Year’s Big Holiday Opportunity

10 Min Read

If you’ve been following our blog content recently, you would have learned that 2020 is set to be the biggest e-commerce event ever.  While we continue the much anticipated countdown before we unveil our annual holiday guide, we thought we’d start unwrapping the ‘presents’ a little earlier with some content bundles for you to enjoy.

2020 Shines a Spotlight on Connected TV Advertising

Connected TV (CTV) ad spend in the US is expected to increase by almost 30% this year, and industry reports anticipate that over half of marketers are following suit in H2 2020, which outperforms non-CTV/OTT video ads (56%) and social media (56%). You know that CTV is here to stay when there are “Best of” lists floating around, like this one on Forbes. 

We recently released a feature on MarketingLand which dispels any rumour that Connected TV is a passing trend – it’s a cultural shift in the way we consume media. The COVID-19 pandemic has one part to play as a driving force behind cord-cutting, but figures indicate that the arrows were already pointing in CTV’s direction: 

There are now 400M CTV devices in U.S. TV homes, up 250M four years ago – that’s a 60% increase.

How COVID-19 Changed the CTV Viewing Landscape

In addition to driving people into homes for the unforeseeable future, the pandemic has far reaching effects that are set to not only impact the holiday period, but other major e-commerce events throughout the year, like the current Back-to-School season. 

Research studies show that CTV household adoption was expected to reach 82% by 2023, but we’re already at that point faster than expected, with an 81% YoY increase in CTV viewing time. More importantly, viewers are no longer using one or two ways of consuming TV, which was evident pre-COVID-19. As the visual below shows, media and entertainment consumption on smartphones, Connected TV and internet have increased and indicates that cross-device usage is now the norm.

We’ve also noticed that primetime isn’t what it used to be pre-COVID. Data shows that global primetime hours are shifting earlier than usual, and CTV analysis site nScreenMedia reports that daytime streaming hours are overall up 39%:

•  31% more streaming hours on CTV devices at 5pm
• 20% more between the hours of 5 to 7pm
• 26% more between 6 to 9am

Advertisers are catching on to this shift, and are also cutting the cord from an ad budget standpoint, to increase spend on CTV.

Why Connected TV Advertising is the Biggest Gift to Advertisers This Holiday Season

A boost in e-commerce sales is one thing that advertisers have to look forward to, after an initial slump in consumer activity – but let’s not forget that Connected TV advertising is the biggest gift for brands hoping to reach their target audience, break through the clutter and drive measurable conversions:

• Support a cross-device mindset: Hands up if you only rely on one device to search information, consume entertainment and make purchases? Most likely, it’s going to be any permutation of TV, desktop/laptop, phones and tablet. 
  
  This might be of concern to advertisers with a limited budget trying to reach users across all of these devices, but luckily there is a solution out there that will reach users on these touch points. MNTN Performance TV was built on the premise that viewers live a busy cross-device life. Our solution enables them to:
  
  
  • Use their own first-party data to retarget users who are interested in the brand by serving them CTV ads on their TV screens.
    
    
  • Launch prospecting ads to over 70,000+ third-party audience segments through our partnership with Oracle Data Cloud, one of the world’s leading data providers. We recommend a combination of third-party and first-party targeting for your ad to hit across all points.
    
    
• Engage your audience with Living Room Quality ads: Our Living Room Quality feature keeps viewers eyes glued to the screen, but also supports the cross-device mindset:
  
  
  • 15 or 30 second non-skippable ads are served directly to your TV screens (not mobile or desktop) for a true CTV experience.  This also happens to achieve an average 95% completion rate, which is proof that viewers aren’t mindlessly channel surfing but fully engaged with these ads.
    
    
  • Only served on top-tier, premium TV networks. We’ve carefully selected 125+ top notch programs to house your ads, so you can be confident that your ads will run alongside brand-safe, fraud free episodic content. These were handpicked for their ability to drive performance, and are household names that we all know and love – including ESPN, CNN and Food Network.
    
    
• Make every view count (and count every view): Brand engagement and perception aside, MNTN Performance TV also appeals to the needs of a performance marketer and is engineered to be measured and tracked like any other direct-response channel. 
  
  
  • Cross-Device Verified Visits: Our proprietary model maps and tracks the entire customer journey across each touchpoint after a CTV ad is served. Not only are advertisers able to see where and how traffic is coming to their site, but it also measures which of those users ultimately convert (and the value of those conversions). 
    
    
  • Google Analytics (GA) Integration: Treat and measure CTV advertising like any other channel in your digital marketing mix. Our integration enables advertisers to get a holistic view of their campaigns and also see how their CTV ads perform alongside their other digital channels, like search and social.  
    
    
  • One single reporting interface: These solutions can be accessed and viewed on a single dashboard, eliminating the need to download multiple reports from different sources. We wanted to make reporting and analytics as easy as possible, which is why all of the marketing metrics can be configured any which way – in other words, customized metrics become the standard with MNTN Performance TV. 

We’ve got more presents coming your way – watch this space as we unwrap our next content feature in the lead up to our holiday guide. In the meanwhile, if you’re ready to try out MNTN Performance TV, sign up for a free-demo below and one of our team members will be in touch.