CTV, Fire TV, and the Funnel You’re Missing

CTV, Fire TV, and the Funnel You’re Missing Speaker 1: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Better Advertising with BTR Media podcast. Today I am incredibly excited to be joined by Gibby. Gibby, thank you so much for hopping on. Speaker 2: Always a pleasure to be on and excited to record today's episode. Speaker 1: If you guys aren't familiar with Gibby, Gibby is our in-house DSP expert and you should pause this episode and go to LinkedIn and follow him before doing anything else. Gibby has been posting exceptional content around DSP in general, a lot around streaming TV, working up the funnel, but also all the backend aspects of attribution and measurement and AMC that I think brands are really struggling to keep up with. So I wanted to start with that because you've been doing an incredible job of not only managing some of our largest brands, but also educating everyone else on what they should be doing. So huge shout out to you for balancing all of that. Speaker 2: Yeah, I really appreciate it. You know, being able to understand and being able to get it out is something I'm always invested in. I love helping people learn on various topics that I'm excited about. So super excited to be able to do that for everybody. Speaker 1: Not to mention this insane guide that you just posted on LinkedIn. That's actually what inspired me to want to do this podcast. Do you know how many pages this guide was? Do you remember? I think it was like 19. It was a 19-page guide on streaming TV. If you're not listening, then you can at least download the resource that we're going to attach to this podcast because I think streaming TV, in my opinion, is probably one of the most exciting avenues that we're seeing in the search, display, performance marketing, brand marketing split. Because I think it's merging the historical brands building storytelling avenue that brands love to invest in with the performance marketing insights, attribution and measurements that I think we've all gotten really spoiled with. So I wanted to dive in and just ask you a few questions for all the brands that listen to our podcast. One, first and foremost, is there a certain Stage in which you think a brand should start to invest in streaming TV? Speaker 2: I think it kind of depends on where they're at in their. Kind of longevity or where they're at and kind of their brand story, I guess. Because Connected TV, Fire TV, STV, OLB, however you want to say it and however you want to look at it can be beneficial to any brand at any point. It just depends on where you want to invest, how you want to invest, how you can invest and ultimately relate it back to what you're doing on, you know, the search side or if you're on. Unknown Speaker: Can I say Walmart on this? Speaker 1: Yeah, you can say Walmart. Speaker 2: On Walmart or anything like that, it translates back to your overall success on that platform. And if you're, again, invested in overall brand awareness, brand growth, it makes complete sense. I've seen brands that launch it initially for products on Amazon that they want to get up and running, that they want that brand awareness there. Okay, sacrificing a ROAS in the short run, knowing that CTV and Fire TV We capture so many different audiences and capture so many people who may not even know the product or hey, if they are already aware of the brand, hey, here's another product that we sell. I think like I'm always in favor of launching it in addition to what you're doing. So when the brand is, you know, more mature and they can invest in a CTV because throwing $1,000 at CTV is not going to do as much as it's, you know, $10,000 do. But I also see it as like I've launched it in early stages as we've done it as a buildup tactic for new brands and new products. So I lean more towards the more mature range, but I've also done it both ways. It really truly depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Speaker 1: There's definitely no one size fits all. I think the context I like to give a brand is you have to consider the consumer. If they're coming to Amazon or Walmart and typing in a keyword they're ready to buy, so their intent's always going to be higher. So if you're focusing on short-term KPIs and really high intent, high conversion rate growth, Then that's gonna be a good opportunity for you. That being said, I think streaming TV has grown a ton and we've seen the value of getting in front of customers before they get to the digital shelf because the digital shelf is incredibly crowded. When you're able to advertise them at home and you included this in the guide, you actually put a side by side of on mobile, you're scrolling quickly, you're ready to purchase and you're distracted. But when you're at home, you use the frame, you're laid back viewing. So you're a little bit more open-minded to the commercial and it's driving a little bit more attention than what you typically see on the digital shelf, which is super important. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think intent is another big thing that you have to look at here too. It's like, okay, what's my intended audience? What's my intended category? Where am I showing these ads? Because it's a lot different from showing on, you know, like Roku and Disney Plus compared to showing on like the Weather Channel or some stuff. It's all about like understanding your intended audience and where you need to show up. And also, you know, leaning into your certain benchmarks within the category too is like that was one of the biggest opportunities that we saw with the Fire TV test is We had this huge opportunity where the Fire TV wasn't currently saturated by the entire category. So we were able to break in at cheap video completion or estimated video completion rate costs, cheap ECPMs, basically a cheaper alternative to STV and OLV. So sometimes you also have to look at that avenue. It's like, hey, does this actually pose an opportunity or are we going to be in an aisle where everything's going to be super inflated? So I think that's another big part of like the intent and understanding where you need to show up to. Speaker 1: That's actually a great point. I would love to transition and dive a little bit deeper on that. Within your guide, you mentioned that of TV usage, streaming now makes up 47%. That's compared to cable, broadcast, and I think you had the other section on there. So very large audience, and we know it's unique. That being said, I think the classical argument with CTV, it's hard to measure. How do you identify, you know, you mentioned the category analysis. How do you identify where your audience is and what opportunities there are? Did you work directly with an Amazon representative that helped you understand the category? How did you guys identify that as an opportunity? Speaker 2: We did work with Amazon to identify it as a big opportunity in a way that we could break into. Speaker 1: Competitor spend analysis type of thing. Speaker 2: And then from there, it was just utilizing a lot of the research that we had already done with the brand and understanding, hey, these are the audiences that work really well. It's not, you don't have to do like a completely new research tactic to understand what audiences you need to go after off platform. They basically translate back to on platform. So if you're showing up, you know, for baby strollers, there's people who are looking for baby strollers on Google, on Walmart, on Amazon are all basically similar. So you don't have to do like any new research. So we basically leverage all of the knowledge and all of the KPIs and data that we had had from months and months and months of running display tactics, you know, funnel down to, okay, hey, these are the audiences that really work for these products that we need to get up and running. These are the audiences that really work for the product that we're trying to advertise. Cool. We have these set aside. Let's run these on a different, you know, platform. Let's run these in a different creative inventory placement compared to what we did on the display and let's see how everything changes. So it wasn't like a significant overhaul as far as like, Needing to do additional research on what audiences is like, you know, keep it simple. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: The approach that we took. Speaker 1: Absolutely. And there's no reason to reinvent the wheel either. I think you have access to a well of information on the search side and with AMC, that's even more so because it's no longer just keyword high intent base. We can actually deep dive into the audience segments that are driving growth for us. That being said, I think when people think TV, they think national media, broad-based targeting. When it comes to streaming TV, how niche can you get with that audience segmentation? How niche do you want to get? Because you can probably overdo it and go too small. Speaker 2: You can definitely overdo it. I want to, you know, we've always taken the approach of depending on what stage of the funnel is how granular you are. If you're more awareness based, like you need to be a little bit more broad. If this is the, that's the sole intent, obviously you need to exclude like recent converters, recent views of the products. So you really go after that strict awareness in market audience. Now, as you start moving down the funnel, you get a little bit more granular, but that's also where you sacrifice on How wide of a range and how. Basically how far you can stretch your audience sizes. So I think it truly depends on your intent of like your strategy. So if we're leaning more mid to upper funnel, you know, a couple of guidelines, let's, you know, target and market audience one while excluding X, Y, and Z. And now as you start working more upper, let's, let's target similar audiences. Let's do just lifestyle, high interest or layer in some demographics. So, um, I think that the stage in the funnel that you're trying to go after really matters when it comes to What audience are you looking at? Speaker 1: Hypothetically, let's say I am advertising a cat treat. I say that because my cat is stretching directly behind my monitor right now. There's a good chance she crosses the screen. And I wanted to lean into TV. What type of audience for extremely upper funnel, how would you craft that? What type of audience would you look at? Speaker 2: So one, I would obviously, excluding all brand purchasers, subscribers, everything, basically what I'm looking at is what exclusions do I need to make to make this whole new brand? So exclude all those audiences, build those out. Then I always like to go to the PDP just to see like what categories they actually fall into. And then I'll take those back over like the audience section on DSP. You can even do your own research by, hey, let's target, let's look at cat treats just in general. Let's see an overlap percentage through audience insights of what I can target. But if I was going like super broad, super awareness, Cat treats is probably one that I would go after just because it is directly related, but cat food, cat supplies, toys for cats, because a lot of the time when people are training cats, they use treats as a reinforcement tactic. So you can get really, really broad or even You can look at demographics for people in houses with pets. Speaker 1: It's incredible, and I think that's where people maybe are still underutilizing the TV aspect because they don't understand the audience or the exclusions. There's always the incrementality argument when it comes to running large brand budgets, which is why you're saying start with your exclusions first so you can segment your traffic and bring your consumer down the funnel. But even like you said, this cat treat play, there's also this level of you can segment and slice and dice an audience to start to understand more and more about that customer and then drive a level of personalization as well. I know one of the examples that we've talked about in the past is like back to school, right? Let's say you sell vitamins and supplements and you're running a back to school activation. You can curate your creative to be focused on back to school so that way when the moms and dads are sitting on the couch and they see this asset of a child, you know, walking onto a bus, it resonates with them. They're like, oh, that's right. I should be buying vitamins and supplements for my child returning to school or using our cat treats examples. We could, to your point, lean into the training element or We have the insights to see whether or not someone more than likely probably just adopted a kit and then this is how we need to bring them throughout the stage of the funnel. So it's, it's incredible. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think you hit on something very important here too, is like your creative intent. You can't just throw something at the wall and hope it sticks. You have to, again, understand your audience, what you're trying to accomplish. And then use your video. So, you know, say it's like an Easter or a Christmas or any, you know, if there's a big tentpole event or if there's a big holiday, maybe using some, let's say Christmas, use green, use red, use bows, hit on that kind of seasonality of what you're trying to accomplish. Now, if it's more just like an activation that you're doing longevity, more brand amp in style, Obviously a little bit different, but always make sure your brand's front and center. Make sure that you have the quality behind it. You don't want something super like AI generated or anything like that. Something that you can tell has a meaning to it and that has basically a persona behind it. Speaker 1: Absolutely. I think people are so accustomed to this high intent marketing world that we see driven from meta ads and Amazon ads that they try to market to everyone because they assume if someone's making a search again, they're high intent and ready to purchase and they lose that Special Edge that actually makes them stand out because you can't stand out in a digital shelf when everyone has the same terms of service, right? The same main image guidelines, same title guidelines. But when you lean into TV, it really gives you this competitive advantage of being able to tell your brand story, but also capture attention. If you know you're serving an ad to a household that has a certain breed of dog and that breed of dog does really well with your chew toy, lean into that. Capture that attention. I know the moment I see a TV ad and a certain breed of dog is on the TV, I immediately look up. I think brands kind of lose that edge because they have access to too many audience insights and too much data. They try to serve everyone, effectively serving no one. Speaker 2: I think this is where the overthinking aspect comes into it. You just need to keep it simple. I always like to keep it simple. You understand, and going back to your point, if something with a doodle pops up on the screen, I'm like, right there. Speaker 1: Ready to go, do I need this? Unknown Speaker: Right there. Speaker 2: I was like, oh, dude, they tore up the couch cushion. I understand that. How can I reinforce? Oh, maybe this dog treat does work. But yeah, it really just comes down to keep it simple. You don't have to overthink this. When you overthink this, that's when you start to get in trouble. Speaker 1: I love it. I think that this was a quick-hitting, incredibly informative episode. We are attaching the full 19-page guide to this episode that gives you a little bit more insights into the hands-on keyboard element. And then I'm sure I'll be doing a follow-up where we actually deep dive on some of the technical questions. But Gibby, thank you so much for hopping on and dropping 15 minutes of straight knowledge for our audience. Speaker 2: Yeah, always a pleasure. Happy to be able to do it. Speaker 1: And again, if you're listening in, the guide will be attached. Take the time to go follow Gibby and always feel free to reach out to either one of us if you have any questions on how you should be leaning into TV for your brand.