“Interestingly, we have been working with the streaming television publishers and partners to bring it more and more into a performance play for our clients,” Minnie Dimesa, executive vice president of advanced media and marketing at Icon Media Direct, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “All the media dollars that we invest and we spend on their behalf have to have a return on investment.”

Metrics like cost per order and cost per acquisition are more feasible with CTV and over-the-top (OTT) channels. As a result, Dimesa has seen some advertisers move their television budgets entirely into streaming video.

“In the last three years, this area has exploded, especially for performance marketers as measurement capabilities have come into place,” she said. “We are now at the point where many of our clients have integrated streaming TV into their evergreen strategy.”

Pixel-Based Measurability

Tracking pixels are a key part of measuring ad campaigns on streaming video, similar to digital platforms that rely on the technology to measure when a view takes an action in response to a marketing message. Streaming video also provides marketers with the ability to deliver richer media experiences to consumers on the biggest screen in their households.

“It is pixel-based, which is beautiful because it’s one-to-one, so very much like digital where you understand exactly who and where your ad impressions are being served to,” Dimesa said. “I always like to refer to streaming television as the beautiful intersection of linear television and digital advertising.”

Alternative to Social Media

As advertisers seek greater efficiencies in their media spending and broader reach, some are supplementing their social media campaigns on streaming platforms or looking for other options, Dimesa said.

“We do have quite a number of our clients who have come to us because…Facebook isn’t working for them anymore, or it’s gotten cost-prohibitive or maybe they’ve hit their cap on how much they can scale on Facebook,” she said. “Now, they’re looking for an alternate channel. We do see some of our clients actually diverting funds from, say, what would traditionally be a Facebook budget to a connected TV, streaming TV channel.”

Source: eMarketer/Insider Intelligence

Paid search advertising will continue to remain viable as a way to engage consumers in the lower part of the purchase funnel.

“When your consumers are now searching for your brand, you’re there to be found, and you’re essentially answering their call,” Dimesa said.

Like digital platforms, streaming video offers greater flexibility in automated media buys. Marketers can choose from private marketplaces (PMPs) with a curated selection of media outlets, or try different strategies to get the right inventory most efficiently through demand-side platforms (DSPs).

“The beauty of DSP/programmatic platforms like Roku is that it gives you access to pretty much all the publishers out there,” Dimes said. “How you’re purchasing that inventory could be different.”

She recommends testing platforms to find the best method to reach audiences and possibly generate a response if that’s the goal. because you’re now then beholden to a certain spend amount, or you’re not having to commit to four weeks

“DSP/programmatic platforms allow you to do that in a low-risk situation,” Dimesa said. “Rigorous testing and continuous testing is very critical in terms of being able to find success within the streaming TV platforms.”

You are watching “How Marketers Can Go TV Streaming First,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Roku. For more videos, please visit this page.

“Our secret sauce is our authenticity in storytelling. We really enable and bring brands to life, give them a platform where they can really tell their story,” David Apostolico, senior vice president of platform strategy, development and distribution at Qurate Retail Group, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “We look at these other platforms where we can stream and have content – it’s just a natural fit for us.”

Entertainment and Shopping

Video commerce is a core competency for QVC and HSN, not an ancillary service for other retail channels.

“What we offer is that video commerce experience that’s very different. It’s not a utilitarian experience. It’s really an experience that allows us to totally engage our customers,” Apostolico said. “We’ve had some terrific partners such as Roku. They were the first to launch our streaming service. They really helped guide us in audience development opportunities to attract both existing and new customers.”

Qurate is seeking additional opportunities to collaborate with brands as they seek to stand out from competitors in a crowded market. Its merchandising teams continually hunt for brands and products that are a good fit for its video commerce channels.

“One of the things we are exploring is how we can partner with more people to help … combine these entertainment and shopping opportunities,” Apostolico said.

Amid the growth in social commerce, Qurate has extended its presence on more digital platforms to engage consumers when they’re ready to shop.

“We can broaden that audience through so many different platforms. Our social team does a terrific job with engaging with some of the newer platforms,” Apostolico said. “Our TV platform is a rich experience with decades of history of bringing products to life, but we think about some of these other platforms where we can just do more.”

You are watching “How Marketers Can Go TV Streaming First,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Roku. For more videos, please visit this page.

“Canadians are looking at how to re-evaluate where they can trim their expenses. An easy way to do that is looking at cutting cable,” Christina Summers, Roku’s country manager for Canada, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “We find that consumers appreciate the value exchange that comes with ad-supported content.”

More than three quarters (77%) of Canadians, or 29.3 million people, said they watched streaming TV by the end of last year, according to a study by Fuse Insights on behalf of Roku. Almost half (46%) of survey respondents said they had signed up for a new streaming service in the prior 12 months.

Bridging Linear TV and Digital

AVOD services typically have half the ad load of traditional linear television, helping marketers to stand out among their rivals. That’s especially true among younger consumers who are among the early adopters of new consumer technology.

“[Streaming] creates an opportunity for marketers to reach these new audiences that we’re finding in the ad-supported space,” Summers said. “It’s going to bring the TV and digital worlds together. Viewers are still watching on the biggest screen in their home, but the delivery of the advertising happens digitally, providing deeper targeting abilities and measurement.”

Roku recently introduced its programmatic ad-buying solution, OneView Ad Platform, to Canada as part of a collaboration with agency holding company Interpublic Group.

“Through our partnership, we were able to get them up as our first test partner within the Canadian marketplace for one of their advertisers so that they could evaluate the benefits of the OneView platform,” Summers said.

As consumers shift their viewing habits to AVOD services, advertisers need to be there to remain relevant.

“Audiences have already moved into streaming,” Summers said. “What we need to do is to showcase to the marketplace and our partners as to why they also need to shift within the space or risk being left behind.”

Roku this week launched an app that lets Shopify merchants to build, buy and measure TV streaming advertising campaigns. The app is available in the Shopify App Store.

You are watching “How Marketers Can Go TV Streaming First,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Roku. For more videos, please visit this page.

Roku, the maker of streaming devices that connect TVs to the internet, this year formed the Roku Brand Studio to help advertisers create branded experiences. It signed a deal with digital comedy producer Funny or Die to hire several executives. Among those professionals was Chris Bruss, the former president of digital content at Funny or Die who now leads the Roku Brand Studio.

“The goal of my group is to figure out how to take those advertisers beyond the 30-second spot,” Bruss said in this interview with Beet.TV. “We can do that in a number of different ways.”

Bruss’s group specializes in creating content that can range from short-form spots to long-form shows that showcase brands. Roku’s research found that a branded experience can lead to consumer purchase intent that’s four times as much as for a 30-second spot.

“In the Roku Brand Studio, we have both the data and also just the experience that shows us that branded content and branded experiences are going to create more impact with our audience,” he said. “You can create truly and genuinely entertaining content, and invite that audience into be part of that. Now, they’re not just watching your ad, they’re in your ad.”

‘The Show Next Door’

Among the recent examples of Roku’s productions are “The Show Next Door,” an interview show created in collaboration with Maker’s Mark, the brand of Kentucky bourbon made by Beam Suntory. The show appears on the Roku Channel, the company’s hub for ad-supported video on demand (AVOD).

“We understood what their [Maker’s Mark] brand goals and what their marketing goals were, and how to incorporate their brand and their product into that show,” Bruss said. “We produced that show from creative all the way through to post-production.”

Data-Rich Platform

Roku can gather detailed insights about viewer behavior and consumer preferences, which help advertisers to improve their targeting and to develop ad creative that resonates with those audiences. After seeing that viewers spend an average of seven minutes looking for things to watch, Roku Brand Studio developed a weekly show called “Roku Recommends” to highlight the best new programming. The show also offers an opportunity for marketers to showcase their brands.

“As brand marketers are thinking about streaming, I think that understanding the power of that platform – and not just how big the audience is, but how you can gain insights from that audience and then you can target that audience in really powerful ways,” Bruss said.

You are watching “How Marketers Can Go TV Streaming First,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Roku. For more videos, please visit this page.

“We’re going to reach a point soon-ish, I would say, of mass scale,” he said in this interview with Beet.TV. “At that point, media planners will start to lead with addressable audiences.”

He said advertisers can be classified among three broad categories of addressable TV strategies.  The first group consists of sophisticated, big-budget advertisers with a “total TV” strategy that are seeking to add incremental reach with addressable TV.

The second group includes advertisers that have an “addressable-only” strategy to reach audiences in the lower parts of the purchase funnel.

The third group is made up of marketers that are completely new to TV, and recognize the opportunity to reach target audiences economically.

“You don’t need a big budget that TV has often been associated with,” Harcus said. “Smaller budgets can still allow smaller, scale-up brands/startup brands to target their priority audiences.”

Future-Proofing Against Cookies

While digital advertisers are bracing for the continued loss of tracking cookies that help with ad targeting, addressable TV platforms haven’t ever relied on those kinds of identifiers. Instead, their targeting tends to be based on location, postal codes and households, Harcus said.

“We’ve got a future-ready data strategy for targeting and measurement that has been immune, to some extent, from the changes in the world of cookies and IDs,” he said. “That’s not to say that innovations aren’t going to come along.”

As more advertisers measure the success of their campaigns with outcomes, Harcus is advising them to gain greater expertise in addressable TV by experimenting with the platforms. Those tests should include different kinds of ad creative that are customized for audiences.

“Our research says there’s a very compelling case for getting the relevant creative message in front of the right audience, but also on the right screen around the right content,” he said.

You are watching “How Marketers Can Go TV Streaming First,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Roku. For more videos, please visit this page.

“We’ve expanded the roster of third-party measurement partners that we work with to help measure traditional TV and linear and streaming across outcomes,” Gaurav Shirole, director of ad measurement at Roku, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “There’s really been an uptick in demand for outcome-based measurement.”

While Roku caters to brand advertisers who rely on trusted metrics like reach and frequency, business outcomes are also significant. Such metrics can include everything from mobile app downloads to subscriptions as viewers respond to video advertising.

“We’ve always worked with third parties to validate the effectiveness of advertising, but what we’ve done is expand the types of outcomes we can support toward the bottom of the funnel as well as some partnerships for continued brand measurement,” Shirole said.

About 54 million U.S. households have a Roku device, while about 38% of smart TVs come equipped with the ability to sign up for its streaming services. Roku is equipped to gather detailed information about consumers and their viewing habits, which helps advertisers to improve their incremental reach to linear TV.

“Many advertisers and agency partners want to take advantage of Roku’s unique relationship with our consumers,” Shirole said.

Nielsen Alliance

Roku in March formed a strategic alliance with TV ratings company Nielsen aimed at improving media measurement and video advertising. Roku agreed to buy Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising (AVA) business that includes its video automatic content recognition (ACR) and dynamic ad insertion (DAI) technologies.

The partnership included a plan to integrate complementary Nielsen ad and content measurement products into the Roku platform and advance the Nielsen One cross-media measurement solution.

“We’re going to look to productize Nielsen TAR [total audience ratings],” Shirole said. “We’re looking to introduce an in-flight reporting mechanism over the next several quarters.”

The goal is to provide advertisers with greater insights into campaign outcomes.

“Not only are they able to see an overall sales lift, but they’re able to understand what’s driving that sales lift,” Shirole said.

You are watching “How Marketers Can Go TV Streaming First,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Roku. For more videos, please visit this page.

“We are in the process of working with our partners to evaluate and validate these [measurement methods],” Bharad Ramesh, executive director of research and investment analytics at WPP’s GroupM, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “A lot of these are modeled out using third-party data or they’re first-party data, and we need to check the validity of those data sets.”

He said there are discrepancies in data about viewership, including different automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies to measure reach on smart TVs. Measuring ad attribution can vary by industry, especially for consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands that many consumers buy at brick-and-mortar stores.

“Closing the loop is definitely a challenge, and that’s something that keeps us busy to try to solve for with our partners,” Ramesh said. “In today’s environment, there is no one partner who can solve identity across everything.”

Walled garden media environments like social networks and streaming platforms that each have their own data sets can make cross-screen measurement more difficult. Ramesh said the industry is working toward solving for identity in the next year.

“There are many different ways to do it, and we are diving into this year right now,” he said. “The way we define premium content and the way we define where video ads appear – it’s expanding, driven by the supply and demand issues we have.”

Advertisers are developing strategies for their “media stack” – or the mix of channels they use including traditional linear TV, streaming and digital video – to reach audiences. Many streaming platforms also have smaller ad loads than traditional linear TV, giving brands an opportunity to stand out.

“For every two impressions you’re losing of linear, you may have the opportunity to get one back with streaming, because 50% of streaming is not ad-supported,” Ramesh said. “The ones that are ad-supported also limit the inventory that’s available for advertising. It’s not a like-for-like replacement right now.”

You are watching “How Marketers Can Go TV Streaming First,” a Beet.TV leadership series presented by Roku. For more videos, please visit this page.