Go Big or Small With Connected TV Retargeting

5 Min Read

This post was produced in partnership with Lever Interactive, a digital advertising agency specializing in emerging channels.

When you think of television advertising, audience targeting isn’t usually the first thing to come to mind—but it soon will be after reading this post. Linear TV has turned off many brands, with advertisers utilizing this format for one main reason—brand awareness. But, even that is a subjective measure, which is why advertisers (specifically in B2B) have avoided it altogether as it doesn’t deliver the insights needed to justify the spend.

The television advertising industry has progressed in leaps and bounds over the past few years, specifically on formats like streaming (Connected TV). A recent article by TechCrunch reported that ad spend grew 57% in 2021 to $15.2 billion, and is expected to grow another 39% this year to $21.2 billion. Why are advertisers and agencies flocking to this performance channel? Let’s explore the ways in which MNTN’s agency partner, Lever Interactive, has made the most of CTV’s audience capabilities, with great success.

How Connected TV’s Audience-First Approach Works

Connected TV applies an audience-first approach to targeting. And no, we’re not referring to what audiences are watching, but instead CTV’s innate ability to drive relevant ads to viewers across different types of programming. Lever Interactive, one of MNTN’s leading agency partners, have taken hold of Connected TV’s audience-targeting capabilities—and reaped the rewards. “Reaching a B2B audience through TV advertising required assumptive placements based on network almost exclusively. On CTV we don’t have to assume where an audience will be tuning in and at what time. We can simply build an audience-focused campaign that reaches a B2B segment with every buy,” says David Sutton, Vice President at Lever Interactive.

MNTN Performance TV embraces the audience-first approach through giving advertisers the ability to target first- and third-party audiences via its Oracle Data Cloud integration and CRM upload feature.

• Utilize third-party audiences in prospecting campaigns to reach tens of thousands of potential customers, and widen the audience pool for retargeting efforts. Or, if you have a niche audience segment you’d like to target, you can go granular too. Here are a couple of the 80,000+ audience segments that can be accessed via MNTN Performance TV:
  – B2B Decision Makers (C-level/C-suite)
  – Last Minute Holiday Shoppers 2x (Individuals that are likely to spend two or more times the average person at Retail stores in the two weeks prior to Christmas)
  – Cost Conscious Shoppers
  
• Utilize first party audiences in retargeting campaigns to reach existing customers (and the ones brought in from your prospecting campaigns)—this can be done a number of ways, such as retargeting existing customers, cart abandoners and even those who expressed interest in certain sections of your website. MNTN Performance TV also released a CRM upload tool, which makes it easy to upload your customer email database and target them directly on Connected TV.

The Best Approach When Targeting B2B Audiences on Connected TV

B2B advertisers might think there’s no place for them on television, but CTV’s audience targeting features change the game. “The reality is that we have the same advanced audience targeting approaches available to us, but B2B advertisers can get stuck in older thinking that their audience is too niche, too granular, and too difficult to target. The silver lining is that B2B brands’ hesitation to invest in CTV provides more untapped potential into very efficient advertising, which is apropos for any early adopter but that gap is growing smaller by the day,” explains Sutton.

Here are a few best practices we recommend B2B advertisers apply to their audience targeting strategy to start off on the right foot.

• MNTN Performance TV’s audience targeting feature gives advertisers the flexibility to be as granular or broad as they wish. We recommend first casting a wide net and group together similar audiences you think would engage with your message.
• Experiment with different audiences to see which segments are resonating with your messaging and ad creative.
• Drill down and view performance data tied to each individual audience segment included in their targeting—providing a detailed picture of the exact, high value customers responsible for driving conversions and revenue. “[CTV advertising] provides advertisers with learnings on [their] B2B audiences – where they’re streaming, what time of day, what device, what networks, and so on,” says Sutton. Ultimately, the insights gleaned from this feature alone is a powerful addition to any B2B advertiser’s overall marketing strategy.

A B2B Success Story

Why should B2C brands have all the fun? Let’s look at an example of a leading B2B email and SMS marketing platform who drove a 11.6% conversion rate with MNTN Performance TV. The brand was looking for a way to increase site traffic, with the ultimate goal of parlaying the increase in qualified visitors into more demos. They turned to MNTN Performance TV to help them reach the right audience, and motivate those viewers to visit and convert:

1. They set up a Performance TV prospecting campaign in order to increase traffic to their site, using B2B segments from the Oracle Data Cloud integration—including those within specific industries and occupations, as well as seniority level and decision-maker roles.
2. L​​aunched a lower-funnel Performance TV retargeting campaign to capture that engaged site audience and drive them to convert. This time, they utilized Performance TV’s audience builder to segment their website traffic, and select from audiences of users who displayed high levels of intent while visiting.

The end result? The combination of prospecting and retargeting campaigns delivered significant increases to both site visits and conversions, proving that B2B brands can reap the benefits of Performance TV. Besides an 11.6% conversion rate, the B2B brand was able to lower their month-over-month cost per lead by 98% and lower their month-over-month cost per visit by 56%.