TvScientific really wants digital marketers (and their wallets) to open up to the idea of CTV as a performance channel.
On Thursday, the CTV ad platform unveiled a cost-per-outcome model to emphasize its confidence in connected TV ads leading to conversions.
TvScientific’s clients can already transact on any metric of their choosing, whether it be cost per acquisition, cost per app install, site visits, etcetera. What’s new is only charging advertisers when their campaigns achieve their intended goals.
Digital advertisers are more likely to include CTV as part of their performance-based media buys if they can do so with little risk – and without having to switch vendors, said tvScientific CEO Jason Fairchild.
“Advertisers looking for new, scalable performance channels should be putting TV at the top of their list,” he said.
Pining for performance
To reach more performance advertisers, tvScientific is also integrating directly into several affiliate marketing platforms, including Awin, Impact, Rakuten and CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction).
This is a necessary “scale play,” Fairchild said, that gives tvScientific access to thousands of performance-based advertisers by partnering with their platform of choice “instead of convincing them to use ours.”
An advertiser using Rakuten or Impact, for example, can now add CTV spots to their performance marketing campaign and take care of the media buying and billing within their affiliate marketing platform.
But in the background, tvScientific is the one buying media across the major streaming services on behalf of the advertiser.
It then links the ad exposures to actions and purchases in the real world through existing partnerships with mobile measurement platforms, including AppsFlyer, Adjust and Kochava, and sends the attribution reporting to the affiliate platform so that buyers don’t have to switch systems.
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TvScientific can also shift more budget to the best-performing ad creatives or placements based on how they’re doing midway through whatever attribution window is typical for the advertised product. Car sales, for instance, usually have a purchase consideration period of between 30 and 45 days, whereas a product like toothpaste has a much shorter attribution window.
As part of the optimization process, tvScientific can surmise how much it would cost for the campaign to scale enough to meet the advertiser’s goals.
Regardless of a campaign’s success, however, brands not working directly through tvScientific have to pay their affiliate platform for its services.
But tvScientific only gets paid if the campaign succeeds, Fairchild said.
Cost per outcome, therefore, introduces some risk for tvScientific, because it might not get compensated for its work. But after testing the strategy for eight months, the company is optimistic that it will work.
At this point, “we know how to manage risk,” Fairchild said. “The hit rate isn’t 100%, but I think it’s going to be way over 50%.”
As seen on CTV
So, will digital buyers buy in?
TvScientific piloted its cost-per-outcome option earlier this year, and advertiser clients, including Crocs, Groupon, LifeLock and Experian, have expressed interest in adding more performance-based reporting to their CTV buys.
“This makes CTV feel more like buying a lower-funnel channel,” said Steve Hartmann, head of integrated marketing at Experian’s direct-to-consumer business. Experian has already been buying streaming supply through tvScientific to help drive users to its credit reporting service.
For now, the ability to buy on a cost-per-outcome basis is only available through tvScientific’s managed service, which means that advertisers like Experian have less control over targeting and ad placements than they’re accustomed to. But that actually has its own advantages.
“We can find new audiences we hadn’t known would work for us,” Hartmann said. Reporting based on ad creative is also helpful for planning future campaigns, he added.
TvScientific plans to start offering cost-per-outcome pricing on a self-serve basis once it adds more automation to campaign planning and activation, which should happen “very soon,” Fairchild said, although he didn’t share an exact timeline.
