Scaling FAST: How to Leverage Ad ROAS Cohort Reports

Despite the positive viewership growth FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channels have enjoyed recently, the success of these channels is driven by their ability to monetize. Advertisers typically gravitate toward established channels with larger audiences, so if you’re building an audience base, it’s imperative to attract the right audiences likely to convert and keep watching. Intense competition for viewers from an ever-growing list of FAST channels – without access to accurate audience performance insights – can make capturing and retaining viewers’ attention challenging. 

The ability for FAST channels to track ROAS (return on ad spend) equips publishers and streamers with a competitive advantage. ContentDiscovery is a performance marketing tool for FAST channels and provides 100% measurable ROAS.. Advertisers can now measure campaign performance like never before – let’s explore the value of these insights to your campaigns.

ContentDiscovery drives FAST ROI

The AI advertising engine of ContentDiscovery uses ad monetization and viewership data to promote content that targets audiences who will hit ROAS goals. This enables FAST services to quickly acquire a larger number of viewers who consistently watch their content — and ads — and drive profitability.

Key metrics tracked on the ContentDiscovery dashboard enable advertisers to measure ad performance for specific campaigns, creatives, device types, and platforms. The transparency of the dashboard provides granular detail to understand what’s working well — as well as identify critical areas for improvement.

ROAS is the most important metric for FAST channels since it shows the percent of ad revenue from viewers acquired through campaign ad spend – or the efficiency of your campaign. Other relevant metrics for FAST monetization include Conversions, Gained HOV, and Total Return $. 

Conversions are defined as households that had not watched a channel in 28 days, then watched a full commercial break on a channel after ContentDiscovery presented an ad. This shows the direct impact of your ad on driving new viewer engagement to your FAST channel or app. Related, Gained HOV tracks the converted viewers’ hours of viewing, and Total Return $ is purely the ad revenue from converted viewers.

The insight you need – cohort reporting

ContentDiscovery finds the viewers most likely to tune into your channel. Wurl’s ML engine learns your channel content and automatically optimizes targeting to identify high-value viewers who will return to your channel and drive high HOV. 

With a weekly relative results table, ContentDiscovery advertisers can track ROAS, Gained HOV, or Total Return $ over the viewer lifecycle by holding the conversion date constant. This analysis of viewers who converted during the same week – called a cohort – is key to enabling advertisers to see when, and how long after conversion, they hit their ROAS goal. This insight proves viewer acquisition performance to stakeholders and ensures ROAS goals are hit early and consistently.

To better understand the cohort analysis dashboard view, each row is a group of viewers, or cohort, who started watching the channel that week. This ROAS week-over-week view provides insights into the whole viewer lifecycle, including when they stopped watching. 

Advertisers can measure engagement over time and pivot content to draw viewers back. For each cohort, the metrics tend to increase each week as viewers return to your channel more frequently for a longer duration, increasing the return on the amount you spent to acquire them. 

Creative performance reports

An equally important aspect of FAST channel performance marketing is understanding the relative effectiveness of each creative. ContentDiscovery tracks the performance of each creative with target audiences and automatically shifts investments to ads that convert. 

Similar to the overall campaign performance dashboard widget, the creative reporting dashboard shows the ROAS, Conversions, Gained HOV, and Total Return $ of each creative. Knowing which creatives perform better allows advertisers to adjust future ad concepts based on performance insights. 

ContentDiscovery provides a unique week-over-week view of ROAS for growing FAST viewership. Learn more about how it works.