As stated in our Essential Guide to Navigating the Advanced TV & Video landscape, the first television commercial aired in 1941. Since then, the TV advertising industry has gone from being steady and seemingly unstoppable to a business fighting to find its foothold alongside today’s modern technologies.

What's happening in the TV space?

Distribution channels for television are evolving. Historically, cable providers such as Comcast have been the main medium for television consumption. But more and more consumers are “cutting the cord,” driven by the popularity of on-demand services such as Hulu, Netflix, and more. Almost 150 million people in the US watch Netflix at least once per month, followed by Amazon Prime (88.7 million) and Hulu (55 million).

But with change comes innovation. As the TV space evolves, so has the ability to reach consumers and measure outcomes, bringing in more data than ever before. This new frontier of insights provides numerous opportunities for marketers to be forward-thinking and to stay ahead of industry trends.

To keep up with the change in consumers’ viewing preferences, here are 5 steps to build a successful modern TV and video campaign:

1. Determine your marketing goal

Step one is a tale as old as time. Before you can start building any advertising campaign, you must first figure out what you’re shooting for and why. To set strong goals, there are 5 “SMART” criteria each goal should meet:

• Specific – Each goal should lay out exactly what you hope to accomplish in exact terms.

• Measurable – Anyone viewing the campaign performance should be able to tell whether or not the goal was met. Quantities should be included.

• Achievable – Goal should be realistic, something that you can achieve.

• Relevant – The goal needs to be related to the most important function of your business.

• Time-Bound – Set a specific time by which the goal should be achieved.

Using these 5 criteria will ensure there are no gray areas within your campaign. Here is an example of a good SMART goal:

2. Who are you trying to reach? Determine your audience

To identify your audience and the platforms they use, you must create a solid, data-driven plan. While reach is important when it comes to audiences, relevance makes all the difference.

Here are a few secrets to building winning audience plans with data, according to our Digital Marketer’s Pocketbook:

• Collect all available 1st party data, and analyze for trends. Determine if there are patterns in the data that reveal who’s purchasing, what channels they’re using, what subject matter they’re interested in, and so on.

• Augment the 1st party data with high-quality 3rd party data to increase scale. Onboarding solutions that have high match rates across specific ID types can help with this.

• Go deeper by creating behavioral profiles of your audience. Combine your audience’s online and offline behavior to develop a stronger picture of who your ideal customers and prospects are and how you can reach them.

• Tailor your brand message and creative based on the unique characteristics of your audience and the platforms and channels in which they can be reached. Balance the positioning of your brand and marketing campaign with the needs and wants of your target audience.·

• Measure all relevant aspects of the campaign to determine if the advertising is resonating with your audience. You may need to optimize the channel, creative, platform, or even the audience to get the desired results for your campaign.

Just how important is it to find the right audience? Relevant data-driven audiences can generate an 80% increase in sales.

3. Tell a compelling story and be authentic

All leading brands start with a clear vision and a core idea of why they exist. From there, they create a brand narrative that captures the essence of who they are and what their mission is. Once that is set in stone, brands must find their true voice and messaging format. It is essential to maintain the same tone throughout your entire campaign. Consumers want to see consistency and authenticity to build the trust that is needed to generate a lasting relationship.

In 2014, Always launched their “Like a Girl” video campaign that aired during the Super Bowl. The brand created a successful, authentic video that resonated with viewers and impacted their audiences’ everyday lives. Always was able to bring light to an important matter, low self-esteem, which affects many teenage females. Adobe ranked “Like a Girl” the top digital campaign of the Super Bowl, based on an analysis of mentions on a variety of social networks and internet platforms.

4. Figure out where to engage your targeted audience using Contextual Intelligence

As trends such as cord-cutting and subscription services are shifting viewers away from traditional television, more and more people are also watching video online. One way to reach consumers watching video online is to use Contextual Intelligence for video. This technology will allow you to:

• Capture the right consumer attention by delivering messages alongside relevant, high-quality, brand-appropriate, safe media

• Analyze video elements, including transcription of audio tracks, to identify more granular subject matter and improve targeting

• Understand a variety of languages and dialects to enable a global approach to target for in-stream video

In addition, brands should make sure their advertising doesn’t appear next to unwanted, unsafe, or irrelevant content. After all, poor brand alignment can ruin a successful campaign.

5. Measure how your audience takes action

To know if your campaign was successful or to help guide future strategies, you must measure how the audience interacted with all elements of the campaign. Measurement is key to a complete marketing strategy. If you don’t know how your campaigns performed, you won’t be able to make effective decisions moving forward.

Here are some questions to ask of your measurement capabilities:

• Collect all available 1^st party data, and analyze for trends. Determine if there are patterns in the data that reveal who’s purchasing, what channels they’re using, what subject matter they’re interested in, and so on.

• Augment the 1^st party data with high-quality 3^rd party data to increase scale. Onboarding solutions that have high match rates across specific ID types can help with this.

• Go deeper by creating behavioral profiles of your audience. Combine your audience’s online and offline behavior to develop a stronger picture of who your ideal customers and prospects are and how you can reach them.

• Tailor your brand message and creative based on the unique characteristics of your audience and the platforms and channels in which they can be reached. Balance the positioning of your brand and marketing campaign with the needs and wants of your target audience.

• Measure all relevant aspects of the campaign to determine if the advertising is resonating with your audience. You may need to optimize the channel, creative, platform, or even the audience to get the desired results for your campaign

Effective measurement is an ongoing challenge for marketers, but focusing on the common metrics below is a good place to start. Use these metrics to gain a strong foundational look into campaign performance, and then expand into more detailed metrics by collaborating with your measurement partner.

Standard baseline metrics

• Impressions

• Clicks

• Conversions

Cross-device and platform metrics

• Desktop

• In-app

• Mobile

• Video

• Connected TV/Over-the-Top (OTT)

Advanced metrics

• Invalid traffic: Distinguish whether an ad generates bots or human traffic

• Viewability: Understand whether an ad was in view, and how long it was viewed for

• Brand safety: Monitor and track brand safety across platforms and ad formats

• People-based reach and frequency: Understand if your message reached the most relevant audience (the segment of the population that cares about that message), and how many times that audience saw your message

• Audience: Did you reach the right people, and are they engaging with your ads?

• Attention: Understand whether your creative delivers interactions and captures the audience’s interest

• Return on investment (ROI): Did your online campaign impact offline sales lift?

Creating a successful television and video campaign is a challenge for even the most creative marketers. The ability to create an effective campaign that reaches the targeted audience can be a challenge due to the changing landscape and advances in technology. But now more than ever, marketers need to get their content in front of the appropriate audiences to ensure they receive their desired results.

Following the above tips can help your campaign reach its greatest potential. Remember, in the digital world, things are always changing, so make sure your digital marketing expertise continues to evolve to keep pace with a changing digital environment. Compelling campaigns deserve to be seen!

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