While advertisers and vendors have been working for years to become more in sync on digital, a massive gap still exists between advertisers and networks surrounding TV.
From identifying audiences, to closing the loop between TV and digital, TV has flummoxed the ad industry for too long. But as the industry grows more advanced with more sophisticated solutions, significant gains have been made to help TV advertisers better understand their audiences and deliver better results.
With this in mind, here are some key areas where technology is closing the gap between advertisers and TV networks.
Targeting
Blanket buckets such as age and gender might have done the trick for TV advertisers in years past. But today, advertisers need deeper insights to help them connect the dots. Rather than casting a wide net and hope that the right audience is there, technology is helping TV target on a deeper level by delivering insights that take behavioral data, past purchase info into account. Pair this with automation and AI, and advertisers and TV networks can get precise about where brands can reach audiences most effectively.
Attribution – Closing the loop
One of the biggest challenges advertisers have been trying to solve for a long time is translating how their TV ad buys correlate to purchases and foot traffic. Moreover, what can be done to build a funnel that nurtures prospective buyers from the research to the actual transaction itself. Today, we understand the importance of interconnecting every touchpoint — from in-store to online. Not having TV involved in attributing sales leaves a large part in this funnel unmeasured. However, with the influx of Smart TVs – and the rise of OTT – the lid has been lifted in terms of TV insights with more data available on audience make-up and viewership trends than ever before. This data is then taken and woven in with data from other mediums to create a more complete view of the purchase lifecycle.
Attribution continues to be a burning topic in the advertising industry, especially in TV. Transparency and accountability are often hard to come by in many instances, with only meagre post-buy reports being made available to advertisers from agencies and vendors. These reports only show a minimal snapshot of performance in relation to KPIs and simply don’t deliver the value advertisers are looking for in terms of reporting. With advanced technology however, advertisers are now afforded the option of insights that not only tie in TV ad results, but also provide an overview of how TV ad performance has translated into online purchases – and even in-store foot traffic. These types of 360-degree insights are imperative for advertisers to find success today.
Thanks to innovation in the tech and advertising sectors, TV isn’t the walled garden it once was. Granted, there’s still a lot that we in the advertising and TV industry have yet to uncover. But with the help of modern tech advertisers and TV networks, they no longer have to rely on the broad guesswork to deliver results – which is better for consumers, advertisers and TV networks.
