People typically don’t shop directly on their smart TVs. So advertisers are left leaning on data science to help with attribution.
On Wednesday, ad planning and activation platform fullthrottle.ai unveiled SafeMatch to make it easier to connect outcomes to streaming TV ads – historically, a very difficult and convoluted process compared with other digital channels, such as Google, Instagram and Facebook, said fullthrottle’s chief product officer, Amol Waishampayan.
But brands would be willing to invest more in CTV if they could get the same level of detailed attribution for streaming as they do across digital more broadly, Waishampayan said.
Attribution evolution
Fullthrottle ingests first-party data from its advertisers, including transaction data, to create behavioral profiles of households that have purchased something from that brand in the past.
To make connections between purchase information and customers at the household level, fullthrottle also relies on IP address, age and gender information, geolocation and other opted-in signals from a brand’s website.
Although providing attribution has been part of fullthrottle’s offering, the business outcomes it previously tracked were “one-dimensional,” Waishampayan said.
For example, fullthrottle would tell advertisers how many households within a target segment converted or bought something within a brand’s attribution window. While this is helpful, Waishampayan said, what advertisers really want is more detailed attribution, which they can use to inform their planning and ad buying decisions.
The more transaction data fullthrottle has access to, Waishampayan said, the more accurately it can pinpoint which product purchases likely happened due to a particular campaign.
So fullthrottle built its new attribution product on top of Citus, an open-source data collaboration software that’s integrated with Microsoft Azure and compatible with other cloud-based data platforms, such as Amazon Web Services, Snowflake and Google Cloud. This makes it easier for advertisers to find ad inventory for a target audience without moving data out of whichever data platform or clean room they’re already using, which agencies prefer for privacy reasons.
Staying on (re)target
But perhaps the biggest change in fullthrottle’s reporting is being able to match multiple transactions to the same customer.
If someone buys several products from a brand over the course of a day or two, for example, fullthrottle can link those purchases to the same household and determine which may have happened after exposure to an ad.
Having a better idea of return on ad spend helps advertisers identify their highest value customers and plan future campaigns accordingly – including retargeting, an increasingly important focus for advertisers trying to squeeze more demonstrable performance out of campaigns.
For instance, retargeting “wasn’t nearly as effective” for home improvement company Florida Window and Door prior to trying SafeMatch, according to its CMO, Chris Cubbage.
More information about a customer’s purchase journey, including how many times they visit a brand’s website before buying, helps identify which customers are more likely to make a purchase, Cubbage said.
Improved CTV-to-mobile retargeting also boosts campaign results for ads on Google- and Meta-owned platforms, not just CTV, he said.
The potential for CTV to raise campaign effectiveness across the board is why Cubbage said his brand intends to invest more in CTV throughout this year – and it’s not alone.
An increasing number of marketers are starting to treat CTV as a performance channel.
