CTV advertising platforms often try to sell small businesses on how closely the channel resembles the digital marketing avenues they’re used to working with, like paid social.

For Wildgrain, a DTC subscription service for artisan breads and other grain-based foods, this argument proved to be very compelling.

When Wildgrain launched in spring 2020 – a very good time to be selling bake-from-frozen sourdough loaves, in retrospect – its entire marketing strategy consisted of paid Meta ads and an affiliate program.

As the brand grew, it began introducing other channels with loftier buy-ins and higher customer acquisition costs (CAC), until CTV finally started to feel like a viable option.

“The white whale for any marketer is to find more incremental acquisition channels that can reduce your reliance on Meta,” said VP of Marketing Alison Mooradian. “Anytime you find another channel that can do that work, it’s a win for sure.” 

Preheating the oven

After fielding recommendations from other marketers in the DTC space, Wildgrain settled on CTV ad platform tvScientific in fall 2023. At the time, tvScientific had recently launched its cost-per-outcome pricing model, which only charges advertisers if their target metrics have actually been reached.

This guarantee was a strong incentive for partnership with tvScientific, Mooradian said. Although Wildgrain was initially launched with investor funding, their goal was to reach profitability without having to rely on another seed round, so their marketing strategy became very CAC-focused as a result.

It also didn’t hurt that tvScientific offers integration with measurement platform Rockerbox, which Wildgrain was already using to determine multi-touch attribution across multiple channels.  The brand assigns deduplicated CAC targets to acquisition channels within Rockerbox and is then able to confirm those same targets with tvScientific’s team.

Letting the dough rise

First, Wildgrain was put through a month-long testing period to help set expectations and prove that their targets were achievable. Prior to June this year, tvScientific used to run all prospective clients through this step, said Co-Founder and CEO Jason Fairchild. Now, however, they have enough automated processes and historical data from previous campaigns that they can skip straight to the actual campaign.

Once it’s time for launch, tvScientific typically starts with a media playbook based on business type (like direct to consumer or subscription box, both of which applied in Wildgrain’s case). This playbook often includes parameters like what publishers to buy against and what household frequency rates to target.

From there, tvScientific’s algorithm takes over to dynamically optimize ad placement and bidding strategies based on whichever metrics the client has asked to improve – driving conversions, for example, or lowering price per conversion.

“We don’t have as much data as Facebook does, but we do have a lot of data at the bid request level,” said Fairchild.

This data is also supplemented via partnerships with TransUnion and other third-party vendors, allowing tvScientific a window into targeting parameters as granular as household purchase activity and even credit scores.

Ready to serve

Wildgrain’s first CTV campaign ran for just a few months, from January 2024 until around March. Between April and September is the company’s slow season, said Mooradian, because consumers are less interested in receiving dry ice packages and more prone to traveling, Typically, Wildgrain shuts down many of its acquisition channels during that time until the “grow season” begins in October.

This year, however, the marketing team let their CTV campaign run until June, a little bit longer than usual. Wildgrain plans to start it back up again earlier in September.

Overall, Wildgrain has seen a 27% lift in conversion based on their campaign, an increase that they see as statistically significant for their business.

Aside from some swapped-out title cards and CTAs, the creative hasn’t needed much updating, either. So far, Wildgrain is still running the same two spots they initially developed with a creative agency tvScientific recommended, featuring close-ups of the baked goods.

That longevity has been especially helpful for Wildgrain, which doesn’t yet have the resources for huge creative frequency like what they would need for some channels like TikTok, said Mooradian.

Where tvScientific is concerned, the success of this particular campaign serves as proof that CTV makes for an effective performance driver, said Fairchild.

“We’ve all intuitively known TV works for our whole lives, and we just never really had the data. It’s exciting to see the data bear that out,” said Fairchild.

Questions? Comments? Concerns? Let me know what you think of this newsletter at victoria@adexchanger.com.