We’ve all heard the stats about the thousands of marketing messages the average consumer is exposed to weekly, and yet advertisers continue to forget just how noisy the media landscape is when planning their CTV campaigns.
Perhaps optimism gets the best of us, and we think great results are all but guaranteed if our campaign has the right targeting, eye-catching creative tailored to our target audience and the TV medium, and a measurement plan to report on our priority metrics. With CTV playing a more important role in brands’ media mixes with every passing month, now is as important a time as ever for marketers to remember that consumers’ mental availability — a person’s ability to recall a brand when making a purchase — has limits.
To be clear, CTV is hugely valuable and important to modern brands. It combines a growing audience staring at a large-format screen with the ability to target highly specific segments and the power of real-time digital attribution. According to an Insider Intelligence forecast, CTV ad spend will continue to grow through 2027, when it will reach $40.9 billion. The missed opportunity arises when advertisers fail to properly surround their commercials with sequential messaging to close the sale.
Digitally native brands and those with goods that are readily sold online can lean on social and other online and mobile channels to remind audiences exposed to their commercials to take action and make a purchase. But where does that leave brands with sales that happen at a physical store — consumer packaged goods, durable goods, quick service restaurants, automobiles and more?
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One answer is place-based digital out-of-home (DOOH) screens located at or near the physical locations where these brands’ products are sold.
Imagine being able to remind your target customer about your product — the same one you told them about a few days ago through your commercial — as they are finalizing their shopping list. That’s exactly what place-based DOOH can allow you to do. With digital screens located steps from store entrances, you’ll deliver that critical reminder to a shopper on their way to grab a cart. In this way, CTV primes your audience, and DOOH gives that necessary real-world trigger that increases the chances a purchase is made.
To put this into perspective with a hypothetical example, say a leading snack food brand chose to harness this combined power of place-based DOOH screens and CTV to maximize sales impact and ensure success for a new product launch.
Through the campaign, the company may aim to generate awareness and drive foot traffic to physical retail stores where the new product would be available for purchase. To accomplish this goal, the team should seek to create a seamless customer experience that would remind the audience about the product moments before making a purchase.
With the combined benefits of CTV and DOOH, the company could support a sequential messaging approach by partnering with an omnichannel demand-side platform (DSP) that allows for efficient management of both CTV and DOOH together. The campaign could be brought to life in two phases:
- Phase 1 – CTV Priming: Running a series of engaging CTV ads showcasing key characteristics of the new snack product, focusing on precise targeting, ensuring that the ads reached its target audience when they were most likely to engage with CTV content.
- Phase 2 – Place-based DOOH Real-World Trigger: Following the CTV priming phase, incorporate place-based DOOH screens by placing them in close proximity to retail partner stores. The DOOH screens would be situated in premium locations near store entrances to meet potential customers right before they made purchasing decisions.
Following completion of the campaign, the stores where the snack food is sold could see increased sales of the new product.
Sequencing CTV and DOOH messages is easy with any omnichannel DSP, including Yahoo!, The Trade Desk, Viant, Google and many more. When planning the real-world reminder portion of your campaign, however, remember to prioritize screens that have direct proximity to the stores where your products are sold. Being as close to the store’s entrance as possible is critical as that’s the last moment advertisers have to influence a purchasing decision. Once the shopper enters the store, you have little control over what aisles they will walk down or what products they take off the shelf.
It’s tough for a brand to convince someone to buy their product, and it’s not because your targeting is off or your creative isn’t clever. You’re fighting for your customers’ mental availabilities against notifications on their phones, transit ads on their commutes, audio ads in their podcasts and more. By stitching together CTV and place-based DOOH media, you can maximize the impact of your next campaign by effectively reminding your audiences about your product in the perfect moment — as they are walking into a store to make a purchase.
Mike Schott is the EVP of Media Sales at Volta, a member of the Shell Group. He leads the company’s sales organization, responsible for connecting leading advertisers with Volta’s digital media network embedded into EV charging stations placed in front of premier commercial properties and retail locations. A proven revenue leader with over two decades of experience driving transformational, data-driven growth, Schott has grown Volta Media from the ground up and is instrumental in forging the company’s partnerships with top global brands, retailers, and agency partners. Prior to Volta, he held key leadership positions at Viant Inc., NBCUniversal and Hearst, and holds a B.S. from Santa Clara University.