CTV Advertising Is a Game-Changer: How B2B Marketers Can Make The Most of It

We couldn't let 2024 go by without discussing Connected TV (CTV). With skyrocketing growth, it is capturing both attention and ad spend as brands recognize its advantages for identifying and converting their most ideal prospects. At OMI, we’ve had the opportunity to witness the rise of CTV first-hand as it reshapes the advertising landscape.

OMI is fast becoming instrumental in our clients' CTV advertising initiatives, offering critical custom audience-building services to ensure campaigns target and reach those most likely to buy. We match our data to platforms like Trade Desk, social and many others, to provide our clients with comprehensive prospect profiles that elevate personalization, relevance, and ultimately, campaign ROI.

Here's what B2B marketers need to know about the powerful CTV medium and how to leverage it for success:

Unstoppable Growth

CTV is not just a consumer favorite but a marketing essential. Consider these stats from Statista and other sources:

• Young audiences dominate: In 2023, most CTV viewers were between 18 and 34 years old, making it a prime channel for reaching digitally savvy demographics.
• Daily engagement: Nearly two-thirds of CTV users interact with their devices daily, while 27% of viewers aged 55+ also tune in daily.
• Broad reach: An impressive 92% of U.S. households are accessible via CTV programmatic advertising.

According to eMarketer, CTV outperformed traditional online video and display ads in attention metrics in Q3 2024, achieving a remarkable 69.5 attention units (AU) compared to 38.4 AU and 22.1 AU, respectively. An October 2024 forecast also published in eMarketer reported that CTV drove a higher Cost Per Mille (CPM) for YouTube, where 7 out of 10 U.S. viewers watch via CTV, outpacing both TikTok and Snapchat.

Precision Targeting: CTV’s Biggest Advantage

What makes CTV especially valuable for B2B marketers is its advanced targeting capabilities, rivaling platforms like Facebook and Google. With CTV, you can:

• Segment audiences based on education level, income, personal interests, consumer behaviors, and other factors.
• Integrate first-party data with your third-party data to reach not only prospects, but also targeted segments of current customers, website visitors, and loyalty program members.
• Utilize advanced targeting options, including retargeting, lookalike modeling, geolocation, and contextual targeting.
• Reach niche audiences while avoiding others, which is particularly valuable for brands wanting to zero in on specific customer and prospect segments.
• Activate hyper-local targeting through IP-based geolocation to customize ads for small geographic regions, which is ideal for local or regional campaigns or for businesses with multiple locations, like medical or optometry practices.
• Target hyper-local audiences, synching regions on a nationwide scale to align strategy and ad spend with national KPIs while achieving real-time campaign optimization.

Accurate Measurement and Attribution

Compared to other digital channels, CTV offers marketers superior transparency and measurement including:

• Conversion tracking: Identify website visitors and determine which ones made a purchase after viewing an ad.
• Footfall attribution: Measure how many viewers visited a physical location following an ad exposure.

Measurement capabilities like this make it easier to calculate ROI and refine future campaigns, ensuring that every dollar delivers maximum impact.

The OMI Edge: Unparalleled SMB Reach, Targeting, and Multi-Platform Matching

Precision targeting is a key CTV advertising advantage, but unlocking its full potential requires not only strategic targeting skills but also assembling and leveraging the right audience data. OMI has the answer. Fortune 2000 firms and other organizations already turn to us and our massive Living File® B2B database -- consisting of 145MM+ manager-, director-, and professional-level and above contacts with email/HEM, social URL, and other attributes -- to perform custom audience building for media activation, email acquisition marketing, programmatic, and other omni-channel campaigns.

We deliver the largest reach into the SMB marketplace with our data while also offering high match rates to Trade Desk and the top social platforms, with up to 15 total platforms available for matching. Our aim, as mentioned previously, is to provide our clients with custom, highly-targeted audiences made up of comprehensive prospect profiles that can be leveraged to elevate CTV advertising personalization, relevance, and ultimately, campaign ROI.

Final Thoughts

The CTV era has arrived, offering a golden opportunity for B2B brands to drive awareness, engagement, and conversions. Now is the time to explore how it can elevate your marketing strategy.

Contact our OMI team today at request@outwardmedia.com to learn how we can optimize your CTV advertising investment with unparalleled CTV-focused audience-building capabilities.