How Marketers Can Leverage CTV Advertising for Their Thought Leadership Program

There is a growing trend in the marketing world, and it revolves around the boom surrounding OTT streaming services. However, only 11% of brand marketers were utilizing this branding strategy three years ago. 

Connective TV (CTV) advertising has become advertisers' solution for the necessary campaigns to include the digital landscape. Yet, nearly less than half of marketers have only been using this strategy for a year or less. Moreover, some haven't been using it at all. 

The reason for this is senseless when you consider how seamlessly these campaigns fit into your current content creation. I'll explain to you more about this growing trend, some of its benefits, and why you need to be implementing CTV advertising into your thought leadership marketing content.

What is CTV Advertising?

CTV advertising is a form of digital marketing that allows brands to reach their audience on any screen, for example, smart TVs, desktops, and mobile devices.

Therefore, this means you're able to use your current thought leadership content on any platform without having to create new content specific to those channels. In addition, by using CTV advertising, your brand can reach its audience on intelligent TVs with OTT streaming services.

The CTV Trend

CTV is still a reasonably new medium for advertisers. However, advertisers recognize its power. Over three-fourths of brand marketers are spending more than one-third of their budget on this growing marketing channel. 

Those who have not yet adopted this strategy claim the reasons are ad costs, lack of skillset, and limited staffing. Yet, this investment is paying off big for those who have implemented this strategy into their thought leadership content. 

Marketers expect to achieve precise audience targeting, and half anticipate improving their content relevance and viewership.

Top 4 Benefits of CTV in Thought Leadership

There are many advantages to using CTV advertising in your thought leadership marketing program. This is especially true when we consider this recent change in viewer consumption habits, which is reason enough.

Here are the four leading benefits of making the shift sooner rather than later.

1. Increased Brand Awareness

The more an ad is seen, the higher chance it will be remembered and generate interest in a company. CTV ads are typically viewed without interruption or distraction from other marketing messages, which means this increased brand awareness heightened with repetition.

A study by TiVo found that when viewers watch TV for four hours every day, they see over 200 commercials each week on average. That's plenty of opportunities to keep your campaign top-of-mind.

2. Improved Brand Engagement

Cord cutters are abandoning traditional TV, and CTV ads provide an opportunity to engage with them.

People who watch streaming platforms spend more time watching commercials than those who still use cable or satellite services. This is primarily due to digital video recorders (DVR) capability of skipping over ads entirely.

CTV advertising is a way to stay in the most common channels of video entertainment. This allows you to improve brand engagement by reaching your audience on a platform that lets them view your thought leadership content more often.

3. Higher Conversion Rate

The more interested buyers become when viewing your company's ads, the better chance you'll increase conversions and sales over other competitors in this competitive marketplace.

CTV ads can help you reach a wider audience. You'll enhance the conversation rate of prospective buyers by exposing them to more of your content on video streaming services, where they are most likely to view it.

The conversion rate will be higher than your competitors not using this marketing channel. This is because the viewer becomes more interested in buying from you when viewing commercials that feature the product or service your brand offers.

4. Better Customer Retention

Consider the customer retention rates of your company. It's a well-known fact that you'll retain more customers when they are happy with what you offer and how it works for them.

If viewers enjoy watching ads from your company, chances are they will buy from you. If they find that the ad was right and are happy with their purchase, they become loyal to your brand after viewing your content. This means higher return on investment (ROI) opportunities too.

While traditional marketing is still essential, marketers can leverage CTV advertising for their thought leadership program by focusing on better customer retention rates.

The Challenges of CTV

There are a few challenges in CTV advertising. One of the biggest is that it's not easy to measure how well your campaign is working or if you're targeting and reaching the right audience. In addition, inventory fragmentation makes it hard for marketers to plan their campaigns effectively because they can't control when ads are viewed.

It also doesn't help that frequency issues make viewers tune out after seeing too many commercials from different brands.  

Your Thought Leadership Programs Need CTV Advertising  

This is a great time to get your brand on board with CTV because it offers many benefits to save you money and increase conversion rates. According to Forbes, it's also been proven as more effective than TV regarding thought leadership marketing. For example, when consumers watch video content instead of reading text, they are shown an ad more often. This heightens brand awareness and leads them back into consuming other media like print ads. So, if they are interested in what they saw, they will seek out more information about your brand.

The trend for advertising in this medium has skyrocketed in recent years. As a result, it is becoming one of the fastest-growing sectors within online marketing. With these trends only continuing to climb, we may see more marketers take notice and find ways to integrate this strategy into their thought leadership content.