CTV and OTT advertising have become strategically vital for eCommerce businesses around the globe in recent years, and especially today. This trend has particularly strengthened since the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic, which caused millions of people worldwide to stream their entertainment. In fact, the number of CTV households among the US population is expected to reach 82 percent by 2023. Such an audience is just too large to miss, so more and more brands are turning their attention to this opportunity. Curious how to apply it to your business in practice? Check out this short OTT/CTV eCommerce video advertising guide to learn more.
What is e-commerce?
In general, eCommerce can be described as a set of techniques, tools, and organizations used by businesses to promote their products and services via online advertising channels. The industry has grown significantly with the development of new digital advertising solutions and channels, such as mobile, smart devices, CTV, and OTT. Experts predict that CTV ad spend is going to reach $6 billion by 2021 and this number will only continue to increase.
With the introduction of social distancing and quarantine measures in many countries, advertising channels like CTV have been core for many eCommerce businesses. Using eCommerce video ads provides great reach, opens up premium audiences, and is effective. Moreover, combined with a couple of targeting and attribution techniques, OTT and CTV advertising can become the key component of your new successful promotion strategy. Here are some tips to ensure this:
Make your ads clear. The first and foremost thing for effective eCommerce video ads strategies is analytics – you will never be able to understand what works best for you if you don’t know… well, what works. Buyer behavior is also hard to understand if you can’t figure out where it comes from. So making your ads measurable isn’t really about some additional bonuses, but is rather a key tool for optimization, just like for other digital channels. Some of the features you might want to track include your audiences, their interests, and behavior, as well as their buyer journey after encountering an ad.
Attract purchases with actionable ads. Getting more awareness about your brand is great, but it shouldn’t be the only thing CTV brings to your brand. In fact, the more opportunities for action the user gets, the better results you’ll receive. Making your eCommerce video ad actionable will help you get instant engagement and better understand the user experience. In order to reach this, you could, for instance, get creative with formats and build a cross-platform campaign that would invite viewers to learn more via SMS or additional content.
There are, however, some details to keep in mind with actionable ads. For example, a recent report suggests that providing users with too many options to choose from can negatively impact their engagement, so the optimal number of the suggested options varies between two and four. The general benchmark of an average engagement rate across verticals for CTV interactive ads is 0.36 percent.
Embrace targeting possibilities. Although placing CTV ads can somewhat resemble traditional TV advertising in many aspects, the core mechanism rather resembles desktop or mobile advertising, because of the advanced targeting capabilities available. Within the digital advertising landscape, CTV is one of the best channels for launching hyper-targeted campaigns, as it allows the gathering and analysis of lots of user information – which can be then used to create customized data-driven strategies. This lets you deliver a personalized message to the right people, and reach them at the right time and place.
A great example of targeting usage for eCommerce video ads would be delivering customized messages to small audiences segmented by demographics and interests. That delivers the most relevant offers to the most interested prospects, thus saving lots of time and money for all sides of the equation.
In conclusion
Building your eCommerce video ads strategies is an important task for every marketer, especially when it comes to adopting new channels like CTV and OTT. The good news is that the doubts and challenges related to this process will be eventually balanced by the potential benefits of the industry, especially since the global COVID outbreak. Throughout 2020, people all around the world have started to search more online, view more online, and, most importantly, buy more online. With all three parts being included in eCommerce CTV advertising to some extent, these ads’ effectiveness continues to rise. The best thing to do now is to jump in and be among the pioneers of this growing industry.