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OTT Continues its Climb
One of the fastest growing channels in marketing today is Over the Top Television (OTT), or Connected TV (CTV). This isn’t surprising to the advertising world, as it’s such an effective way to reach your targeted audience. These ads that run on this platform are highly targeted, brand-safe, trackable ads that will always make an impact. These programmatic messages are designed to take away the “spray and pray” method of TV advertising. In fact, these sharp-shooting commercials are quickly becoming a mainstay of the marketing mixes of many brands. Any marketer wanting to succeed in the programmatic landscape will eventually need to become familiar with Over the Top TV, and why it’s so invaluable.
Why Incorporate OTT Into Your Marketing Platform?
Each day, more and more TV viewers are cutting the cable, causing an onslaught of streaming platforms. Recently launched amongst these platforms are Disney+, Apple TV Plus, HBO Max and YouTube TV. Serious advertisers are starting to take note of a few compelling reasons to get with the program (no pun intended) and start shifting ad spend towards this recent advancement:
- Some of the huge cable giants are getting in on the action. NBCUniversal (a subsidiary of Comcast) is launching Peacock; an ad-supported streaming service
- According to Variety, satellite and TV companies lost 6 million customers in 2019
- Resonate reports that so far, 53 million people have “cut the cord”
- According to eMarketer, they predict that in 2021 total ad revenue will reach a grandiose $11 billion
In the course of a normal year, this would be the time (May 11-15) that the Networks would be making the in-person presentations to Madison Avenue ad buyers … but this is anything but a normal year, compliments of the COVID-19 crisis. The upfronts have been cancelled or postponed for who-knows-how-long, along with the live sporting events that would normally be one of the main revenue sources for traditional TV advertising. So, as TV networks modify their programming and make it available on streaming services, more marketers are following suit and making the jump to OTT.
A Real-Life Example
When it comes to the power of OTT, the results speak for themselves. A recent example of OTT ad power can be found with a longtime client of ours, ATI (Advanced Training Institute). ATI, along with their ad agency, Magic Marketing, contacted Genius Monkey looking for a solution that would help them boost student enrollment through greater brand awareness. We suggested adding OTT to their add mix. Once OTT was added to their plan ATI saw immediate results! The students’ path to conversion became substantially shorter, meaning the amount of users who took over 90 days to convert decreased from 63.5% to 35% – a 28.5% improvement! Additionally, users who took less than 2 days to convert improved to 22.6% from 5.1%, a 17.5% improvement.
This example demonstrates the power behind the rich content and engagement with OTT/CTV placements.
What Are The Marketers Seeing?
The marketing world is recognizing the field of OTT as being ripe, and ready to harvest. Here are a few compelling reasons for marketers to increase ad spend towards this effective technology.
Research by OpenX and The Harris Poll revealed that OTT consumers use their mobile devices for more than six hours a day and watch more than two hours of mobile video daily. Millennial OTT users stream more video content on their mobile device than their TV sets.
Also revealed in that same study is that 52% of adults in the United States (over 18) use at least one OTT service, while nearly one-third of Americans (55 and older) watch OTT content.
Emarketer predicts that OTT ad spend will reach $9 billion in the US this year (2020), and will increase 28% year over year. At this rate, by 2023 the ad spend figures will reach $14.6 billion.
With advanced proprietary programmatic technology, Genius Monkey can track OTT/CTV conversions through attribution; something that’s been impossible with traditional television advertising. As with all marketing efforts, attribution is imperative in order to track the effectiveness of your ad spend, as well as determining the most effective way to allocate your ad spend.
For over a decade Genius Monkey has set the bar for programmatic advertising, helping their clients reach their targeted audience with the right message at the right time, across the entire sales funnel. As we always do, we have kept up with technology and incorporated OTT/CTV into our clients’ repertoire.
With this technology, marketers can now increase the effectiveness of their campaigns by incorporating OTT/CTV into their strategies, reaching those who may have seen a previous ad from a different medium, virtually doubling the effect their ads have on their targets.
