Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back to the LeadsRX Attribution Marketing channel here on YouTube. On today's episode, we are going to be talking about OTT and CTV and how you can measure and accurately track how well those campaigns are performing, just like your other digital campaigns. So stay tuned. Now, OTT and CTV are very popular ways of advertising and getting your messaging on TV in an advertising format, but they are in fact different. Not only different from each other, but different from traditional TV advertising as well. So let's break that down first. First off, OTT is generally the delivery of video on demand through a typical streaming provider, and OTT stands for over the top, which basically implies that they are circumventing or going around the traditional TV players to bring you that digital streaming content. Now that differs from CTV in a few ways. Mainly the difference in CTV is that the device is more natively internet connected. That might be a smart TV or gaming console, but otherwise the device is always connected to Wi-Fi and behaves more like a traditionally internet connected device. That's what makes CTV special. And lastly, linear TV or traditional TV is just the TV that you would tune into through your cable provider or even the bunny ears or rabbit ears antenna that would bring you ABC, NBC, and the over the air channels as well. So those are your three options, OTT, CTV, and linear or traditional TV. For this video, we're mainly just going to be talking about OTT and CTV. Almost synonymously, although they are different, we're just going to refer to them both as OTT. The bottom line is that the content is digital, it's streaming, and it can be accessed on demand as opposed to linear, which is live and static and typically not connected to the internet in any way. Normally TV and that broadcast medium in general is typically used for raising awareness or getting your brand out there as opposed to performance driven advertising like Google search or even social media ads. But that perception is starting to change because with new technology, you can really measure OTT and CTV in a very unique way that brings those results into the same ecosystem as the rest of your digital marketing strategies. And when those two channels are found together, you can really net out the effect of what OTT is or is not delivering as it pertains to your KPIs and metrics that you're trying to optimize for. All these new technological features and the broad reach of TV in general has really led to a ton of growth in this channel. There will nearly be $20 billion spent in 2022 just on OTT and CTV combined. So is CTV or OTT really worth it should you invest in that channel? Let's look at a few reasons why you might consider bringing OTT or CTV into your marketing mix. If you already have linear TV or experience in that channel, you're going to realize a few benefits right away when you make the leap over to OTT. Some of the advantages that you're going to get from OTT is the fact that unlike digital, you can't skip ads. So if you're watching a show that's been recorded, you can't just hit that skip button and jump over that call to action. If it's downloaded, then you might be able to fast forward. But if you are streaming something on demand, you're likely going to be subject to those ads and you can't get around them. So that gives you an advantage over digital right there. With all the new developments in attribution and technology, you're now also able to track CTV and OTT in the same way that you would track digital or in a very similar way. You're now able to deliver the granular audience targeting that advertisers really relied on digital to deliver. So with OTT and CTV, you can dial in zip code, gender preferences, or other audience metrics on an anonymous level to help you get your messaging into the right homes and in front of the right eyeballs. What most people don't realize about OTT is that it offers some level of the same remarketing strategy that social ads and search ads provide. I'm sure we've all had the experience of a particular advertisement following us around online, but with OTT and CTV, advertisers can achieve a similar result by understanding the browsing behavior of maybe that IP address or other anonymized data that comes from third party sources. Because OTT and CTV have an overlap with the digital space and they're connected to Wi-Fi, they can really start to incorporate some of the same digital marketing tactics like remarketing, but deliver those tactics on the television as opposed to the computer or mobile device. So if a particular home has internet traffic that's looking for refrigerators and maybe they ask Alexa for deals on refrigerators, it's no coincidence that the ad that they might see when watching a movie on Amazon Prime might be about refrigerators. All of this has really led advertisers to consider OTT and CTV to be less about these fuzzy metrics of brand lift or raising awareness and really start to hold them accountable for the results that they purport to deliver. That means advertisers are starting to use OTT and CTV in performance driven campaigns as opposed to awareness or branding campaigns. Furthermore, OTT and CTV have a big distinction over linear TV in the sense that getting access to that frequency and getting your message in home and on that television screen has a lot lower cost of entry when deploying that advertising on OTT and CTV, it's far easier to get started with a lot smaller scale if you start with OTT and CTV as opposed to linear or traditional TV advertising. So if you want to explore OTT and CTV, you're going to end up wondering, well, how do you buy those advertising units? How do you get access to that inventory? And there's really two ways. The first way is buying from a traditional reseller. This is a media buyer or an agency who might help you place that messaging or place that campaign on an appropriate channel that has inventory for sale. The problem with this methodology is that you're essentially paying a middle man to help you get your messaging onto the technology which actually delivers it. That technology is called a DSP or a demand side platform, and those platforms are able to pull in all of this inventory available on OTT and CTV and bring it back to advertisers in a programmatic and auction style format, which is similar to search ads or social ads where advertisers can bid up certain targeting or metrics to achieve their messaging goals. This programmatic and digital environment allows advertisers to really configure their campaigns and most importantly, make in-flight adjustments, meaning if you see your advertisement is doing well on a particular streaming channel or on a particular device or even market, you can in real time access your campaigns through your DSP and make those adjustments to get your money into the right channels which actually produce the results that you're after. Again, this is in contrast to linear TV, which is nearly impossible to stop once the campaign has already started. With linear TV, you typically run a campaign and measure the results after the fact, as opposed to making any adjustments during the campaign's duration. The most important thing when you're getting started with OTT and CTV or even linear TV is how you're going to measure it. And the important thing is that you measure these channels using multi-touch attribution. And what we mean by that is you don't look at the performance of OTT in a silo. How many impressions did I get on my website? How many customers ordered? How many views of my ad were there? These metrics are only particular to the OTT channel and they ignore the reality that the modern customer journey includes many, many touch points across a diverse set of channels. So you might run an OTT ad that causes a customer to do a Google search. And in that Google search, they might come into your site organically from a blog post, or they might click on one of your paid search ads. They might not buy that refrigerator until three or six months in the future. And so to know how well your OTT ads are really doing, you need to measure their performance in that multi-touch environment so that you can capture all the channels across the top of your funnel at the same time and the entire funnel depth as well. You might have Facebook, Google, your search campaigns, email marketing, trade shows, and your OTT channels. These should all be driving new prospects and eyeballs to your messaging. Now, if you consider full funnel, that means what do they do when they get to your website, after they leave their email address, after they create an account, after they place their first order? You need to be able to follow folks on that customer journey from the first touch all the way to the conversion point that you're actually trying to optimize. The only way to do that is if you look at all those touch points in one unified view, where you can bring in all your campaign spend, all the performance across all those channels, as well as what were the revenue results or the conversion events that you're after down here at the bottom of the funnel. And with all those pieces using the appropriate multi-touch software, you're going to be able to determine the real effect that OTT or CTV will have on the goals that you're trying to optimize for. So if you're looking to get started with OTT or CTV, you should be asking your DSP or your reseller or your agency a few key questions to make sure that you're going to get the most out of this effort. First off, do they control the technology? Are they a DSP or are they simply reselling someone else's? If they're reselling someone else's DSP or someone else's technology, then what is that technology? Will you have access to it? Can you make in-flight changes? What is that provider? So that you can do your own research and find out exactly what you should be paying for those advertising impressions. In your OTT campaign, what level of granularity can you expect? What targeting is available to you? It's important to ask how the campaigns are audited. If you receive a statement that your $100,000 spend delivered 10 million impressions, how can you be sure that that happened? Is there a system in place to audit those impressions or is there some third party measurement system that can ensure you that those impressions did take place? Are you able to select not only your targeting, but are you able to edit and select the placements where your ads are shown? This is distinct from targeting because you can specify the type of user you might want to reach and your ad might be shown on a channel or in an environment which doesn't support your brand, but yet still targets that user. The important thing about being able to control your placements is to make sure that that doesn't happen so your advertising message only shows up on the content or channels or devices that you want it to. Lastly, you need to ask about the privacy policy. This is becoming more and more important and honestly might be the most important question. Is the data that's being generated and is the advertising methodology compliant in the regions where you're advertising? If you collect user data, is that going to be first party data? If you were to leave the DSP or leave the reseller, would your data come with you? Nowadays, everything is all about first party data and you see Google and Facebook, Apple and everybody scrambling, including the regulators around the world to figure out this problem. So don't overlook it and make sure that you have the correct privacy standards in place and are compliant in all the areas in which you are advertising. If you're considering getting started with OTT and you want to really learn how this works, I encourage you to sign up for a free demonstration of our LeedsRX multi-touch attribution software. On this demonstration, we're going to break down exactly how LeedsRX is able to capture OTT, CTV and even linear TV and bring it alongside the rest of your other advertising strategies and campaigns so that you have one single source of truth about what is working and what is not. With this real time data, you can make in-flight optimization changes to all your campaigns on OTT, digital and everything in between. So what are your thoughts on OTT? Have you had success on the channel? If so, let us know what's worked for you in the comments below. If you found this video helpful, please like it and subscribe to the channel for more content like this. This is the attribution marketing channel signing off.