Creating a Winning CTV Strategy: Defining FAST and AVOD KPIs

So far in our series, we’ve given streamers and publishers a deep dive into CTV distribution, monetization, and marketing. Measurement and KPIs should guide your team toward successfully achieving these objectives — and winning with your overall CTV strategy.

But first: What are KPIs, exactly? Unlike metrics, which measure progress for specific business activities, KPIs (key performance indicators) help you measure progress toward high-level business goals.

For FAST and AVOD streamers and publishers in the CTV space, what goals can the right KPIs support? To measure and optimize a CTV strategy, you need to understand the differences between measurement on linear and CTV, as well as the ideal KPIs for CTV distribution, monetization, and marketing. We’ll close out with insight into how Wurl equips you with straightforward, actionable CTV insights — for all of your business goals.

Linear TV vs. CTV measurement

Nielsen ratings for linear TV measurement can be useful temperature checks for viewership trends and can help you figure out if you’re getting your money’s worth for an ad spot – but they’re only one piece of the puzzle. As helpful as these ratings have been as a measurement tool in the past, there are limitations considering Nielsen only surveys a portion of linear television, where viewership is starting to wane.

CTV advertising solutions, on the other hand, can provide robust data. There’s the ability to harness powerful measurement capabilities because so much more information is available through internet-provided television, including viewer behavior, demographics, and more. CTV advertisers can work with third-party attribution providers, like mobile measurement partners (MMPs), to measure conversions and subsequent actions, which is key in effective performance marketing efforts. Pair the power of an MMP with in-depth insights from your FAST channel and you can really unlock key KPIs.

Now that you have a good sense of the differences between linear and CTV measurement, let’s dig into KPIs for your CTV strategy. KPIs are vastly different for AVOD / FAST channels versus SVOD services. For this reason, we will focus on FAST and AVOD channels for this article.

KPIs for distributing your content

AVOD and FAST channels are focused on monetizing more available ad impressions, growing viewer HOV (hours of viewing), and increasing the perceived value and CPM (Cost Per Thousand) of their inventory.

Defining KPIs will grant you the insight necessary to navigate CTV distribution challenges and get your content to high-value audiences. Here are some key performance indicators that you’ll definitely want to consider as you launch an effective campaign:

• HOV (Hours of Viewing): This counts the total number of hours of streaming sessions, or the time viewers spend watching your content, which helps you quantify how much your content resonates with viewers. 
• Inventory: The number of advertisements for your channel — or amount of ad space — a streamer has available to sell in 30-second slots. This helps quantify how many opportunities you have to monetize your content. Bonus FAST fact: nearly half of viewers say ads during other shows help them find new content. 
• Total Sessions: The number of streaming sessions over a specific period of time. (A streaming session needs to run longer than 3 minutes to count.) This gives you a sense of how often viewers watch your content. 
• Average Session Minutes: The average length of streaming sessions enables you to see how much your content sticks with your viewers. 
• Unique IPs & Unique Users: The number of unique users seeing your content. You also get data about the kinds of people who are tuning into your content, giving you more insight into the makeup of your audiences. 
• Completions: The number of viewers who watched an episode up until the final 4 minutes. Another great way to see how your content resonates with your audiences.

KPIs for monetizing your content

When it comes to monetization, FAST and AVOD streamers’ and publishers’ biggest goals include driving up ad inventory value by boosting their number of viewers, as well as increasing the perceived quality of viewers on a specified channel or streaming platform.

With that in mind, you’ll want to set and closely monitor KPIs like the below to gauge your CTV monetization:

• ARPDAU (Average revenue per daily average user): It tells you how much revenue your active users generate for your content. This lets you see how well your monetization strategies are working on a daily basis. 
• CPM (Cost per thousand ad impressions): This is the cost it takes for your ad to gain one thousand impressions.
• RPM (Ad revenue per thousand impressions): The difference between this and CPM is that RPM tracks publisher revenue (CPM tracks advertiser cost.) 
• Impressions: The number of individual users looking at one ad. This enables  you to scope the quantity of your monetization opportunities. 
• Fill Rate: Total time of ads returned for insertion for the available seconds. The higher this is, the more revenue your monetization strategies are making. Think – if my ad spot is 90 seconds, the more ads that fill that 90 seconds, the better!
• Ad Yield: This number is the total revenue your advertising efforts bring home.

KPIs for marketing your content

To achieve marketing goals, AVOD apps and FAST channels need to hit HOV and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) targets. Core KPIs to consider here are ones that provide an indication of discovery (are viewers tuning in to your content?) and attention (for those who have tuned in, are they sticking around to watch?).

Here are the core marketing KPIs that AVOD apps and FAST channels should define and monitor to navigate these questions and hit growth goals:

• HOV: This number shows the engagement level of your viewers. The more hours they’re watching, the more ads they’re going to see. As you read earlier, this is a key performance indicator for distribution as well. It’s a big one to remember!
• ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): This is displayed as a percentage of ad spend where 100% is break-even and anything higher is a positive return over a given period of time. This percentage shows you how well your campaign is fulfilling its goals. 
• Total Return: The total revenue you generate with your marketing campaign.

Wurl gives you straightforward CTV insights

There’s a lot (and this is an understatement) for you as a streamer or publisher to measure in terms of your CTV distribution, monetization, and marketing. And as helpful as it is to define and monitor these KPIs to understand your CTV strategy’s success, having solutions that mobilize CTV insights in an actionable way is even more impactful. 

Wurl’s core offerings give you the insights you need to uplevel your distribution, monetization, and marketing: 

Global FAST Pass (GFP) — one of the world’s largest FAST channel networks that supports publishers in building audiences quickly and monetizing their content — offers secure distribution and instant monetization all while delivering robust KPI and data insights on a simple, intuitive dashboard.

AdPool takes all the guesswork out of CTV monetization. AdPool helps connect your content to ideal advertisers and monetize every available ad impression on a global scale. With AdPool, you’ll raise your inventory fill rates and engagement — all with top-notch measurement and reporting on those monetization KPIs! 

ContentDiscovery lets you accurately track ROI performance to drive optimizations, increasing viewership and revenue for your streaming platform. The solution mobilizes AI technology to learn your content, connects content with the viewers who’ll love it, and equips you with the 24/7 personalized campaign measurement you need to keep up with your marketing KPIs. 

Now that you’re an expert on CTV KPIs for FAST and AVOD channels, you have a moment to catch your breath before we explore the same KPIs for SVOD and HVOD in our next blog… With our next blogs, we’ll cover everything you need to know about SVOD / HVOD KPIs, full funnel marketing, and performance marketing. Stay tuned! 

And for a deeper dive into distribution, monetization, and CTV as a performance marketing channel, check out our new report “How to Turn CTV into a Performance Marketing Channel for Growth.”