A full-funnel approach to CTV marketing 2024

Introduction: CTV in 2024

Welcome to the Full-Funnel Approach to CTV Marketing 2024, our guide to advertising best practices and tips to maximize the performance of connected TV (CTV) campaigns.

Major content owners and producers have adapted to meet the increasing demand for at-home entertainment, leading to higher-quality programming across various platforms — and spurring advertising dollars to follow.

In this report, we’ve put together some frameworks and key findings to help marketers understand CTV’s headwinds and tailwinds in 2024 and also to spell out how CTV can be a multiplier at every stage of the buying process. For brand marketers, there’s food for thought on how CTV can drive conversions. For performance marketers, you’ll find useful information on how CTV’s brand awareness halo effect impacts the lower funnel.

The state of CTV in 2024

As we enter H2 2024, CTV adoption is set to hit its highest level.

So, how can advertisers succeed on CTV in 2024?

A full-funnel approach is vital. CTV’s power is the unique brand-building ability it inherits from its status as the largest screen in the home, combined with the advanced targeting enabled by digital technology. This gives CTV the powerful ability to create brand equity and distribute it at every touchpoint, including conversion.

Market overview: Key trends & takeaways

Money is moving to CTV

As we look ahead to the latter half of 2024, CTV is experiencing significant growth, with ad spending expected to increase by 18.8% this year, driven by the Olympics and elections.

And it’s not just dollars from linear TV (though that reallocation is sizable); a large proportion of increased spending will shift from non-video digital ads, traditional ads, and social media.

CTV is an increasingly appealing marketing channel for mobile marketers who are attracted by the reach and ad quality offered by the largest screen in the home. Data from Adjust, the measurement and analytics company owned by our parent company, AppLovin, found that mobile marketers have massively increased the number of ads being served on CTV devices to promote mobile apps — with 12 billion ad impressions served year to date, including 4 billion in July. That’s an increase of 79% year over year.

That growth is continuing to accelerate. Between January and June of 2024, the number of CTV impressions measured by Adjust increased by more than 300%. This reflects a huge increase in the marketing budget allocated to CTV.

A key trend we’re noticing is that — in addition to capturing key attention in the living room — marketers are targeting their apps to the whole household.

What does this mean for the full funnel?

As advertisers delve deeper into the world of CTV, it’s crucial to understand and excel in this unique ecosystem. The potential for success is massive, with new technologies and capabilities constantly emerging. Getting to grips with the trends on CTV is key to elevating your approach, including leveraging sophisticated strategies that enhance effectiveness from the top of the funnel to the bottom.

Wurl’s access to CTV data across the ecosystem, combined with Adjust’s insights into down-funnel metrics, and AppLovin’s ability to power performance across devices, gives our three brands a unique perspective on this versatile channel.

Awareness stage: Grow positive attention

Brand engagement with CTV has evolved from traditional, broad-reaching cable-like media buying to a more targeted, data-driven approach. Like CTV streamers and publishers initially focused on mimicking traditional TV to ease user transition, CTV advertising initially was geared toward providing a ‘linear-like’ experience for ad buyers. With the market now evolving to provide a more CTV native approach, marketers now have more tools to ensure their ads are receiving ‘positive attention.’ 

One key change is that CTV tools now leverage the vast influx of viewer data to enhance targeting and personalization. This modern phase unlocks the potential of contextual advertising, utilizing generative AI and advanced analytics to meet viewers where they are in the buying cycle, thereby fostering deeper engagement through personalized content experiences.

As CTV matures, harnessing data for tailored content delivery is becoming crucial, setting new standards for advertising effectiveness and viewer satisfaction in the streaming era.

Despite its potential, our industry has run into an obvious problem with scale — how do marketers deliver the right message, at the right time, in the right content across thousands of hours of programming over hundreds of channels, with inconsistent data standards?

Ad context is an important question to solve because it impacts efficacy: research by Eun Sook Kwon, et al, (2019) found that ads placed in media contexts that are congruent with the content can significantly enhance consumer attitudes towards the ad and the product.

Indeed, for TV, contextual relevance is a superpower. Map The Territory research has found that the fact that TV is a family gathering point in a central part of the home is a massive multiplier for ad effectiveness. The living room is a space where we are naturally inclined to consume content together — especially professional and well-produced content.

The Context Effects study cited by Map The Territory demonstrates a 60% higher recall rate when viewing professional content in a communal context. Ads within ‘professional’ content are also seen as 44% more trustworthy and 39% more engaging.

Placing your ads in quality content

Positive vs. negative attention

Trust and engagement are important KPIs for brands and are examples of having earned positive attention. The distinction between positive and negative attention is crucial for effective advertising on CTV. 

Positive attention is earned when ads are congruent with the content and align with viewer preferences, enhancing brand likability and clarity. Timed right, CTV ads can leverage the intimate, family-centric nature of TV viewing, transforming the viewing experience into a positive brand interaction that amplifies ad effectiveness.

Conversely, negative attention emerges when advertisements are perceived as disruptive or irrelevant, which can jar the viewer experience, leading to ad fatigue and potentially causing brand aversion. At scale, the challenge to maintain relevance across a broad content spectrum is significant.

The Brand Awareness Flywheel: harnessing positive attention

When a brand successfully captures positive attention, it can engage a virtuous cycle, which we will call the Wurl Brand Awareness Flywheel. Our flywheel has 5 phases:

The costs of negative attention

In the following section, we examine what happens during ad breaks when content and advertising are not aligned or aligned at random. Wurl’s data shows what you would expect: viewers frequently change channels during ad breaks when the content and ads are not aligned, with a portion not returning after the ad break.

When viewers decide to change the channel, it results in lost opportunities for both marketers and publishers due to incomplete impressions and potential negative associations with the brand. Our data shows that on average, approximately 4% of viewers are lost per minute of an ad break, meaning an 8% loss during a typical two-minute break.

Viewers are more engaged when content and ads align

Improving the congruence between ad creatives and programming can significantly increase ad acceptance and brand recall. Contextual targeting, which ensures the delivery of the right ad at the right time, leverages the storytelling power of CTV by priming viewers — as seen in the flywheel above.

Our study of over a million transitions from FAST channel content to ad breaks found a clear trend: higher emotional resonance between ads and TV scenes correlates with a lower user loss rate. To test this, our algorithm gave streaming content and ad creatives an ‘emotion score’, and then calculated the correlation between those two scores. The closer the correlation was to 1, the closer the emotions matched.

Scenes and ads with a score of 1.0 resulted in nearly a 50% reduction in user loss compared to a score of 0.4. Ads with a cosine similarity of 0.75 or higher significantly improved user retention.

This can be seen on the chart below: if emotions had no impact, all the dots would align on the dashed line. However, if an ad’s emotional mismatch increases user loss, you’ll find the dot below the dashed line, where the dissonance loss rate (X value) exceeds the resonance loss rate (Y value). This region is shaded to highlight increased viewer abandonment. Conversely, dots above the dashed line would indicate higher retention for emotionally congruent ads, in the non-shaded area.

The chart shows that most ads fall below the dashed line, suggesting that when ads are emotionally mismatched, they tend to increase user loss.

The data demonstrates that emotional resonance can reduce user loss by as much as 60%.

The data is fairly clear on this point: ensuring your ads match the tone of the content around them makes viewers less likely to switch away. For advertisers looking to ensure audiences are aware of their ad and engaged in the content, finding the right context is critical.

Engagement drives results

The benefits of contextual alignment extend well beyond ad completion rates. It drives performance up and down the funnel. 

Consideration stage: stay top of mind

With traditional linear TV, lower funnel metrics were tricky to calculate, with marketers relying on ‘spike’ analysis—analyzing activity above baseline in correlation to ad timings—or other probabilistic efficiency metrics. These types of TV measurement are even more tricky on CTV. When you’re buying impressions programmatically, it is difficult to identify exactly when and where your ads ran—and, therefore, where the spike should theoretically be.

However, there are compensating factors on CTV. The first is that for many industries, conversions occur on a mobile device concurrently with the ad being broadcast. ‘Dual screening’ is an increasingly common way to consume both mobile and CTV content. For food delivery apps, mobile games, and other low-barrier-to-conversion business models, tracking a conversion can be relatively easy.

Stat recap

Innovative ad formats

CTV offers a dynamic platform for incorporating interactive ad features that can significantly boost viewer engagement during the consideration phase. Imagine captivating your audience with QR codes, shoppable ads, graphic overlay ads, and direct links to product landing pages.

Graphic overlay ads seamlessly integrate visual elements like text, images, or animations onto the video content, adding an extra layer of information and compelling calls to action. Shoppable ads take it a step further, allowing viewers to purchase products directly within the ad, making the shopping experience as smooth as a click.

Sequential ads unfold a captivating narrative through a series of ads, each one building on the last to deepen viewer engagement.

By engaging viewers with these interactive elements, brands can shorten the path to purchase, making it easier for viewers to act immediately on their interest.

Assisted conversions

For longer buying journeys, it also helps to be able to track buyer behavior across CTV and mobile platforms. This capability allows for a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey, ensuring that marketing efforts are optimized and effectively driving lift through the funnel.

An assisted install means the user saw an ad on a channel in the window before conversion, but later converted on a different channel. The initial channel (or channels) are credited with an ‘assisted’ install—the users saw the ad during their consideration phase, and that needs to be measured, even if they converted elsewhere. 

Looking at data from Adjust, CTV has proven itself to be a powerful assisting channel for mobile app advertisers. It is consistently demonstrated, for example, that channels more commonly awarded with an attribution (like Facebook or Google Ads) see a significant uplift in conversions if a CTV impression was part of the journey. One Adjust study found that 29% of 2.7 billion installs over two months were assisted.

Analyzing assisted installs is a great way to prove how CTV, traditionally considered for top-of-funnel impact only, is actually capable of impacting campaign effectiveness at every level of the funnel.

Decision stage: Influence conversion behavior

Awareness and consideration are only part of the story — CTV also works for performance marketing.

Strategies must be sharp and intensely focused in the decision stage of the CTV marketing funnel. This phase is critical as it directly influences a viewer’s choice to transition to taking definitive action, such as making a purchase or signing up for a service.

Seamless conversion pathways

Simplifying the conversion process is key to boosting conversion rates, and with new formats, it is easier to incorporate several strategic enhancements specific to CTV. Features like one-click purchasing directly from a CTV ad, via QR codes or push notification, can significantly reduce the friction typically associated with online transactions.

Offering instant access to discounts or special promotions during a CTV ad can capitalize on the immediacy and engaging nature of television viewing, prompting quick viewer action and leveraging the ‘lean-back’ experience of TV watchers.

 Marketers should also make sure the landing pages their CTV ads point to are optimized for quick checkout. Auto-fill capabilities for returning users can massively increase the success rate.

These strategies collectively smooth the path to conversion, significantly boosting the likelihood of success.

Driving performance on CTV — especially for mobile

Mobile has proven to be a powerful amplifier of CTV advertising and vice-versa. Over 75% of users are on their phones while streaming their favorite shows, providing marketers with a significant opportunity to deepen engagement and drive action.

Mobile campaigns benefit from CTV’s broad reach and creative storytelling to support down-funnel activities that ultimately drive conversions.  In fact, the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) found that cross-device tracking in campaigns can boost conversion rates by 20% and increase visibility into the customer journey.

App marketers have a distinct advantage with performance campaigns because of their ability to quickly test and optimize strategies toward what’s working. This real-time feedback loop allows for continuous improvement, driving incrementality and growth.

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. Picsart’s success allowed them to triple their investment into CTV as a companion to their mobile campaigns.

Working with offline measurement

Offline advertisers have also been able to track campaign performance effectively by partnering with sales measurement firms.

BrandDiscovery ensured ads were timely and contextually relevant. This strategic placement, confirmed through geo-targeting and credit card data analysis powered by InMarket, led to a significant uplift in restaurant visits and sales, demonstrating a 40% increase in visits and a 48% rise in sales. Read the full case study here.

This approach showcases how offline entities can utilize CTV alongside advanced analytics to drive measurable offline outcomes, effectively bridging the gap between online advertising and real-world transactions.

Conclusion: Winning on CTV in 2024

Adopting a full-funnel approach to CTV gives marketers the tools to make a measurable impact at every stage of the customer journey. The strategic use of CTV’s unique abilities can significantly enhance your marketing efforts, from building brand awareness to influencing conversion behavior.

Here are a few key lessons from this report:

As the CTV landscape evolves, marketers must stay agile and adapt to new trends and technologies. New and innovative solutions are emerging to deal with some of the headaches marketers have faced when trying to buy programmatically on CTV.

With new approaches to metadata, context analysis, and audience targeting, we’re entering a new era where brands can harness CTV’s full potential to create impactful and effective advertising campaigns that drive real business results.