Implementing Full-Funnel Marketing on CTV in 2024: A Guide for Advertisers

In 2024, Connected TV (CTV) adoption has never been higher, but is your brand making the most of this diverse channel — at every stage of the sales cycle? Following on from our report, A Full-Funnel Approach To CTV Marketing 2024, here are some key conversation starters for advertisers considering adopting a full-funnel approach in CTV advertising. This blog delves into how to turn the insights from our research report into actionable, repeatable strategies.

Use CTV’s unique features to grow your brand all through the funnel

CTV allows for sophisticated targeting options that can help advertisers build brand equity right from the top of the funnel. By leveraging data-driven insights, advertisers can ensure their ads reach the right audience at the right time.

The large screen presence of CTV ads coupled with their targeted delivery ensures high viewer engagement, creating a halo effect that benefits the entire campaign funnel. This approach not only enhances top-of-funnel awareness but also boosts mid-funnel consideration and bottom-funnel conversions, as audiences feel more connected and receptive to the brand message throughout their buying journey.

New, innovative ad formats – like including QR codes in video ads, promoting shoppable content with deep links directing viewers to buy, and even using sequential messaging – are all strategies that can shorten the path to purchase, and are proving effective for performance-focused marketers.

Takeaway: TV can be a massive multiplier for ad effectiveness. Studies show that placing your ads in quality content can significantly boost recall rates, trustworthiness, and viewer engagement.

Control timing across programmatic inventory and boost effectiveness

The timing of ad placements in CTV can significantly impact their effectiveness. Utilizing programmatic buying, advertisers can optimize when their ads are shown to align with viewer engagement levels. More importantly, integrating emotional resonance into these ads ensures that they not only capture attention but also maintain it.

Wurl research shows that ads resonating with the emotional tone of the content they accompany can drastically reduce viewer drop-off rates. For instance, ads that match the emotional context of the program can decrease viewer loss by up to 60%.

Effective CTV advertising hinges on reaching the right viewer at the right time. Leveraging AI to determine the optimal context for ad placements is a game-changing capability for advertisers. Wurl’s BrandDiscovery uses GenAI for scene-level targeting, aligning ads with the emotional tone of the content. This approach enhances brand awareness and increases purchase intent by holding consumer attention longer, resulting in greater ad engagement, enhanced brand recall, and improved consumer trust. Driving better campaign outcomes reduces the required ad spend and ad frequency for messaging internalization.

Takeaway: Leverage contextual CTV capabilities to deliver personalized advertising experiences. For instance, food delivery companies can sync ad content with viewer emotions related to hunger — driving measurable increases in activation.

Measure outcomes and iterate on campaigns

Effectively measuring the impact of CTV campaigns is critical to understanding their success and areas for improvement. Advertisers should employ both first- and third-party measurement tools to gain comprehensive insights into campaign performance. For instance, incremental reach studies can evaluate the additional audience gained through CTV over other channels, while brand lift studies assess the effectiveness of CTV ads in enhancing brand perception.

For advertisers with cross-device strategies, measuring conversions such as installs, events, or assists via mobile measurement platforms provides a clearer picture of the user journey and the role CTV plays in driving action. This approach allows marketers to understand how CTV contributes to their overall marketing goals and make data-driven decisions to optimize their campaigns.

Takeaway: Find the measurement tool that works for your CTV campaign. For example, Monks worked with independent measurement partners EDO and Kantar through BrandDiscovery to gain full visibility into their campaigns. PMG, utilizing InMarket for third-party validation, found that emotion-based targeting drove a 40% lift in incremental restaurant visits and a 48% increase in sales for their QSR client. Additionally, mobile marketers working with Adjust can track conversions and assist rates, ensuring a complete view of user engagement and driving more effective advertising strategies.

Questions to ask about your CTV advertising strategy

What is the scale of my current buying? Can programmatic help unlock scale?

Review your current investment in CTV and consider whether programmatic buying could enhance your reach and efficiency. Programmatic platforms offer advanced targeting and real-time bidding capabilities that can help you scale your campaigns more effectively, reaching a broader and more relevant audience.

What kind of environments are my ad creatives currently running in? Can I know this?

Understanding the context in which your ads are displayed is crucial. This is particularly important in the current programmatic advertising landscape, where transparency challenges are prevalent due to inconsistent metadata and varied targeting parameters. Broad targeting based on program or channel categories can lead to misplaced ads, potentially disrupting viewer engagement and diminishing the ad’s impact. For instance, an ad for a family-friendly product ideally placed during a show like “The Lion King” could be ineffective if shown after a sensitive scene like Mufasa’s death. Advanced targeting that incorporates scene-specific insights ensures that ads align more closely with the content, improving brand safety and the overall viewer experience by matching the emotional and thematic tone of the surrounding media.

Wurl is leveraging Gen-AI technologies, including a proprietary large language model (LLM), to revolutionize scene-level ad targeting. This model analyzes the dialogue, sounds, and imagery of streaming content, assigning real-time scores related to emotion, genre, and brand safety to each scene. Such granular analysis facilitates the delivery of ads that not only fit the immediate content environment but are also shown to significantly boost ad performance, resonating emotionally with viewers and enhancing engagement by multiple folds.

Are you satisfied with your video campaigns? Can it be boosted by being featured on the largest screen in the home?

If you’re already running video ad campaigns, but not yet on CTV — consider the potential benefits of expanding to a new channel. The prominence of the largest screen in the home can significantly enhance viewer engagement and brand perception, making CTV a powerful medium for delivering impactful video content.

Featuring your video content on CTV can drive higher engagement, improve brand recall, and ultimately lead to better campaign outcomes. Take advantage of CTV’s unique capabilities to elevate your video campaigns and achieve greater success.

Picsart, a leader in digital creativity tools with over 150M monthly active users and more than 1B downloads, successfully expanded its app’s user base through a campaign powered by AppDiscovery, AppLovin’s UA platform, which ran across mobile and CTV.

This multichannel approach, coupled with AppDiscovery’s AI-based advertising engine, enabled Picsart to expand its reach and acquire net-positive users at a competitive cost per install (CPI), helping it become the #1 top grossing photography app and maintain its status as the second-most downloaded photography app.

Conclusion

In conclusion, making the most of Connected TV (CTV) means adopting a full-funnel approach. By using advanced targeting techniques and tapping into viewers’ emotions, businesses can make their ads more effective and engaging at every stage of the sales cycle.

Wurl’s BrandDiscovery provides precise, data-driven insights, enabling personalized advertising that truly connects with viewers. Continuously optimizing these strategies and leveraging robust measurement tools can transform CTV from a simple advertising channel into a vital part of your marketing mix, driving better engagement and more conversions.

Read the full report to get more key insights!