TV advertising has always been a must-buy for brands as it drives growth in customer base and business. And for good reason: Research shows consumers are 42% more likely to say TV was how they first discovered a new brand compared to social media.
But, while marketers know multiscreen TV – traditional and streaming – drives brand awareness, it hasn’t always been easy to demonstrate its direct impact on sales and business outcomes. And in the age of social media, AI, and data, brand marketers need to prove out the value of their TV media spend just as they can their digital campaigns.
Today, tracking deep, full-funnel attribution for TV and streaming campaigns should be a non-negotiable for brands. And it all comes down to working with the right partner.
Here are three tips for brands looking to bring digital-like measurement to TV and streaming.
Expect More Than Awareness
TV’s ability to drive reach and build brand awareness cannot be denied. But while awareness is still crucial, marketers are looking for campaigns that perform across the full funnel: 76% of advertisers say driving final consumer actions, often resulting in sales, are important.
The key is proving that impact. Thanks to advancements in data accuracy, technology, and even AI, it’s now easier than ever for advertisers to link ad exposure to tangible outcomes like store visits, sales, and more.
Here’s an example: By partnering with Blockgraph, we were able to measure the value of TV advertising for a regional mattress store by looking at the impact on actual spending driven by the campaigns. In one quarter alone, the campaign drove more than $6 million in sales, which equated to an impressive 13.5X return on ad spend. Furthermore, the analysis broke the results down to show which tactics were most effective in driving conversions across traditional, streaming, and addressable strategies.
Go Deeper
For those marketers wading into the TV attribution waters, it’s important to understand that not all attribution is created equal. The most reliable insights come from attribution built on first-party data, deterministic signals, and accurate exposure metrics.
At a minimum, marketers should be able to see the return on ad spend (ROAS) for each campaign. But the real value for brands lies in going deeper, gleaning insights against a specific audience, or a specific geography, and getting a detailed understanding of how and when advertising is impacting those spending behaviors – or how they are making a purchase.
For example, our work with Clarivoy was able to demonstrate not only the direct sales attributed to a campaign for an auto dealer but was able to give them insight into their customers’ behavior – showing the journey they took following a TV ad exposure to marketplace sites or other locations – all the way through to the actual purchase.
This extra level of insight is invaluable to a brand marketer managing a budget: it not only tells them where their dollars go furthest, but also what is driving the most audience action.
Keep it simple
Many marketers assume that getting attribution from TV requires complex pixeling or heavy data integrations. Not true. With the right partners, it can be straightforward.
By partnering with Mastercard, for example, we have been able to connect ad exposure to spend without the need for a pixel – just by matching TV ad exposure data to actual transaction level data in a privacy-safe and non-identifying way. One such example demonstrated a grocery chain drove a 19X ROI and $152 million in incremental sales over the TV advertising campaign.
This ability to connect ad exposure to transaction level data provides a cost-effective way for advertisers to get attribution reporting without investing in complex back-end infrastructure updates – all while proving invaluable insights into advertising performance.
Proof of performance should be the standard for today’s TV advertisers
TV is no longer just a top-of-funnel play. It’s a full-funnel powerhouse and today’s attribution tools are proving it. Leaders in premium multiscreen TV are redefining attribution for the medium and ensuring that marketers can confidently measure the impact of their TV investments, optimize their media mix, and make smarter decisions across planning and buying.
TV works – and now advertisers have the data to prove it.
