With U.S. brands expected to invest over $28 billion in connected TV (CTV) in 2024, balancing linear TV and CTV is now a top priority. Advertisers need to integrate these platforms as the TV landscape evolves to reach audiences with various viewing habits. A successful strategy requires both linear and CTV approaches to effectively reach audiences at scale.
We interviewed experts from Comcast Advertising, Disney, Fox, Samsung Ads, Snowflake, and others to gain insights on the evolving landscape of linear and CTV. In our video, they discuss audience fragmentation, data-driven targeting, measurement challenges, and more. Watch now to hear their perspectives.
Five considerations for connecting with linear TV and CTV audiences
1. Adapt to audience fragmentation
With consumers’ rapid shift toward streaming, it’s easy to overlook the enduring significance of linear TV, which still commands a large portion of viewership. According to Jamie Power of the Walt Disney Company, roughly half of the current ad supply remains linear, highlighting the need for brands to adapt their strategies to target traditional TV viewers and cord-cutters. As streaming continues to rise, ensuring your strategy integrates both CTV and linear TV is crucial for reaching the full spectrum of audiences.
“I don’t think that we thought the world would shift so quickly to streaming, but it’s not always just all about streaming; there’s still such a massive audience in linear.”
jamie power, disney
2. Combine linear TV’s reach with CTV’s precision
Blending the reach of linear TV with the granular targeting capabilities of CTV allows advertisers to engage both broad and niche audiences. Data is critical in understanding audience behavior across these platforms, enabling brands to create highly relevant campaigns tailored to specific audience segments. This strategic use of data enhances engagement and ensures that the right viewers see advertising campaigns.
“The future of TV is really around managing the fragmentation of audiences and making sure that you can reach those audiences addressably wherever they’re watching TV.”
carmela fournier, comcast Advertising
3. Manage frequency across platforms
Cross-platform campaigns require managing ad frequency to avoid oversaturation while ensuring adequate exposure. With a variety of offline and digital IDs resolved to consumers, our Digital and Offline Graphs can help maintain consistent messaging across linear TV and CTV. This approach allows advertisers to strike the right balance, preventing ad fatigue and delivering the right audience reach for campaign impact.
“You’ve got to make sure that you’re not reaching the same homes too many times, that you’re reaching everybody the right amount of times.”
justin rosen, ampersand
4. Focus on consistent measurement
Linear TV and CTV offer different data granularities, necessitating tailored approaches for accurate cross-platform campaign measurement. Bridging these data gaps requires advanced tools that streamline reporting for both mediums. As the industry moves toward consistent measurement standards, advertisers must adopt solutions that provide a comprehensive view of campaign performance, enabling them to optimize their cross-platform efforts.
“Where I think there are pitfalls are with the measurement piece, it’s highly fragmented, there’s more work to be done, we’re not necessarily unified in terms of a consistent approach to measurement.”
april weeks, basis
5. Align with shifts in audience behavior
The success of cross-platform campaigns hinges on staying agile and responsive to shifting audience preferences. As CTV adoption grows, advertisers must proactively adjust their strategies to align with how viewers engage across linear and streaming platforms.
Ideas include:
- Regularly updating creative
- Adjusting the media mix
- Utilizing real-time data insights to ensure campaigns remain relevant
“At Fox we were a traditional linear company, and essentially what we’re trying to do is merge the reach and the scale of TV as well as the reach and the scale of all the cord-cutters and cord-nevers that Tubi possesses.” Darren Sherriff – Fox
darren sherriff, fox
As streaming TV rapidly changes, brands must stay ahead of trends and shifts in consumer behavior to tap into CTV’s growing potential. By focusing on these opportunities, advertisers can blend linear TV and CTV, ensuring their campaigns reach audiences wherever they watch.
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Tapad’s TV analytics solutions now include premium national cable inventory– Travelocity asserts industry need, praises partnership — NEW YORK, February 28, 2017 — Tapad, a part of Experian, has announced its partnership with clypd, the leading audience-based sales platform for television advertising. By integrating clypd’s national cable network inventory, the partnership will expand Tapad’s extensive supply of TV inventory to include premium national cable inventory. Tapad is the leading provider of privacy-safe, cross-screen marketing technology solutions and was first-to-market with a device graph. Clypd’s robust sell-side advertising platform was one of the first built exclusively for the television industry, empowering media owners with solutions that deliver workflow automation, data-enhanced decisioning and, overall, maximize TV campaign performance. Through this partnership, Tapad’s Device Graph-powered TV tools will work in tandem with clypd’s sales platform to enable more precise audience engagement for TV ad buys. This will enable marketers to integrate their customer data or third-party digital segments into Tapad’s TV platform and use them to precisely engage their audience across clypd’s industry-leading footprint of national TV inventory. Campaigns are then optimized using Tapad’s graph-powered TV attribution, ensuring ads are aligned with the best context for each brand’s message. “Clypd is a pioneer in building TV marketplaces,” says Marshall Wong, SVP of TV market development at Tapad. “They were quick to recognize the benefits a device graph could bring to TV so that advertisers can activate linear inventory curated for any digital audience.” “Tapad’s TV activation platform increases the efficiency in which marketers can reach their intended audience on traditional linear TV,” says Doug Hurd, co-founder and EVP of business development at clypd. “Their customized, data-driven campaigns launch with precision and really increase the value marketers can extract from linear TV inventory.” "At Travelocity, we are always looking for ways to more efficiently reach our target audiences,” says Ashley Parker, head of brand marketing at Travelocity. “The combination of traditional linear TV and solutions like this offering from Tapad and clypd are bringing both the tools and the supply to make this vision a reality." Contact us today!
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