We Should Focus On Outcomes Over Turf Wars


Today’s column is written by Matt Bayer, senior vice president of advanced TV, cross screen and emerging channels at Cadreon.

It is a well-known and undisputed fact: Audiences are consuming more video on nontraditional platforms, such as TV streaming devices, smartphones and tablets, and they’re spending less time watching video via traditional cable and satellite services. In a new streaming world, connected TV and OTT providers are emerging as the major players. As a result, they are redefining the customer expectation of the video consumption experience.

This is the state of video today, yet much of the debate continues to revolve around agency team ownership, as the channel sits at the intersection of classically defined TV and digital distribution channels.

While this conversation may be a hot-button issue, it lacks purpose and vision. The problem can be solved by teams focusing on driving client-specific outcomes and adopting an approach that is audience-led and channel-neutral. It’s about delivering business results for marketers across channels.

We must take a multilayered approach in the planning and implementation of a successful campaign. The first step is always to gain an understanding of the desired outcome. Once the goal has been determined, the next step is to identify the audiences and approach that have the highest propensity to deliver said outcome.

With that foundation in place, a plan is constructed that reaches the right audiences wherever and whenever those audiences are consuming media, regardless of channel, device, platform or touchpoint. A touchpoint could be linear TV, video on demand, connected TV, display, online video, digital out of home, streaming audio, terrestrial audio, podcast or print, but ultimately, the channel is determined by the audience’s consumption behavior and the desired campaign outcomes.

Given the plethora of media touchpoints accessible to high-value audiences today, along with the people-based and cookie-based data available, marketers’ targeting capabilities have become extremely advanced. Campaigns can reach target audiences channel-agnostically, activate against those audiences, measure real outcomes, such as sales, visits or return on advertising spend, and then optimize against those performance indicators.

In order to access those audiences and eventually, optimize against them, it is often most effective to take a channel-neutral approach when crafting a strategy. This foundation allows marketers to identify the high-value audiences that are most likely to deliver the campaign’s desired outcome. The next step is to match those audiences across all channels and determine which ones the audience groups are engaging with.

After those steps are taken, performance indicators can be utilized to optimize to the highest value audiences by leveraging programmatic campaign management to manage reach and frequency. This can drive dramatic outcomes, with up to a 100% increase in site visitation, significant lift in incremental visitation and an overall increase in sales.

Ultimately, the results speak for themselves. It’s clear that it would be most beneficial to shift the conversation to focus on the audiences best positioned to deliver marketers’ outcomes. In doing so, as an industry, we will bring the attention back to the ultimate goal: demonstrating the role paid media plays in helping marketers drive their business forward.

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