‘Tis the season to stream, and CTV is a captivating channel for reaching consumers during the year’s biggest spending season.
The holidays are a crucial time for advertisers, but they also bring challenges such as heightened competition and shifting consumer behavior. This moment presents advertisers with a unique year-end opportunity: transform traditional approaches to holiday advertising by investing in CTV and capitalize on increased engagement and brand awareness.
Benefits of CTV for holiday advertising
CTV is still an undervalued channel. Let’s consider how ad spend is spread across digital devices versus how many hours users spend with each device. For every hour of mobile use, advertisers spend $0.51 — but only $0.12 goes to CTV. This means CTV offers untapped potential to improve return on ad spend (ROAS).
Household reach
TVs are household devices, typically shared by several people. While this can create a targeting challenge, it also boosts ad reach. CTV viewers now spend over 2 hours watching CTV per day, a rapidly-growing figure as time spent with CTV increases faster than time spent with any other connected device. And over the holidays, this number becomes even more impressive. Last year, CTV watch time spiked two to three times over Thanksgiving and Christmas!
Brand-building
Santa drinking from a glass bottle of Coca-Cola. Hershey Kisses ringing the song “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” Holiday TV commercials create some of the most memorable brand messages. According to a recent survey, 69% of CTV users remember holiday shopping ads on streaming TV (a 31% year-over-year increase). With CTV viewership surpassing that of linear TV, CTV is the new premium ad environment that serves as an ideal touchpoint for driving brand awareness.
Captivating ads
Connected TVs are the biggest screen in consumers’ homes, and their size can have a big impact on ad efficacy. Typically shown during a break in main video content, many CTV ads are unskippable, ensuring that the entire message reaches the user. Unlike many digital ads on other devices, CTV ads always include sound. This provides a crucial layer for grabbing consumers’ attention.
Incorporating interactive features into a CTV holiday ad can significantly boost viewer engagement. These interactive features can include clickable links, quizzes, QR codes, and even shoppable ads — all directly accessible from the viewer’s TV screen.
Advanced targeting
We already know that consumers prefer relevant ads. In fact, nearly three-quarters of consumers find contextually-relevant ads the most appealing and feel more likely to interact with them. CTV has powerful targeting capabilities that allow advertisers to not only ensure that their ads are contextually-relevant, but also targeted to the viewers’ unique interests, behaviors, and viewing patterns.
Best practices for CTV holiday advertising
Whether you’re trying out CTV advertising for the first time or looking to expand your current CTV budget, here are some best practices for advertising via CTV during the holidays.
Go omnichannel
To drive brand awareness during the holidays, CTV is the icing on the omnichannel fruitcake. When integrated into an omnichannel advertising strategy, CTV can reinforce brand messaging. This leads to better brand recall, higher ad engagement, and better holiday ad spending ROI. In a recent survey, 72% of marketers say that they use CTV in their holiday campaigns because it significantly drives incremental lift when used alongside other channels.
Optimize creatives
Maximize the format of your creatives to take advantage of all the capabilities of the big screen. No matter which innovative ad format you choose, CTV ads should include a consistent call-to-action, logo, and URL. Those that have all three boast a 113% higher conversion rate on average. Also, don’t forget to make the most of music and voiceover to engage the viewer! This can help capture the attention of viewers that may be looking away from the screen.
Inspire action
Consumers are primed for action during the holiday season, and they appreciate when ads make holiday shopping easier. According to LG’s survey, 72% of CTV viewers would scan a QR code in a CTV ad to make a purchase, and 42% would go directly to a brand website. Interactive features like QR codes that inspire action with viewers are clearly a winning tactic for CTV holiday advertising.
Get started with holiday CTV advertising
CTV offers a viewing experience similar to its linear counterpart — but with much more engaging formats, along with sophisticated targeting and measurement capabilities. This makes it the ideal channel for engaging holiday shoppers and building lasting brand awareness.
You can easily get started by purchasing CTV inventory programmatically via an open exchange like the Brand+ Marketplace. This allows you to dynamically adjust bids and optimize ad delivery based on performance in real time.
If premium content is critical to your brand (especially during the holidays), consider buying inventory through a Private Marketplace deal (PMP). Verve offers both pre-built packages that combine targeted CTV inventory and tailored audiences as well as custom deals with targeting strategies as unique as your audience. Get in touch for more information on how to start your holiday CTV campaign today.
