What does addressable TV mean for advertisers?

What is addressable TV?

Addressable TV is the ability to show different ads to different households while they are watching professionally produced TV content on the TV screen across on-demand, live streamed and linear viewing environments.

The original premise of addressable TV was to deliver specific product or service messages to specific cohorts to drive short term effectiveness such as sales, footfall, web traffic and sign-ups – but it now enables so much more across the entire sales funnel. It enables brands to reach new audiences on new platforms to drive performance across brand, consideration, intent and sales KPIs.

Blending granular data and panel-based research, addressable TV reaches the correct audience with more relevant ads on the platform consumers trust the most, all within professionally produced TV content on the large screen. Due to its real-time, data-driven nature, campaigns are more measurable with faster feedback loops on performance, giving advertisers more flexibility, real-time insight, and the ability to optimize campaigns accordingly, whether that’s the creative, audience strategy, budget, or a combination of those and more.

Should I focus on a targeted or mass-market TV approach?

The answer is you can do both -- and more -- with addressable TV. Brands can incorporate addressable into their advertising portfolio, targeting specific households with relevant ads to drive short-term results. For example, Finecast supported Cancer Research UK to grow positive brand feeling and drive continuous giving donations. The campaign was 30% more efficient in driving continuous giving donations than linear TV alone, and 28% more efficient in shifting recommendation than other on-demand suppliers. Cancer Research UK’s addressable campaign was also the best performing channel for individual giving ROI.

Addressable TV is now being used beyond mid-to-lower funnel activity, extending into non-linear TV environments. For mass reach, a ‘Total TV’ approach is agile enough to allow advertisers to pivot from one platform to another, maximizing reach and realizing cost efficiencies. With Finecast, brands such as Direct Line Group have effectively measured total TV across linear and broadcaster video-on-demand (BVOD) to present a clear picture of incremental reach, impact, and cost per impactful reach point. Advertisers can then quickly adapt spend to optimism reach, employing a sophisticated mass market approach through the power of the big screen.

Addressable tailored to fit your needs

Finecast enables targeted advertising at scale across linear, live-streamed, BVOD, and ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) platforms, and we recently partnered with new AVOD supply partners to supplement our broadcaster offering. Scale is important in targeted advertising. While segmenting your target audience, you should also aim to reach them across all platforms to ensure as many who people saw the ad found it relevant.

There is a misconception that TV campaigns are complicated and expensive to run, however addressable TV provides opportunity for newer or more specialist brands, who would never previously have considered TV. We recently partnered with premium cocktail brand NIO cocktails on its first TV activation to create a bespoke campaign which catered directly to its needs. It incorporated addressable into its marketing mix, matching its brand to ideal segmented audiences, resulting in greater awareness and significant sales uplift.

Many consumers expect brands to advertise on TV and studies show there’s a halo effect of doing so, not just for the product but across an entire brand. It’s a huge opportunity for savvy marketers to invest in new channels, diversify their advertising portfolio and drive consumer spend using TV. As addressable TV continues to deliver accessible data-driven channels to create bespoke TV campaigns, more advertisers will be shifting to these types of solutions and investigating what addressable can do for them.