Creating a Winning CTV Strategy: Performance Marketing

Measurement and attribution are age-old problems for marketers. But now, CTV delivers new levels of targeting and measurement for TV viewership, enabling marketers to use TV as a performance marketing tool. Although there are limitations for FAST channels, as detailed in FAST Advertising – Reckless Without ROAS Insights, CTV can help drive incremental growth for many streamers and publishers in today’s highly competitive marketing ecosystem.

As its name suggests, performance marketing helps CTV marketers focus their activities on ad impressions that perform. In this model, advertisers only pay when a specific action is completed — such as a sale, a lead, or a click — rather than paying ad fees upfront or based on reach. Performance marketing prioritizes measurable results and outcomes. 

Let’s build on the CTV marketing foundation we have so far, digging deeper into performance marketing’s benefits and how it works. From there, we’ll explain how to mobilize a performance marketing strategy and how publishers and streamers can leverage Wurl and AppLovin’s CTV solutions, such as ContentDiscovery and AppDiscovery, to maximize ROI. 

What are the benefits of performance marketing?

In a word: results. A performance marketing mindset focuses on getting the most out of budgets by reaching the right audiences (those who convert), and understanding the impact of spend. 

Maximized budgets

Because performance marketers only pay for successful transactions, it’s easier to reduce wasteful spending and manage their budget. Perhaps even more powerfully, they can quickly identify what’s working well and double down to increase ROI. 

Targeted spend

When used in combination with digital platforms that allow precise targeting, performance marketing for CTV targets high-value viewers right where they are watching. The precise targeting now available for CTV has unlocked performance marketers’ ability to run true omni-channel campaigns. They can now use similar strategies to target viewers across CTV, mobile, and desktop. Because performance marketers only pay for results, mistargeted ads won’t incur any cost.

Detailed attribution

Traditional marketing models require an upfront investment in time, resources, and budget to develop an ad campaign – even before having a clear idea as to what will work. Taking the time to set up accurate attribution methods can help performance marketers determine if they are achieving the ROAS that they want. 

It is worth noting that attribution can be both the best friend and worst enemy of marketers. While providing invaluable insights into channel performance, there are often data gaps and inconsistent tracking – so it is important to be aware of where these are, and how they may influence reporting. 

Leading a performance marketing approach keeps the focus on the highest possible results for marketing investments with accurate targeting based on viewer behaviors and clear attribution to inform optimization efforts. 

How does performance marketing work?

Let’s look at some key marketing tactics and channels that are even more powerful when deployed under a performance marketing strategy. 

CTV performance marketing tactics 

• CTV advertising: Pairing widespread reach with highly-targeted, precision-response techniques, CTV advertising’s interactivity enables performance marketers to combine the targeting and measurability of digital with big-screen creative. CTV ads drive viewers to take actions like app installs, free trials, subscription sign ups, or just channel viewership. Check out our recent CTV report to get a closer look at CTV advertising’s impact on performance marketing.

• Mobile advertising: Mobile ads geared for performance direct consumers to download apps, sign up for free trials, subscribe, and tune in. They are especially helpful for user acquisition. Mobile advertising relies on attribution data, usually from a mobile measurement partner (MMP) on behalf of an advertiser. Pairing mobile ads with CTV, which also uses MMP data, to capitalize on dual-screening behavior creates more touchpoints to drive engagement and motivate consumers to take action.  

• Affiliate marketing: With this performance marketing tactic, an affiliate (whether it’s an incentive site, influencer, or publisher) promotes the streamer’s and publisher’s brand and channels and earns a part of the profit from each resulting conversion tracked by the affiliate’s links. 

Top performance marketing channels

• OTT and CTV: These terms are sometimes used interchangeably, for media delivered both via internet-connected TVs and streaming apps. For performance marketers the key idea here is that OTT and  CTV impressions are rooted in the digital ecosystem enhancing their ability to target audiences and measure performance. For instance, with  OTT and CTV, marketers are able to measure HOV (hours of viewing), episode completions, app installs, subscriptions, and more. 

• Social Media Marketing (SMM): Banner, photo, and video ads posted on social media channels, like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and X, can feel like they were designed especially for performance marketing. But it’s important to ignore vanity metrics, like impressions or even comments and reactions, to get the most out of SMM as a performance channel. Instead, focus on revenue-driving actions like app installs, subscriptions, and free trials.  

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Ads that direct users to content through search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing enable performance marketers to target audiences already motivated to look for a particular brand or channel. SEM helps lead potential viewers to actions like free trials, subscription discounts, or downloading an app. 

How do you develop a performance marketing strategy?

Now that we have a solid grasp of performance marketing, let’s lay out the steps you need to take to create your own high-octane performance marketing strategy.  

1. Do your homework

Although you have probably already invested a significant amount of time developing your overarching marketing strategy, it’s important to revisit and fine-tune it with a performance marketing mindset. Market research and evaluating what has worked over past campaigns can help you identify the high-impact audiences to target, as well as the optimal channels and creative to drive action from your target audiences. Many of the audiences you have used in your digital performance marketing campaigns will also be available within the CTV ecosystem. 

2. Define performance targets and strategy

The driving force for performance marketing is clear goals. After you’ve identified your audience, the next step is to think through which specific marketing goals you need to achieve for your target audiences. Make sure you can map these back to top business KPIs in order to accurately track the progress of your marketing. 

Clear revenue targets for your channels depend on how you monetize your content. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is a driver for FAST and AVOD performance marketing, and CPA (Cost Per Action) is the main KPI for SVOD and HVOD performance marketing.  

3. Design and launch your campaigns

It’s time to get to work on your campaign content. Depending on your market cycles, your performance marketing strategy may define specific campaigns for a quarter or two. 

As you plan, use research and available data from past campaigns to determine which channels, creative, and other assets will likely perform best. Even if you have run previous campaigns, you may want to try new creative and channels – particularly if your research uncovers a fresh sentiment or trend among your target audiences. 

Generally speaking, though, you’ll be optimizing different ad formats, designs, messaging, and durations for your creative. For more on best practices for CTV marketing creative, check out our prior blog on marketing your content. 

4. Measure, adjust, optimize

Collecting and analyzing data throughout your campaigns is a core driver of performance marketing, perhaps even more so than with traditional campaigns. Data will inform not only changes to the current campaign but also future campaigns.

What’s especially powerful, though, is that with performance marketing, the money you’re spending is always driving conversions. So, while you’ll want to run as efficiently as possible to keep your marketing team humming, you also have the benefit of knowing that every iteration or test is helping your marketing campaigns be that much more successful. You’re never spending without performance insights. 

Make Wurl your CTV performance marketing partner

ContentDiscovery is a performance marketing solution built for streamers to help them attract, engage, and retain viewers at a massive scale — all while delivering 100% measurable results.

With ContentDiscovery, streamers and publishers can leverage powerful AI technology to learn your content and identify viewers most likely to convert. The best part: ContentDiscovery automatically adjusts targeting to achieve your campaign goals, yielding higher conversion and engagement rates while maximizing your ROI. 

You can monitor your performance marketing KPIs, like ROAS and conversions, across a variety of devices and channels on ContentDiscovery’s dashboard. Full transparency on the performance of each creative asset is provided with clear data on how they’re driving your KPIs, like ROAS and CPA. 

Our final topic in the “Creating a Winning CTV Strategy” series will hone in on campaign optimization and viewer retention. Stay tuned!