Digital Agency Solutions: How to Maximize Your Local Campaigns With Performance CTV

The age-old maxim of “think globally, act locally” isn’t just embraced by marketers for local mom-and-pop businesses. Today, massive multi-location brands and franchises are taking a local-first approach to their performance marketing strategies, helping them better resonate with their target audience.

As customer spending and viewing habits change and the demand for more unique and personalized experiences skyrockets, advertisers are responding by steering their budgets toward regional markets.

For regional marketing managers, whose success is inherently tied to the performance of the stores within their territories, embracing a local-first strategy has never been more crucial..

The Local Ad Landscape

Source: BIA Advisory Services

Based on BIA Advisory Services’ 2023 Total Local U.S. Ad Revenue report findings, key sub-sectors, like automotive, are poised for local growth as we close out the year.

BIA also revises upward its projections for Tier 3—new car dealers and automotive repair services. Other sectors seeing an optimistic adjustment in advertising expectations include financial institutions, loan services, plumbing and HVAC services, and real estate agencies. While political advertising is projected to be a major category in 2024, BIA projects initial spending to kick off in late 2023.

According to eMarketer, local television stations will likely gain from a rebound in automotive advertising as vehicle stock levels rise.

Source: eMarketer

Pre-pandemic, local TV derived approximately 20% to 25% of its advertising revenue from the automotive industry.

There is room for improvement. In February 2023, the automotive industry saw a steep 66.8% drop in the U.S. TV advertising expenditure, attributed mainly to fewer car companies buying high-priced ads for the Big Game than in the previous year, 2022.

The Benefits of Local Marketing

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to regional advertising, but the perks apply to just about any industry and brand—startup shop or national corporation.

When you harness the power of local advertising, you benefit your bottom line through:

• Geo-Specific Targeting: When you go local, you reach the right people, at the right place, at the right time.
• Increased Customer Engagement: Local marketing allows your brand to tap into your locale’s specific needs and interests, leading to higher customer engagement and loyalty.
• Cost-Effectiveness: Localized campaigns often require a smaller budget than national ones, yet they can provide a significant ROI by targeting a more responsive audience.
• Brand Authenticity: Tailoring your marketing messages to suit the local culture or needs can make your brand more relatable and trustworthy.

Political advertisers especially benefit from local advertising. By investing in local campaigns, they’re able to deliver messaging by region and specific voter districts to achieve targeted impact, drive issue-specific campaigns, and mobilize grassroots support more effectively.

Similarly, national advertisers often opting to buy the most populous markets can reach untapped ones and close any gaps through 100% designated market area (DMA) coverage.

Unlocking the Power of Local With Performance TV

Connected TV (CTV) brings together two key digital agency solutions—the reach of traditional TV and the pinpoint accuracy of streaming—making it an ideal tool for local advertising.

The pillars of its effectiveness lie in its targeting capabilities, creative approaches, and chosen inventory.

The Targeting

The most successful local CTV campaigns use a 360-degree targeting strategy to reach the audiences that perform. These campaign components encompass a mix of tactics, including:

• Targeting Enhancements: Contextual targeting, device targeting, location targeting, frequency capping, dayparting
• First-Party Data: CRM onboarding, look-a-like modeling, retargeting
• Third-Party Data: Location-based, TV viewership, search history, intent-based, purchase history

Geo-fencing is ideal for:

• Retargeting customers who visit or commute through any business’s location
• Leveraging targeted campaigns only to customers within a predetermined physical proximity to a business
• Increasing brand awareness with concentrated spends
• Identifying high concentrations of customers
• Targeting competitor’s locations

Among many other industries, quick-service restaurants (QSRs) reap the many rewards of localized targeting. No matter what they’re whipping up in the kitchen, these eateries can communicate new menu items and promotions available within the region.

The Creative

If you’re already prioritizing local marketing in your CTV strategy, how well is your creative performing?

The success of your campaign will only be as good as your creative ingenuity.

One particularly effective method is the use of interactive ad formats. Not your run-of-the-mill commercials, these ads invite your audience to engage directly with the content, transforming passive viewers into active participants.

For example, QR codes can be integrated into your CTV ads to bridge the gap between the TV screen and the viewer’s mobile device. A simple scan of the code could take the viewer to a landing page, promotional site, or even a digital shopping cart—encouraging immediate action.

Similarly, dynamic creative allows you to automatically tailor the content based on real-time data. This could mean adjusting the ad’s messaging or visuals depending on factors like the viewer’s location, time of day, or even the current weather conditions.

These creative methods are personalization at its finest, serving up a hyper-relevant experience for each individual viewer.

The Inventory

In the CTV advertising ecosystem, inventory isn’t just a list of available slots—it’s your stage, your platform, and your battleground.

Choosing premium OTT publishers places your brand in elite company, aligning your message with high-quality content that your audience already trusts and enjoys, like live sporting events.

With inventory software, you can leverage premium video ad supply and share your message both:

• In-Stream: Show up in picture-by-picture, dynamic L-bar, and dynamic border frame formats to take advantage of peak moments and lulls in gameplay without disrupting the viewer experience.
• In-Break: Show up in picture-in-picture or dynamic L-bars during traditional ad breaks. Or, opt to transform live content/exclusive highlights into 6,15, or 30-second VAST-enabled ad units.

Plus, take advantage of real-time customization capabilities to adapt and fine-tune your messaging for maximum impact.

Digital Agency Solutions With Digital Remedy

With Digital Remedy, you can optimize your regional CTV advertising strategies and gain a better understanding of your local audiences across the board.

Our digital media solutions support the unique goals of all our local partners—retailers, venues, dealers, franchisees, agents, and more—whether it’s to boost brand awareness or drive store/dealership traffic. To give you a holistic overview of your performance, we can also execute a foot traffic study to examine how your digital media channels are contributing to your on-site visits.

From national to proximity-based targeting, we have the power to get as granular as your brand needs. With our innovative media solutions, premium inventory access, and a regional sales team as your performance media partner, we’ll help you leverage these granular insights into your customers with greater levels of measurability to help you better understand what is and isn’t working. We have vast experience optimizing towards the full scope of your KPIs and have successfully executed everything from branding and engagement, down to site visits and ROAS.

Ready to get the most out of your regional marketing efforts? Let’s talk.