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Optimize Your Strategic Pharma Campaigns for Today’s Converged TV Advertising

In the continuously evolving landscape of TV advertising, the traditional stronghold of linear TV is facing stiff competition from digital media, particularly Connected TV (CTV). As audiences increasingly shift their attention to CTV, particularly with patients and health care providers (HCPs), pharmaceutical marketers are presented with a unique opportunity to maximize the impact of their campaigns with converged TV advertising.  

This fundamental change in consumer viewing habits calls for a data-driven, optimized strategy for pharma advertising to not only identify high-value audiences but also ensure their advertisements are seen as relevant. As a result, working with a reliable media partner is imperative for pharma marketers to successfully navigate this dynamic environment, strategize and optimize campaigns, achieve maximized ROAS, and exceed KPIs.  

Suppose an advertiser is promoting a new antibiotic for patients diagnosed with a specific ailment.  

Jack watches ESPN on his iPhone, his favorite Hulu show on his laptop, and ends the day with Netflix on his PlayStation. Sally, on the other hand, starts her day with local news and in the evening watches the BBC Home FAST channel on her smart TV. Both Jack and Sally have been diagnosed with the same ailment, making them the right audience for the advertiser. How can they effectively and privacy-consciously reach these audiences across various platforms? Successfully engaging Jack and Sally will require a precise audience data and media activation strategy.  

Identifying the Right Target 

One of the key advantages of implementing a converged approach to TV advertising is the ability to plan your campaign with a precise audience strategy.  

Working with trusted partners like Cadent unlocks the potential of utilizing robust and flexible audience tools, allowing advertisers to onboard and match first-party data securely and efficiently, and extend the value of your data by leveraging a wide variety of third-party data partners such as: 

Curating Audiences Across all Touchpoints 

As previously demonstrated with Jack and Sally, pharma and health-related audiences are not limited to one viewing device or experience, so knowing exactly where your audiences are is imperative to campaign success.  

Linear TV provides expansive reach through curated packages such as sports, with both live and in-game opportunities, and news packages, with the added benefit of daypart, geo, and addressable targeting. Yet the latest research suggests that pharma brands that underinvest in CTV are missing opportunities to reach consumers aged 50+ and HCPs as OTT offers the power of precision with first- and third-party data, allowing for enhanced contextual targeting.  

When it comes to consumer behavior, reports show that patients and doctors do not discern between platforms as much as marketers might think – TV is simply TV, regardless of where or how people are watching. You need a partner that can execute both, within a single platform, for efficient and effective campaign activation and measurement. By combining the reach of linear TV with the advanced targeting capabilities and unprecedented precision of OTT, pharma marketers can build a powerful and comprehensive media plan maximizing reach across over-indexing networks and dayparts while also delivering ads to precise household-level audiences prioritizing campaign relevance. 

Aperture Platform is data-agnostic offering pharma and health marketers access to an unparalleled depth of premium inventory at scale through open auctions, private marketplaces (PMPs), and direct deals – all in a fully secure and HIPAA-compliant manner – to meet audiences across relevant and available inventory. Our direct connections to supply across screens and devices provide pharma marketers access to 200+ MVPDs, 90+ cable networks, 1,100 broadcast stations, vMVPDs, SSP and exchange integrations, and direct publisher connections through Aperture MX. This means advertisers can leverage curated inventory across content categories such as health, news, sports, fitness, nursing, biotech, and more to effectively activate audiences across the converged TV environment and deliver a lift in incremental reach.  

Proving Performance in Pharmaceutical Marketing  

Choosing an integrated approach to audience targeting and cross-screen activation streamlines the advertising process, making it easy for advertisers to measure the success of their campaigns. Aperture Platform is integrated with best-in-class measurement partners to drive and quantify business results and measure metrics such as household penetration, Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) and pharmaceutical Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like doctor visitation, script lift, and new patients. 

By connecting high-value health audiences to brand-safe premium supply in a secure and HIPAA-compliant manner, Cadent empowers pharma marketers to reach their target audience and achieve their campaign objectives. 

The Perfect Prescription 

For pharmaceutical advertisers looking to embrace converged TV advertising, Cadent Aperture Platform stands as a beacon of intuitive technology that transforms health advertising into performance.  

Advertisers gain access to strategic planning and execution capabilities, enabling efficient data-driven campaigns across all screens – cable, broadcast, and OTT to confidently navigate the converged TV landscape, and ensure campaigns deliver maximum impact and value. 

Find out how to make the most of your media investments. Get in touch to learn how Cadent can support your pharma and health-related marketing campaigns.

How Retail Media Networks Can Maximize Advertising Potential

In today’s ever-evolving media landscape, brands are looking for innovative and effective ways to reach their target audiences. As consumer behavior and preferences continue to change, it is critical for marketers to take a data-driven approach to omnichannel marketing. To compete in this dynamic and competitive market, the rise of Retail Media Networks has become a game-changer for brands and retailers alike.  

The numbers do not lie – advertiser spending on off-site retail media is projected to grow from 10.3% in 2021 to 17% in 2025. Overall ad spending on off-site retail media is predicted to reach $11 billion in 2024, with retail media CTV ad spend accounting for $1.5 billion, according to Statista

Based on current trends, e-Marketer expects that marketers will have poured more than $45 billion into retail media advertising by the end of 2023.  

As we dive into the world of retail media, we will explore the benefits of this impactful tactic, opportunities for advanced targeting and measurement, as well as how marketers can extend the reach of their retail media campaigns.  

The Benefits of Retail Media 

Retail media refers to advertisements placed at or near the point of sale – whether it’s in a physical retail store or an e-commerce website. Retail Media Networks (RMNs) sit on the sell side, offering marketers several advertising solutions: in-store (aisle end caps and digital signage), on-site (display, online video, and sponsored reviews), and off-site (display, social, and CTV). Big box retailers such as Walmart, Target, and Home Depot have leaned into retail media with robust networks of brick-and-mortar and digital products.  

Brands have quickly realized the value of retail media and are moving budgets toward the retailers where they sell their products.  

Interested in learning more about retail marketing? Learn how a CPG brand found success with in-store and CTV advertising. 

At a recent event hosted by Insider, Glen Conybeare, Global President, Reprise Commerce & Retail Media at IPG Mediabrands shared, “As marketers, we — agencies and brands alike — have become hooked on accountability, on targeting, and that’s going away on the open internet in a lot of cases. But within retail media, you can really pinpoint an audience quite accurately and marketers love that.” 

However, we believe that RMNs and marketers have only just begun to scratch the surface of the full potential of retail media. At present, off-site tends to be the last piece of an RMN tech stack, and many have yet to include it in their offering.  

The Challenge 

As the effectiveness of social media and search declines, and the depreciation of third-party cookies looms, marketers need to future-proof their retail advertising. As the value of retail media increases, marketers need to find ways to use this channel and extend reach through other growing channels, such as CTV and online video (OLV).  

Simultaneously, RMNs are racing to keep up with market trends, and often lack CTV capabilities, identity solutions, or both. Without access to CTV inventory or tools for targeting and activation, RMNs are limited to in-store and on-site placements. To maximize revenue, RMNs must develop partnerships that will provide them with CTV reach extension, first-party data onboarding, and closed-loop measurement. 

How Cadent Aperture Platform Can Support the Retail Media Ecosystem 

For RMNs that need an easier way to onboard brand customers’ first-party data to build privacy-safe custom audiences, or expand off-site capabilities to CTV, Cadent offers multiple solutions to target, activate, and measure retail campaigns – down to the local level.  

Aperture, our converged TV platform, simplifies cross-screen advertising through a streamlined workflow that brings together identity, data, and inventory with hundreds of integrated partners. 

With Aperture Platform, RMNs can build audiences through first-party data and custom audience segments, enhance them with third-party data to target viewers with the right advertisement, and then activate audiences across national and hyper-local CTV, digital, and display. Through Aperture’s customized supply scale, RMNs can optimize campaigns as they gain more insights into strategic audience viewership trends.  

Aperture Viewer Graph, Cadent’s proprietary and privacy-compliant identity graph, maps customer data to 4 billion match keys across zip codes, emails, IP addresses, and more than 100MM+ households – all without the use of cookies. Aperture also enables RMNs to define their own geo radius for targeting.  

Cadent provides multi-faceted RMN solutions across data onboarding, audience building with third-party data partners, and campaign activation, allowing partners to expand their RMN off-site offerings to reach audiences in a meaningful way—wherever, whenever, and how ever they’re watching – helping to build deeper customer relationships and drive action. 

Ready to discuss how Cadent Aperture Platform can support your retail media needs?  

Get in touch with the Cadent sales team to get started today. 

3 Key Takeaways from Advertising Week 2023

Advertising Week New York took over the newly named “Penn District” last week. This year, conversations focused on retail media, AI, and data. In addition to a packed schedule of panels and presentations, attendees could experience the latest Netflix shows with a claw game and record shop, check out Google’s Formula 1 race car, or enjoy a full slate of special programming in Female Quotient’s Equality Lounge. While many sessions discussed the obstacles advertisers face in an uncertain market, others spoke optimistically about the future of the industry and what innovations are on the horizon.  

In case you missed it, here are the three key takeaways from Advertising Week.  

1. Programmatic CTV is Driving the Industry Forward 

TV advertising has evolved from a channel best suited for upper funnel awareness to a lower funnel marketing tactic able to generate measurable sales lift. By measuring campaigns against strategic business outcomes, advertisers can now understand how their CTV efforts are driving sales and other KPIs.  

“If you think about CTV pre-pandemic, [advertisers] were not applying a lot of data to their buys, either due to scale issues or the increased cost of data CPM on the media CPM, so from a data standpoint, it was still early days of data for CTV. Now we see a spike where it’s a very rich data media tactic to use,” said Conor Burgess, VP, Business Development at Acxiom. 

The combination of better audience inputs and reporting outputs has made CTV an exceedingly valuable channel for marketers.  

2. It’s Time to Refine Your Data Strategy 

More data is available to advertisers than ever before, but it’s not just a matter of having data – you must be able to activate your data across channels.  

Diana Haussling, SVP – GM, Consumer Experience & Growth at Colgate-Palmolive, explained, “You need a well-rounded data set to allow you to know if what you’re doing is working or not… you really have to play around with the mix itself of your different media levers.” 

Maureen Bosetti, Chief Investment Officer at Initiative, echoed this sentiment saying, “If we don’t get better data to help inform, ‘what is that right level of optimization we’re doing across TV, OTT, CTV, social video, digital video?’ We can’t look at CTV in isolation from all these other touchpoints.” She elaborated saying, “We need the right data feeds […] to make informed decisions in terms of how much we should be investing in those channels.”  

Maureen emphasized the importance of getting your data strategy right ‘upstream’ in the planning process, you cannot successfully execute cross-screen campaigns. 

Effective omnichannel marketing will rely on implementing a holistic data strategy.  

Learn about Aperture Dashboard and Measurement Marketplace, Cadent’s advanced reporting tools. 

3. Proof of Performance is Table Stakes 

Macroeconomic challenges persist, pushing C-suite brand executives to expect quantifiable accountability on all their media investments. 

“All media should perform, hard stop. It shouldn’t be brand versus performance. It’s a matter of selecting the right KPIs in those moments,” said Vinny Rinaldi, US Head of Media at The Hershey Company. 

Adam Davis, Senior Marketing Manager at Magnolia Bakery described how CTV has become a performance tactic, rather than just an awareness play for the brand. 

“A lot of people in the industry have these thoughts that a certain tactic is tied to a certain objective and only that objective. Two and half years ago if you had asked me, I would have said video – upper funnel, rich media – mid-funnel, Facebook ads, and Google ads – low funnel. That’s full-funnel advertising. Excellence in CTV now hits across all three of those stages in the story,” Adam explained. So, with the right solutions in place, Magnolia is able to track performance down to the order level, directly connecting an order to a CTV exposure. 

Yet while measurement has become a necessity, several measurement challenges remain in our deeply fragmented industry. First and foremost, the debate over currency.  “If you do not have alignment on currency, it becomes difficult to measure anything,” shared Chris Martinez, OTT, Director of Sales at Hearst Television. 

As demand for improved measurement increases, it is up to technology vendors and data providers to work together to develop innovative solutions.  

Interested in learning more about Cadent’s converged TV advertising capabilities?    

  

Why Programmatic Deals Are the Driving Force Behind the CTV Renaissance

Before the dawn of digital, buying and selling TV advertising required paper spreadsheets, fax machines, and a rolodex of publishers. In more recent years, progress has been made, and the industry is undergoing a shift from IO-based buying to real-time bidding.  

Programmatic advertising technology enables advertisers to leverage their ad-buying transaction type of choice, whether it’s an open exchange, private marketplace, or programmatic guaranteed, to purchase ad inventory. Each type has unique benefits to meet the various needs of different advertisers. As programmatic deals continue to evolve, they have helped to unify digital audiences, inventory, data, and measurement into more streamlined workflows.  

However, it’s important to understand not only the benefits of each transaction type but when and how they should be integrated into your digital advertising strategy. In this blog post, we break down the key terms you need to know and explain how you can use programmatic buying for your next CTV advertising campaign.  

Understanding Types of Programmatic Transactions 

Programmatic buying and selling of CTV ad inventory continue to grow as both advertisers and publishers lean into the digital transformation sweeping the ad industry. To avoid any confusion, below we’ve defined a few key terms.  

  • Open Exchange – Open exchange buying via real-time bidding (RTB) is the process of programmatic buying through an auction process. During this auction, multiple advertisers are bidding on the same inventory, and the highest bidder, based on CPM (cost per impression), wins the inventory.  
  • Private Marketplace (PMP) – PMPs are a programmatic buying mechanism that aggregates supply so a limited number of advertisers can buy targeted ad inventory from an individual or a select group of publishers. Advertisers access PMPs through a deal ID which is used to identify the marketplace that meets the advertiser’s specified criteria, often based on audience and CPM. There is also typically a floor price – the minimum price a publisher has agreed to receive for its inventory.  
  • Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) – PG deals are a type of buying that combines the benefits of programmatic with guaranteed inventory. Unlike PMPs, these 1:1 transactions occur when an advertiser agrees to a fixed CPM and a publisher commits to delivering a set number of impressions. Unlike a manual insertion order (IO), an automated system enables the transaction through a DSP. 

Interested in learning more about CTV? Here’s what you must know before investing in this advertising medium.  

The Benefits of PMP Deals 

Now that you understand the basics, let’s do a deeper dive into PMPs. If you’re an advertiser, PMP deals allow brand marketers to combine the efficiency of automated buying with the ability to negotiate custom deals with publishers. Additional benefits include:  

  • Increased Transparency 

    Brand safety is of the utmost importance for most marketers, making CTV feel like a risky medium for programmatic advertising. Yet with PMPs activated through a trusted partner, ad fraud is eliminated because you know what you’re buying and from whom.  
  • Access to Premium Inventory 

    When you use a PMP through a trusted partner, the deal IDs are built from direct publisher connections. This means you have more inventory control and fewer hops between buyer and seller. However, not all PMPs are alike – some marketplaces will include resellers.  
  • More Efficient 

    Programmatic buying is inherently more efficient than manual transactions, but PMPs in particular are efficient because you are removing inapplicable inventory. By using a PMP, the deal ID powers faster transactions therefore increasing your chances of winning bids. It also improves the likelihood of achieving your desired business outcomes.  

Publishers also benefit from PMPs. Increased transparency for advertisers also means greater control for publishers, as this transparency allows them additional insight into who bought their inventory. Further, PMPs mean access to new demand while simplified workflows automate the buying process, lessening the need for a direct sales investment. 

How Cadent Aperture Platform Can Help Advertisers 

Ready to try PMPs for your next CTV campaign? Get to know the Cadent Aperture media exchange – Aperture MX. The new Aperture MX team curates custom inventory packages for our advertiser customers. Our customers can then select the PMPs that meet their specific campaign goals at pre-negotiated rates.  

Aperture MX PMPs provide:  

  • Brand Safety 

    Increase transparency, reduce guesswork, and simplify your buying process. In an open marketplace, you may not know what publisher you’re buying inventory from, which can lead to a brand safety crisis – if your ad appears alongside inappropriate content, it can affect your brand reputation. Aperture MX PMPs allow you to avoid mystery inventory from unsuitable publishers by only offering inventory procured through our direct relationships with premium publishers 
  • Curated Inventory 

    With Aperture MX, tap into our curated inventory to meet your unique campaign objectives, from audience targeting to KPIs such as video completion rate (VCR). Using Aperture Platform also means you can activate true, omnichannel advertising across cable, broadcast, OTT/CTV, FAST channels, and digital extension, including display and online video (OLV). 
  • Control & Transparency

    Optimize your supply path and increase data fidelity by directly connecting to publishers – not resellers – within Aperture MX. Our PMP solution means you have greater control and can execute faster transactions. Filters in the Platform offer a simplified approach to identifying your KPIs, so you can bid against those goals. 
  • Targeting & Performance  

    By activating your PMP deals through the Aperture Converged TV DSP (a managed service solution), you can tap into first- and third-party data. Cadent Aperture Viewer Graph, our proprietary IP-to-Household matching technology, helps boost the targeting power of your campaign, while Measurement Marketplace, our catalog of best-in-class measurement partners, provides comprehensive campaign reporting and closed-loop measurement to validate your business outcomes.  

Interested in learning more about PMPs through Aperture MX?  

Get in touch with the Cadent sales team to get started today.  

How Incremental Reach Can Boost Your TV Advertising ROI

In today’s dynamic media landscape, marketers seek innovative ways to connect with their target audience more effectively and efficiently. Quality content matters, but the real value comes from effectively reaching audiences with the greatest impact. One strategy for boosting the exposure of that ideal target is to activate media across all places where consumers view content – maximizing the potential for incremental reach.  

Understanding Incremental Reach 

Incremental reach refers to the additional audience that your campaign can reach when activating beyond the traditional linear TV you already have in place. Using deterministic data, you can identify, target, and measure untapped viewers – an essential tactic as sweater weather approaches, bringing an opportunity for a fall-like bounty of new households being exposed to your campaign. 

By capitalizing on media inventory across all viewing environments, you can overcome the fragmented media landscape, expanding your exposure to light and medium linear TV viewership households. This strategy is increasingly important in a reality where oversaturation of content and ad fatigue are consistent challenges.  

This year marks the first time US adults will spend more time with digital video than with traditional TV, further signaling the widespread adoption of cord-cutting and making it crucial for marketers to adapt their strategies to reach new audiences to enhance conversion rates, decrease cost per visit, and expand ROAS.  

Deliver Incremental Audiences at Scale 

Cadent takes a data-driven approach to help you most effectively reach your audience based on their viewership habits across linear and CTV. Unlike other strategies that rely solely on third-party data extrapolation, Cadent leverages cross-screen viewership data through Aperture Platform powered by our Viewer Graph to derive precise audience segments within each household. With a persistent ID across all data elements, advertisers can expect minimal drop-off and data loss when it comes time to measure, resulting in a comprehensive understanding of reach and more accurate campaign insights. Cadent’s cross-screen reach analysis reveals the total and overlap reach of a multi-channel campaign at the household-level, measuring the impact of engaging an audience on CTV in conjunction with and comparison to a linear TV buy. 

Proven Cross-Screen Results  

When implementing data-driven reach strategies, Cadent advertisers experience unique-to-CTV reach above the reach of linear TV alone, garnering a substantial average lift in incremental reach, ranging from ~30% to 60%, all while using only 10% to 20% of a campaign budget. In addition, Cadent has observed an overall CTV cost per reach point of ~20-45% of the cost per reach point on linear TV, meaning advertisers are achieving higher cost-efficiency when reaching those new and unique target audiences through CTV platforms.  

In a recent campaign, a major CPG company came to Cadent to develop an effective cross-screen activation to reach audiences wherever they are watching. The results were impressive, driving a 28% lift in incremental reach. Notably, CTV contributed 12% of the total reach achieved, despite using only 15% of the overall campaign budget. And by incorporating CTV into the campaign’s media mix, the client was able to engage additional “medium” TV viewers and reach the elusive “light” TV viewers who may only be accessible through alternative inventory sources. 

LEARN MORE ABOUT INCREMENTAL REACH

What’s Next?  

While the media and advertising ecosystems continue to shift, it’s clear that achieving incremental reach cannot be overlooked. Cadent offers an optimal strategy to identify your target audience across screens and devices, maximizing household reach and optimizing performance, and provides advanced measurement solutions to contextualize the effectiveness of your campaign.  

Ready to activate and measure the incremental reach of your cross-screen campaigns?  

How National Streaming Day Can Help Attract New Customers

In the U.S., May 20th is National Streaming Day, a day to celebrate streaming in all its bingeable glory. Those who recognize the unofficial holiday gather with friends and family to stream their favorite movies and TV shows and share the #NationalStreamingDay love on social media. As if we needed a reason to applaud the benefits of streaming anymore, savvy marketers know connected TV (CTV) continues to grow 40% year-over-year, demonstrating endless opportunities for advertisers. 

Leveraging CTV 

National Streaming Day was first celebrated by Roku in 2014 as a means of promoting their streaming device. It has since become a day for other streaming platforms to promote new content, deals, and more. For example, ahead of Streaming Day in 2022, Disney used drones over Los Angeles to promote their brand and Hulu used enticing customer promotions to drive subscriptions and push trending content.  

It also serves as a reminder of the shifting TV consumption patterns, accelerated growth of CTV, and the importance of diversifying your media mix across linear and CTV to reach your target audiences.  

According to MediaPost, 65% of media buyers consider CTV a “must-buy” as it continues to be one of the fastest-growing media channels due to its advanced audience targeting capabilities and ability to reach unique audiences no longer found on linear TV. Implementing a cross-screen campaign will deliver incremental reach lift and engage new households and unique audiences otherwise not attained with linear TV. 

In a recent campaign for a craft & home décor store, activating across cable, broadcast, and CTV drove a 37% increase in-store visits. Read more >>>

It is important to reach audiences where they are given the seemly endless options for streaming. To better understand the CTV advertising landscape, here are three things you must consider before investing in CTV advertising

Using the Right Data 

Implementing a cross-screen strategy that includes OTT/CTV media requires developing a strategic approach to activate brand messaging. Asking the following questions will help kick-start the planning process to effectively engage audiences through CTV advertising:  

  • How will I identify my target audience? 
  • Where does your target audience consume media?   
  • What and how can you measure? 

Cadent’s unique approach to cross-screen advertising begins with Aperture Platform. Aperture allows advertisers to build audiences, identify households within that audience, activate across premium inventory, and report measurable insights. 

With access to over 100M households for 1-to-1 deterministic HH-level targeting across OTT and CTV media, 90+ cable networks, and 1000+ broadcast stations, Cadent allows marketers to reach the right audience, efficiently and effectively.   

Learn more about how the right data helps marketers engage audiences through connected TV. 

Adding Streaming to Your Media Mix 

National Streaming Day signals to marketers that it’s not only a time for streaming services to promote their platforms and any new or trending content, but it’s also essential to leverage ad-supported streaming in your media mix. When it comes down to it, there’s no wrong way to celebrate National Streaming Day! 

But, in case you need some new recommendations, here’s what we’re streaming on May 20th this year: 

  • Hulu: Class of ‘09 
  • Freevee: Jury Duty 
  • HBO Max: Oh Hell 
  • Peacock: Mrs. Davis 

Ready to add streaming to your media mix? Get in touch to learn how Cadent can support your OTT and CTV advertising needs.  

How CPG Brands and CTV Can Create Spellbinding Results This Halloween

Guest Author: Sarah Faustino, Senior Director, CPG Omnichannel Solutions, Catalina

With Valentine’s Day behind us and Easter just weeks away, it’s time to set our eyes and TV media buys on the next candy prize – Halloween.

The Halloween stock-up period starts eight weeks before the actual holiday, with consumers spending up to 17% of their total basket on candy, according to Catalina’s Shopper Intelligence Platform. Inflation took a toll on candy pricing and basket size in 2022. During the stock-up period last year, inflation was over 8% but the average candy basket size only increased by 5%, indicating that shoppers were cutting back. Although basket size may rise again if inflation continues its downward trend, we expect competition amongst brands will be even more fierce as marketers fight for their fair share of wallet.

Based on 2022 purchases, Catalina data shows regional differences with Midwesterners buying a larger proportion of gummies and jellybeans, Southerners gravitating toward non-chocolate choices, while mainstream chocolate was most popular in the Northeast. In contrast, West Coast parents didn’t do as much stocking up in advance and picked up more non-chocolate products in 2022. 

As advertisers begin to work on this year’s Halloween media plans, we anticipate these questions will be top of mind: 

  • How do I get higher-quality CTV Targeting?
  • What can I do to optimize my CTV ad spend? 
  • How can I prove my CTV campaign’s impact/performance? 

Reaching the Right Ghouls and Goblins

Using purchase-based targeting, you can identify your precise consumers and audience segments to capitalize on emerging Halloween trends. For example, recent Catalina research found households with kids, particularly Millennials, are buying slightly less chocolate. Similarly, brands can take advantage of purchase data to engage shoppers based on their preferred flavors – from caramel to mint to strawberry. Chances are, Catalina has an audience for that!  

The real magic happens when Catalina’s powerful shopper data aligns at the household level with Cadent HH IDs to deliver CTV ads to exactly whom you want to reach. With a 99% match rate, you can be confident that ads are delivered to the right household for your precise target. From pumpkin flavor seekers to scratch home bakers, the possibilities are endless when it comes to finding the right product for your seasonal products.      

Conjuring Spooky Activation Efficiency

Wherever the economy stands this Fall, every marketing dollar will count. With responsive marketing techniques, you can intelligently deliver relevant media based on the behavior of your most valuable shoppers. 

For example, Catalina had a client looking for ways to amplify their penetration strategy. They were running upper-funnel advertising and lower-funnel promotions but couldn’t ensure these activities were working together efficiently. Catalina helped to serve a high-value trial incentive only to those who saw the TV ad three times but had not yet purchased it.

Check out how this brand saw a $59,000 cost savings by tracking those who converted on CTV and brought in 74,000 New Buyers. 

Creating a Campaign That’s S’more Efficient

Consumer TV consumption has changed with online video-serviced households now outnumbering those with cable and satellite TV. Yet, according to eMarketer[1], marketers would boost their CTV ad spending if it could deliver higher quality targeting data, create more efficiency in their media planning and buying process, and display more transparent measurement.

With the right partners, these needs have not only been met but proven. Together, Catalina and Cadent worked with Stuffed Puffs and their media agency to keep this chocolate and marshmallow treat top-of-mind and drive trial. 

Leveraging our consumer purchase-based insights, Catalina and Cadent developed a strategic CTV campaign to pinpoint Marshmallow & Smores Buyers who had never purchased the brand before, as well as the brand’s current competitive and lapsed buyers. With media inflight, Catalina’s Multi-Touch Attribution measurement allowed them to make in-flight tweaks to optimize at the audience level. The campaign lifted sales by 58% and delivered an incremental ROAS of $0.66. About 75% of buyers were new to the brand. 

As you look ahead to Halloween 2023, tap into tools that will fine-tune your targeting, activation, and measurement strategies. While we can’t predict the impact of inflation on this Fall’s habits, we’re confident that the right audience strategies for CTV are sure to cast a spell with tangible results – no hocus pocus.  

Interested in learning more? The Catalina and Cadent teams are available to provide recommendations to help you implement successful CTV and cross-screen campaigns.     


[1] eMarketer, September 2022, “Beyond the Cookie: Next-Generation Customer Acquisition & Retention for Marketers and Publishers” conducted by PureSpectrum. 

How Caulipower Increased New Shopper Sales and Improved Efficiency

Competition in the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) space isn’t new. In fact, it’s only increased as a result of new brands – particularly those focused on healthy living and specialized diets, recent supply chain issues leaving store shelves empty, and rising production costs tied to inflation. Yet despite the challenges faced by CPG brands, there are several trends that are cause for celebration.  

As the CPG industry continues to grow to meet changing consumer preferences, brands will need to find ways to stand out from the pack and develop strategic marketing tactics to reach their target customers. Connected TV (CTV) has emerged as one of the innovative channels CPG marketers can leverage to engage shoppers on the path to purchase.   

Caulipower’s Challenge 

Caulipower was launched in 2016 as a mother’s response to needing quick, nutritious, and gluten-free options for her gluten-intolerant children – that weren’t filled with fat, sugar, salt, and excess calories. Since then, Caulipower has revolutionized the frozen pizza category with its innovative, healthier options.  

With health foods trending and competition heating up, the brand was looking for ways to effectively recruit new users and gain back share in the crowded market, needing a cost-effective way to drive awareness, educate consumers, and incent trial among its most valuable shoppers. 

Goals  
• Drive sales among new shoppers
• Boost customer loyalty 
• Improve campaign efficiency  
• Reduce dollars spent on promotional incentives

To drive sales and boost awareness, Caulipower would need to build an efficient, highly targeted campaign.  

The Solution 

By working with Cadent and Catalina, Caulipower was able to leverage purchase-based targeting and sequential marketing to execute a successful CTV campaign.  

The Plan 

Cadent and Catalina designed a sophisticated CTV campaign to deliver household-level targeted ads based on consumers’ past purchases. Using real-time insights, Catalina identified Caulipower’s most relevant shoppers – including lapsed and competitive buyers. Then, through Catalina’s ID graph and Cadent Aperture Viewer Graph, high-value offers were served only to those who had seen the ad 3 times but did not yet make a purchase. The campaign delivered sequential product messaging and managed promotional costs by only issuing incentives to shoppers that needed a little extra push to try.  

The Results 

Through sequential CTV messaging and strategic promotional incentivization, the campaign generated a considerable return on ad spend (ROAS) and new shopper acquisition, in addition to providing Caulipower with impactful audience insights.  

By The Numbers $2.80 Total ROAS74K New Buyers Introduced as First-Time Purchasers9% of New Buyers Made a Repeat Purchase in First Month $59,000 in Savings Through Promotion Redemption 

Ultimately, this activation drove $2.80 total ROAS, 74,000 new customers, 9% of which made additional Caulipower purchases within the first month, and a staggering $59,000 in promotional savings.    

Recently, the CMO Club hosted a virtual roundtable featuring Paul Alfieri, CMO of Cadent, Stuart Smith, CMO of Caulipower, and Kevin Hunter, EVP and Head of Innovation at Catalina, where they discussed the value of advanced TV for CPG brand marketers.

Next Steps 

Want to learn more about how Cadent and Catalina partnered for Caulipower’s data-driven CTV advertising campaign?  

How an Award-Winning Data-Driven TV Strategy Drove Sales Success for Applegate

In recent years, the CPG industry has been met with a variety of challenges. From lingering supply chain issues to rising costs associated with inflation to competition among emerging brands, to changing consumer preferences.  

Recent research from McKinsey & Company indicated that several key trends are top of mind for consumers: 

  • 45% of consumers plan to find more ways to save money when shopping  
  • 29% of consumers will actively research the best promotions more frequently 
  • 40% of consumers plan to increase their focus on healthy eating and nutrition 

As a result of these industry-wide changes, CPG companies are seeking ways to stand out from the crowd and rethinking their marketing strategy to reach shoppers at critical points on the path to purchase. Among the innovative ways to reach shoppers, Connected TV (CTV) has emerged as an invaluable tool.  

Applegate’s Challenge 

Over the past two years, Applegate’s diverse range of products has steadily generated increased sales. For this campaign, Applegate was looking for a way to efficiently continue to acquire new buyers, bring back lapsed buyers, and defend loyal customers – all while driving cross-category purchases across their entire portfolio.

Goals  
• Increase customer acquisition  
• Boost customer loyalty  
• Lift sales and dollars spent per customer  
• Improve campaign efficiency

To boost sales, Applegate would need to find a creative way to reach and engage these customers. 

The Solution 

By partnering with Cadent and Catalina, Applegate was able to implement a targeted and cost-effective CTV campaign.  

The Plan 

Together, Cadent and Catalina developed a sequential messaging strategy to deliver household-level targeted CTV ads to 4.2MM existing and new shoppers. By monitoring consumption and purchase behavior in real time, they were able to activate a responsive marketing approach to promotions.  

Shoppers who were exposed to 3 CTV ads but did not make a purchase received an in-store offer to try the new Applegate product. On the other hand, shoppers who were exposed to the ads but did make a purchase did not receive the initial offer and were instead delivered a promotion to try other products, with the aim of expanding these customers’ share of wallet.  

The Results 

Through CTV ad impressions and in-store sequential offers, the campaign generated a significant return on ad spend (ROAS) and sales lift, as well as providing Applegate with powerful buyer insights.  

By The Numbers
• $2.13 Incremental ROAS 
• 24.9% Sales Lift42% Increase in Dollars Spent Per Transaction$250,000 in Savings through Targeted Promotions

This strategic activation drove a 24.9% lift in sales and a 42% increase in dollars spent by customers per shopping trip. The campaign also resulted in an impressive $250k in promotional savings.   

Recently, the campaign earned the 2022 AdExchanger Award for Best Data-Driven TV Campaign. 

Next Steps 

Want to learn more about how Cadent and Catalina partnered for Applegate’s CTV and responsive marketing campaign?  

Can Your Political TV Strategy Keep Up?

In the last few years, political TV ad spending has evolved from a bi-yearly, planned event into an “always on,” fluid medium. The pace of news, events, and stories has made buyers and sellers need to adapt to speed and data.   

The role of television has also changed in recent years. Traditionally, television was used as a tool for efficient reach, used to implement persuasion and awareness tactics. More precise tactics, such as the Get Out the Vote (GOTV) initiative, were left to channels with greater targeting capabilities, as party-driven campaigns would not want to remind the opposite party to vote. This left the target and GOTV efforts in channels such as digital, social, mobile, and direct mail.   

As the technology supporting TV advertising has become more automated and data-driven, TV’s role in the political ecosystem has begun to change rapidly. Sophisticated campaigns, issue advocates, and PACs can now deploy TV with the same speed and accuracy as digital targeting.   

“We just saw streaming officially surpass cable as the most popular way to consume TV content,“ said Mike Schneider, a Partner at Bully Pulpit Interactive. “But treating CTV like a ‘set it and forget it’ extension of a traditional linear TV buy misses the potential impact. It needs to be targeted, optimized, and measured for impact.” 

The lines between linear TV, addressable TV, OTT/CTV, and digital and mobile continue to blur for buyers and sellers, as much as they have for consumers. But the strategy remains the same – how do I engage my core supporters and how do I reach persuadable voters?   

“Political advertisers value hyperlocal marketing strategies, which is what OTT can provide. And with NBC Spot On, political advertisers have access to premium local OTT inventory, including Peacock, enabling clients’ targeted messaging to reach the right voter, at the right time, in a fully engaged and pristine environment” notes Patrick Notley, SVP of Sales, NBCUniversal Local.

Marketers can now use the same data from their digital activations to inform their TV spend in those premium OTT environments. Campaign first-party data, third-party voter registration files, and issue advocacy data can be activated in the TV space as quickly and seamlessly as digital and traditional channels. Speed to market for TV is now measured in hours – not days or weeks.   

The question then becomes, can your media sales organization keep up with the needs of the buyers?  And can your campaign keep up with your opponents? Be as precisely targeted and quickly activated as your digital efforts for your political TV advertising with Cadent Aperture Platform. 

Reach out to learn more Cadent Aperture Platform for publishers.  

3 Things You Must Know Before Investing in CTV Advertising

Connected TV viewership continues to grow, as does the number of subscription-based and ad-supported streaming services available to consumers. However, Connected TV (CTV) ad spending is still considerably less than that of linear TV. But let’s take a step back to better understand the full CTV advertising landscape.  

The State of Connected TV by the Numbers 

As of February 2022, Nielsen found that the average weekly time spent streaming video content hit 169.4 billion minutes, up 18% since 2021 – on top of the growth streaming had already experienced since spiking in 2020. By the end of 2021, CTV ad spend had also increased – 57% year-over-year, reaching $15.2 billion – and is projected to grow an additional 39% in 2022 to $21.2B, according to the IAB’s “2021 Video Ad Spend and 2022 Outlook” report.  

While the streaming wars remain tenuous, with changes in format – both Netflix and Disney+ are planning to launch ad-supported tiers, and subscription churn leaving subscription counts in flux, many advertisers are moving full stream ahead with investment in the channel.  

This shift in ad spend and viewership will continue to increase as the linear and digital TV ecosystems converge. In fact, eMarketer predicts that US linear TV ad spending (including addressable, programmatic, and upfront investments) will grow to $68.35 billion in 2022 but will then decline over the coming years. Ultimately, CTV’s appeal of growing viewership and improved measurement is too strong for advertisers to ignore.   

To help you determine how to incorporate this channel into your media mix, here are three things you must know before investing in CTV advertising.  

1. CTV offers advertisers a huge opportunity to reach consumers with advanced targeting 

Reach people where they are watching with a more granular approach to audience targeting. Fragmentation remains a pain point for many advertisers, so as consumers continue to spread their attention across an ever-growing number of screens, devices, and platforms, it’s time for advertisers to follow where the eyeballs lead. 

With a wide variety of data and audience targeting solutions, advertisers are faced with choice overload. Fortunately, Cadent Aperture Audience Data Marketplace seeks to minimize friction and enable advertisers to activate audience segments from their preferred third-party data providers.  

Learn more about our data partners. 

2. Ad fraud is cause for concern among CTV advertisers, but the risk can be mitigated 

U.S. advertisers are expected to lose $23 billion to fraud this year, based on forecasts from Juniper Research. And like all digital media, fraud exists in CTV. According to DoubleVerify, the number of fraud schemes spiked by over 70% year-over-year from 2020 to 2021.  

But just how prevalent is ad fraud on CTV? GroupM and iSpot.TV determined that there will be $1 billion in CTV ad waste this year. While these numbers are not exact, that amounts to roughly 4.3% of all ad fraud. Unfortunately, as CTV viewership grows, the advertising industry will need to be more vigilant in combatting ad fraud. 

As an advertiser, it is important to understand if and how your CTV media has been evaluated by key verification, viewability, attention, and brand safety markers – not all CTV or platforms are created equally. Cadent integrates with leading third-party verification and viewability providers to help you effectively combat issues like fraud.  

3. Measurement for CTV provides advertisers with digital-level insights  

Measurement is often seen as the defining characteristic that sets CTV apart from other TV advertising channels. Yet over the course of the past year, debates around “multiple currencies” have dominated the industry dialogue as agencies and advertisers raise their concerns regarding industry standards and the challenges of interoperability. 

At Cadent, we not only minimize the impact of fraud from a delivery and viewability standpoint, but we take it a step further by tying CTV performance to real business outcomes. Through Aperture Platform, Cadent enables measurement from the leading third-party measurement providers to best support our customers.  

Today’s marketers also need solutions that allow you to match planning, delivery, and optimization to results on a campaign-by-campaign basis. Cadent Aperture Viewer Graph was created with this challenge in mind. Advertisers do not have a single need and measurement in a “black box” is as inefficient as no measurement at all. Through Aperture, Cadent seeks to foster a more open, effective TV advertising ecosystem.  

Interested in learning more about CTV advertising through Aperture Platform? 

4 Tips to Elevate Your CTV Strategy

Guest Author: Keelia Schumacher, Senior Director of Sales, Data Axle

As we head into 2022, it’s expected that 60% of American consumers will be watching CTV. The trend began in 2020, we saw Connected TV (CTV) usage skyrocket to 3B+ hours per week. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, CTV use was growing – but the pandemic pushed it into overdrive. In January 2021, eMarketer reported that U.S. programmatic CTV video ad spend rose by 36.3%, reaching $4.36 billion. Advertisers are recognizing the opportunity in this growing space and are adjusting their business plans to capitalize on it.  

And not only is the audience for CTV on the rise, but the death of the third-party cookie is looming. CTV is one of the few digital channels that are mostly immune to its demise. CTV thrives on first-party data, based on user-authentication and respect for privacy preferences. Pseudonymous identifiers, such as IP addresses, are rooted in this type of user authentication and will offer a way to keep track of viewers while still respecting their privacy.

1. Set campaign goals and KPIs before launching your CTV campaign

CTV gives advertisers plenty of data by which to measure the success of their campaigns. Metrics such as video completion rate (VCR), unique households reached, cost per unique household, after-ad influence, and offline conversion tracking are all available. However, because this is such a new medium there is no industry standard to compare to. This leaves the door open for advertisers to define what success looks like and which KPIs are important to their business goals. KORTX reports that marketers have come to expect VCR percentages of 95%+ for CTV campaigns. However, depending on what you want to accomplish, VCR might be less important than after-ad influence or cost per completed view (CPCV). Before launching your campaign, decide what your goals are for the campaign and which metrics are important to you. This will give you a better roadmap for determining if your campaign was successful and how to proceed to best maximize the potential of this channel down the road.

2. Create (and segment) custom audiences

One of the major benefits of CTV as opposed to other channels is that it allows for extremely precise targeting. This feature is what prompted Forbes to describe CTV as the “holy grail” for advertisers1. The primary objective of a custom audience is to allow brands to create and target their ideal customers. When you have a custom audience defined by third-party data, you can use that to create an accurate look-a-like model. 

Look-alike models allow you to:

  • Identify your existing best customers
  • Employ advanced statistical analysis and custom modeling to identify prospect households who “look like” your best customers
  • Reach these “best” prospects through a cross-channel media strategy designed to engage and convert these prospects to customers

Once you have your look-alike model, you can create custom audiences on CTV. This will enable you to reach the audience that is most likely to convert.

From there you should segment the model. Segmentation is effective because it allows your ads to be delivered to an audience that would find them relevant. You can invest in pre-packaged audience segments based on demographicstransactional history, interests, recently moved individuals, and political affiliation or you can build a custom audience off your look-a-like model. For example, a cookware retailer can use their CTV ad to target an audience with a higher projected interest in cooking, such as hobbyists, mothers, college-educated men, and newly engaged couples who are building registries.

3. Use data to improve online and offline identity resolution to improve audience targeting

As a whole, the industry is behind when it comes to integrating online and offline data, in addition to identity resolution. In general, Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) – the systems that allow digital advertising buyers to manage multiple ad exchanges – have a hard time reconciling mobile, desktop, and CTV users. To advertise more effectively, you need additional data. Data providers, such as Data Axle, can help match offline and online data by appending information to your first-party records. This approach will improve targeting, amplify your campaign reach, and significantly improve onboarding rates. James Purtle, Senior Director of Digital Marketing at Data Axle, says, “Clients that leverage Data Axle data to enhance offline audiences before onboarding have seen as much as a 60% increase in match rates, resulting in more targetable ads.”

4. Integrate CTV into your omnichannel campaigns

A coordinated, well-planned omnichannel campaign is a sure-fire path to success – and CTV can be a powerful tool in bringing an omnichannel strategy to fruition. Richard Geiger, Senior Vice President at Data Axle, said, “We also know from industry surveys, match-back studies, lots of testing, and attribution work that it takes more than one touch and more than one channel to keep donors continuously engaged.” He continued, “I recommend touching potential donors 7-12 times to maximize donation opportunities. A data-driven retention approach utilizes channel, offer, and message in concert with one another, so it’s important to keep that in mind as you start to explore an omnichannel strategy.”

For example, Data Axle recently assisted Defenders of Wildlife with integrating CTV into their omnichannel strategy. Defenders wanted the CTV campaign to be used in conjunction with digital ads to raise brand awareness, engage prospective donors, and boost fundraising for Q4, 2020. Using Data Axle’s donor database, Apogee, and custom modeling, we created an audience of potential donors who were likely to give online. To target them, we deployed a CTV ad to drive brand awareness and a display retargeting ad with similar creative and messaging. Both campaigns drove the audience to the Defenders’ website. The campaign generated an ROI of over 600% and the CTV ads had a Video Completion Rate (VCR) of 94% – which means that 94% of viewers watched the entire commercial.

CTV usage is only going to continue to grow as consumers shift their attention to streaming services, and others opt to ‘cut the cord’ altogether. Savvy companies should shore up their data now to take advantage of the opportunity in this buzz-worthy channel.  

Contact Data Axle to start down the path to creating your own customer audience and take advantage of the advanced targeting CTV has to offer.


Sources:

1 https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2020/06/12/connected-tv-viewing-is-not-returning-to-pre-pandemic-levels/?sh=22c589be3aa5


Keelia Schumacher

With over 13 years of experience, Keelia has a deep knowledge of client challenges, is passionate about customizing solutions to best fit their needs and helping them exceed their business goals. She is an expert in location analytics, ad tech, and digital marketing.

What’s the Right Way to Get Started with CTV and OTT?

A client recently told me she perceived two mindsets related to connected TV and over-the-top TV: If you’re not doing it, you are foolish for missing a big opportunity to reach premium audiences at scale. But if you are doing it, you are going in a bit blind. You will have to contend with a lack of standards in measurement and an inability to solve or understand frequency and duplication uncertainty across screens.

This led to her question: “Who is doing it right?”

I believe that anyone that is in-market and learning is doing the right thing.

The fact is audiences have shifted and brands cannot afford to ignore this. Based on Cadent’s Viewer Intelligence Graph of holistic deduplicated cross-screen viewership, a brand could miss up to 40 percent of its desired audience reach by ignoring CTV/OTT in its media plan, depending on the target audience segment.

Besides ignoring a large percentage of viewership, the cost of not trying is that you won’t learn—about your customers, audience segmentation performance and the effectiveness of CTV/OTT in your media mix.

Unlike linear television, CTV/OTT gives brands the ability to garner actionable insights in real-time. Brands can understand how responsive audiences are to their ads by monitoring video completions rates and even deterministically tracking ad exposures to conversions. That allows you to link real-time ad exposure to desired business outcomes with the ability to optimize while in-flight.

Instead of looking for reasons not to invest in any newer channels, it is time for brands to get in there and figure out what works for them. Data-driven channels such as CTV and OTT lend themselves to massive learning opportunities. Don’t put CTV/OTT on a plan just because everyone else is. Make it count. Create a scalable solution by working across multiple partners, focus on leveraging consistent data across all and push for visibility and learnings across every screen.

With a clear plan, and a few basics in place, marketers can create a path to success with CTV and OTT today:

  • Iterate and innovate. If you use your campaigns as a mechanism to learn and figure out what works for you, you’ll succeed. There is usually debate over the “best” data sets in the market. The data sets and approach that work to drive optimal results for an individual brand’s KPI is the data/segment that is best for that brand. Brands will find that for certain KPIs, third-party data outperforms their CRM data and vice versa.
  • Get your team together early and often. This is a team sport. Your partners—agencies, data companies and publishers—should be at your side on this journey. Bring everyone together at the beginning of the process and challenge partners to step up and help you learn. Encourage them to be thoughtful on the front end  while being clear on what you’re trying to learn and accomplish. Push partners to give you the measurement and validation needed to help scale your efforts. Over time you’ll understand that OTT and CTV are key tactics that can be leveraged to drive outcomes, and you’ll know how to better maximize success.
  • Don’t accept that something succeeded or failed without questioning why. I always say that understanding what is broken is usually more powerful than knowing which pieces worked. If you don’t know why a campaign is not performing well, you cannot improve. Do not accept campaign success or failure without questioning why. Take a deeper look into the data and ask, “What levers can I pull to make the next campaign better?” and “How can I take insights from this campaign to inform future media buys?” For example, figure out if demo-based or strategic audience-based targeting is better for driving sales volume. Learn what the trade-offs are for targeting a demo versus a more specific audience. Determine how a shift in audience targeting could have maximized the ROI.
  • Create your own standards and practices within your organization. Find the subject matter experts in your group and develop those voices. In the test design phase for every campaign, make curiosity a core value for your team and organize everyone around that.

You have to start somewhere. As an industry, we’re building the foundation of next-generation TV. There’s no syndicated source that’s going to tell you what works, what doesn’t work and why. The technology will get smarter over time, standards will come and OTT/CTV will become easier to plan.

In the meantime, no one is going to do the work for you. It’s up to you to figure out what will continue to drive the success of your business in this evolving marketplace while maximizing reach against high-value audiences.

Learn more about bringing data to TV.

Reaching Fragmented Audiences with OTT and CTV

Dana Bhargava, Head of Experience Planning & Media, Sanofi Consumer Health, took the virtual stage at Cadent’s Future of TV summit to speak with Jamie Power, Chief Data Officer, Cadent, about getting started with OTT and CTV, reaching fragmented audiences and much more.

Catch a video of the session, plus a full recap of the conversation, below.

Jamie mentioned that during the pandemic, people became more health conscious. How exactly did Dana’s brand supported that behavioral shift?

“Our goal at Sanofi has always been about empowering people to take control of their health,” Dana said. And in trying times, it becomes even more important to communicate that message. Sanofi’s OTC products were impacted by pantry loading earlier in the pandemic, and the brand had to make sure that its distribution channels were clear and that its products were available for customers who depend on them.

The pandemic has accelerated consumer behavior in certain ways, some unexpected, Dana said, putting marketers on their toes: “It’s both scary and exciting at the same time because it really stimulates change within an organization and sets an organization on fire to go chase those areas where we know we’re not going to be able to keep up.”

Reaching fragmented audiences across screens

With so much fragmentation today, Jamie, asked, was Dana satisfied with her insight into understanding audiences across screens, whether it be reach building or frequency building. Dana replied no, that with all the wall gardens out there, “we live in a world where we really don’t really understand duplication at all,” adding, “Some duplication isn’t bad, some frequency isn’t bad. I think there’s work to be done there. Certainly I think we really need to understand that. CTV OTT is just one part of it.”

This whole idea of bringing data to TV is really the start of evolution of all of our channels to make them all more accountable. And I think we have to work as an industry to start breaking down some of these walled gardens.” -Dana Bhargava, Head of Experience Planning & Media, Sanofi Consumer Health

Ad environment is key

Sanofi has always had strong guidelines on content, Dana said, and some those content guidelines don’t exist in other channels. And this year, as social media platforms struggle with brand safety, the issues becomes increasingly important to Sanofi, which Dana said could continue to drive shifts back to looking for those environments where you can have some kind of guarantee of where an ad is actually showing up.

Why buy an ad in a skippable environment? For many marketers, it comes down to going where their audiences go. Dana said, “Audiences still continue to be there [in skippable ad environments]… Audiences are there, and there’s content in which you want to align with.” Sanofi thinks about using the first three seconds of its ads in that context really carefully, and they consider the  specific customer journey stage the person might be in.

Building a foundation for OTT and CTV within a brand

Sanofi’s approach to investing in specific channels, Dana said, is one that is investment agnostic and aims to understand consumers and their consumer journeys, being able to deliver against what an audience is looking for as opposed to having a sort of siloed approach to planning.

Dana said she thinks about using CTV and OTT to increase reach against audiences that might be harder to find in linear TV today: “CTV OTT can be a great add to driving incremental reach against all those precision tactics that you have,” adding that the medium can create quality environments that you want to run in, more opportunities for you to put longer-form content out in front of unskippable content, and importantly, increased scale against a lot of those precision audiences.

Any emerging medium is going to have a ramp up period while marketers try it out and decide if it’s worth the investment. Being a champion for mediums like OTT, CTV or addressable TV within an organization can be difficult, especially if it’s outside of the traditional box.

If you can really focus on what you’re trying to accomplish and what the role of your channels are,  it will almost tell its own story as to why you’re [trying the new medium],” Dana said. If your goal is upper funnel awareness, then you need to drive reach and share of voice against your competitors, which you can’t do successfully without other carefully orchestrated tactics. Dana added, “Contextualizing the spend against what its role is always helps to have those conversations internally.”

Learn more about the future of data-driven TV advertising in our series, “Coming to Terms with TV Ad Terms.”