For nonprofits, reaching audiences through connected is often out of reach.
They have limited resources, a lack of control over audience targeting, and it’s hard to effectively measure impact.
But ’tis the season for giving.
On Thursday, AdGood, a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits buy premium streaming inventory at a discount, announced a partnership with Samsung Ads, which is donating ad space from its Samsung TV Plus service to AdGood’s media marketplace.
AdGood will help nonprofit organizations and their marketing agencies buy the inventory as a managed service, said AdGood CEO and Founder Kris Johns.
Samsung Ads will benefit, too, and not just from the warm feeling that comes from supporting charities.
Expanding and diversifying the types of advertisers in its network of FAST channels helps Samsung fill empty ad spots and improve ad frequency rates, said Joe Melaragno, the company’s head of channel sales.
What’s a purchase funnel without a purchase?
AdGood, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit itself, launched at CES in January with the goal of helping other nonprofits buy CTV ads at more affordable discounted rates.
Now, the platform works with more than 100 different nonprofits across multiple verticals, a number that may be closer to 200 by the end of this year, Johns told AdExchanger.
These nonprofit organizations also run the gamut with respect to their level of digital savviness and their campaign priorities. Some are already focusing on performance metrics, John said, while others are only just dipping their toe into CTV for the first time and mostly care about brand awareness.
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Driving awareness and attention is very important for nonprofits regardless of traditional performance measures, said Jason Brock, president of nonprofit-focused marketing agency Eaglecom, which also works with AdGood. The classic purchase funnel doesn’t really apply to charitable giving, he said, because there isn’t actually a purchase being made.
Although Eaglecom has an entire sales team whose job is to negotiate the best rates on paid CTV inventory with network partners, Brock said he sees a lot of value in what AdGood does.
“Not only are they getting lower cost inventory, but they’re really flexible in terms of how they can deliver it,” said Brock, ”so we can plug and play depending on the client’s needs.”
Better to give than to receive
The timing of the Samsung Ads announcement is notable given that the holiday season is a crucial time for nonprofits. A benchmark survey by marketing firm M+R suggests that, last year, the average nonprofit generated 40% of all its online one-time revenue in December.
This year has been especially challenging for the nonprofit sector. Many organizations were already dealing with the fallout from massive federal funding disruptions even before the current government shutdown began in October.
On top of that, nonprofits are held to much stricter efficiency standards than other businesses, which can make it hard to invest in growth and branding opportunities, including CTV campaigns, said Brock.
“In a typical programmatic buying world, there’s a lot of supply-chain costs that stack up pretty fast,” he said. “If we can knock that down by 60% and still hit the same audience, we’re able to expand the budgets more for nonprofits.”
And for those that can’t afford even discounted rates, AdGood also recently launched a nonprofit media fund supported by donations from both individuals and organizations to subsidize access to CTV ad space.
“Coming from ad tech myself,” said Johns, who spent nearly six years at AppLovin-owned streaming TV distribution platform Wurl, “it’s pretty awesome to talk to people doing truly amazing stuff on a daily basis and be able to help them to do better.”
