By Kristi Rinck, Partner/President, Nexus Direct
Last month, Ryan Peña with Be the Match and Jeff Cosgrove with Epsilon shared an eye-opening case study on their experience with Connected TV (CTV), Over-the-Top (OTT), and Online Video (OLV).
This was an interesting presentation for anyone wanting to dip their toe into these up-and-coming digital media channels.
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Here are five key takeaways:
- Have a strong “why.” In the case of Be the Match, their goal was to provide brand awareness and education while taking the user on a digital journey to create an emotional connection with the organization.
- Start small. Focus on a specific geographical area to gather learnings. You must learn to crawl first and do that really well before moving on to learning to stand. Be patient.
- Take your time. Understand this is a slow process, and it’s necessary to build in time in between campaigns to do the appropriate measurements to fully understand performance, brainstorm new audiences, and ensure audiences get a memorable experience.
- It’s important to run CTV/OTT/OLV concurrently with consistent audience targeting for the digital surround-sound effect.
- Attribution is difficult, but results and awareness can be inferred through spikes in website traffic and increased engagement.
In the case study that Ryan and Jeff shared, the goal was to promote brand awareness for Be the Match, which has a registry for stored cord blood units. The registry connects patients with a matching donor for lifesaving stem cell transplants.
They created a three-series campaign. The first campaign was focused on bringing brand awareness through CTV/OTT. This was used as a baseline to continue to improve upon. The second campaign also used CTV/OTT, but it was smaller and highly targeted, focusing on audience awareness and education. The third campaign incorporated CTV/OTT/OLV and all the learnings from the first two campaigns. The creative design for CTV/OTT was PSA/awareness-driven, while OLV had a specific call to action.
The opportunities that exist with CTV/OTT/OLV are monumental, allowing us another means of direct access to a HUGE audience of individuals and households with highly precise targeting options. Keep these five takeaways handy when trying out these media channels — I know I will!
