Tag: creative

The contours of the media landscape are ever-changing. What was once ubiquitous is now far less so. By the end of 2022, 39.3 million US households cut the cord on traditional cable, a number expected to hit nearly 47 million households by the end of 2024.

Perhaps it’s no surprise that so many are saying bye (or never saying hello) to traditional cable with a plethora of streaming services like Netflix, Prime TV, Hulu, Apple TV+, Disney+, and more, which allow viewers to watch what they want, when they want, for less than the cost of a traditional cable subscription.

What is CTV?

In this rapidly shifting landscape, digital marketing is experiencing major change, with Connected TV—or CTV—emerging as a pivotal player, transforming how audiences engage with content. CTV is any television set that connects to the internet and streams digital video content through built-in smart TV functionality or external devices like streaming sticks like Roku, set-top boxes, or gaming consoles.

With this technology, viewers can access a wide range of content that goes far beyond traditional broadcast channels, like streaming services, on-demand video, and internet applications. All of this is causing major shifts in how brands advertise to their audiences, with CTV advertising in ascendancy and changing the TV advertising game. Let’s dig in.

The What and the Why of CTV Advertising

CTV advertising refers to video ads delivered through a streaming service while a viewer watches a TV show, movie, or other video content on an actual TV set via a connected device like Firestick or Roku or directly from a smart TV. For most streaming services, CTV represents over 80% of all viewing, the remainder occurring on other internet-connected devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets.

Unlike traditional television advertising, CTV advertising leverages viewer data like demographics, viewing habits, and interests, allowing for a more targeted and personalized ad experience. Advertisers gain improved measurement and tracking abilities, allowing for smarter and more efficient ad spending — and the ability to reach more niche audiences with greater precisions.

Evolution of TV Advertising

Traditional or linear TV advertising lets advertisers reach millions of viewers all at the same time. Linear TV advertising is what you see when you watch broadcast or cable TV — the traditional, old-school TV advertising that’s been around for decades. Linear TV ads reach everyone watching a particular program rather than just their intended audience. And measuring the success of a linear TV ad campaign is more nebulous — it’s hard to know if anyone went to go buy something after watching the ad.

With changing viewer behavior as cable and satellite TV use continue to drop, advertisers are instead following their viewers over to CTV, lured by more measurable ad performance metrics and better-optimized campaign management overall. As linear advertising spend declines, CTV ad spend is fast on the rise.

Ad spending for CTV is expected to reach $21.45 billion in 2024, an increase of 16.2% from 2023. In 2025, it is forecast to hit $24.4 billion, growing year over year by 13.9%.

CTV Advertising vs OTT Advertising

OTT means “Over-the-Top,” referring to content that goes “over” your cable box, providing access to TV content via an internet connection instead of with a cable cord or satellite. While OTT and CTV are often used interchangeably, and can refer to the same thing, it’s important to note that OTT is how video content is delivered to viewers — it can stream content across all devices, like mobile and desktop. CTV only streams content onto smart TV screens, which is why it is often referred to as streaming TV advertising.

OTT ad inventory tends to differ from CTV, which typically has premium network content similar to what you would find on traditional TV. In contrast, OTT offers a much wider range of inventory.

So, Why Use CTV ads?

If you want your ads to help you find users who actually want your products or services, CTV ads are the way to go. As streaming services like Hulu and Netflix adjust their pricing models to an ad-supported tiered system that displays more ads to folks on less expensive plans and fewer or no ads to those on higher plans, marketers can now zero in on their demographic with far more precision.

Here are a few other perks that come with CTV ads:

  1. Multiple precision targeting methods

With linear TV, targeting is limited to finding shows that best index against ratings — the system network television uses to make programming decisions and to price advertisements. But Nielsens’ typically can only offer broad age and gender demographic metrics, like women 25 – 54 and men 18 – 49. But CTV advertisers can leverage similar digital targeting to Google and Facebook, which means audience segments can be based on everything from income or education level to personal interests and more.

Some of the top CTV targeting options to get familiar with include:

  • Geolocation targeting
  • Contextual targeting
  • Retargeting
  • Time-of-day targeting
  • Lookalike targeting

  1. Hyper-local targeting

With CTV ads, it’s far easier to pinpoint consumers based on their IP address, which means ads can be hyper-localized and served to viewers in far smaller geographic areas than with linear ads. Messaging can be highly customized based on where the viewer is located. For example, a spa with four locations can send the right commercial to the right viewers closest to each location.

  1. High Video completion rates

Superior targeting means that CTV ads are far more likely to be truly relevant to those viewing them—which means they are more likely to be interested in the ad and engage with it until completion. Using automatic content recognition technology, or ACR, CTV providers can provide real-time, second-by-second completion rate data, which helps advertisers hone the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns.

  1. Detailed attribution measurement and accuracy

CTV ads allow advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their brand campaigns more accurately via conversions — they can see who came to the brand’s website and completed a purchase after viewing an ad. With time and increased data, advertisers can learn what creative worked best and which publishers, dates, times, and other factors had the greatest impact on conversions.

 

BOTTOM LINE
Marketers, if you want to lead your company’s CTV marketing innovation charge but need help figuring out where to start, Creative Circle can provide the talent and build the teams to help you perfectly craft and precisely target your brand to shine on the TV screen. The media landscape is fast evolving — to succeed, it’s important to prime your business to be in step with the times.

Creative Circle is thrilled to announce the release of our 2024 Client Pulse Report, offering a comprehensive analysis of artificial intelligence’s impact on creative and marketing teams. This year’s report illuminates how AI has rapidly become embedded in daily workflows, but leaders still seek support in deploying the groundbreaking technology to its full potential.

To develop the report, Creative Circle collected survey responses from 463 creative and marketing leaders. The survey was conducted in March 2024 and received a near-record response rate, demonstrating business leaders’ continued investment in the subject more than a year after AI entered the mainstream.

The Results Are In

Resounding consensuses emerged around several of the topics addressed in the survey:

  • AI is now a staple in creative and marketing teams, with 82% using it to some extent and 45% using it daily or weekly.
  • Leaders would like to further implement AI into their work, but 89% face barriers to increased adoption.
  • The necessity of AI today is undisputed, as 83% of leaders say they need to develop new AI skills and competencies in order to achieve their goals.
  • Businesses are eager to close their AI gaps, with 66% of respondents seeking AI-specific training, hires, or consultants to upskill their teams.

“This study makes clear that marketing and creative leaders recognize AI’s extraordinary potential. But for the most part, they’re only scratching the surface,” says Creative Circle President Matt Riley. “Teams need direction, training, and subject matter expertise in order to fully integrate AI technology and realize its many benefits.”

Creative Circle’s insights and solutions offer an ideal set of skills and knowledge that marketing and creative teams need to realize the benefit of today’s AI technologies.

Katherine Forbes, Creative Circle’s Senior Vice President of Marketing, states, “We are actively partnering with our clients to bring out the full potential of AI within their marketing and creative teams. Our people have the right solutions at their fingertips and the necessary insights to implement AI effectively and securely.”

Read the full report for all the detailed findings on topics including the top AI use cases, barriers to adoption, and upskilling strategies. And, if you’re ready to harness the power of AI for your team, contact Creative Circle to tap into a wealth of resources and expertise.

About Creative Circle

Creative Circle provides marketing and creative services for companies looking to solve business challenges of all sizes. Our strength comes from our talent community, and our power lies in leveraging this network to provide flexible custom solutions for our clients.

Creative Circle is part of the Commercial Segment of ASGN Incorporated (NYSE: ASGN). To learn more, visit creativecircle.com.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements made in this news release are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and involve a high degree of risk and uncertainty. Forward looking statements include statements regarding our current and future support of client AI needs, claims pertaining to internal and client efficiencies created using AI tools, and statements about how marketing and creative professionals may leverage AI tools within their own organizations. All statements in this news release, other than those setting forth strictly historical information, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results might differ materially. For a full list of risks and discussion of forward looking statements, please see ASGN’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023, as filed with the SEC on February 23, 2024. We specifically disclaim any intention or duty to update any forward-looking statements contained in this news release.

In 2011, Kat Gordon, a Creative Director, got firsthand experience with how women were often left out of pitches and essential meetings — and why it matters. Her agency had an important pitch to Saab. But when they actually went to do the pitch, the team was a wee bit lopsided: 16 men and (just) 1 woman, and — spoiler — they didn’t win the pitch. Wanting to better understand why, Gordon decided to do some research on women in creative leadership at ad agencies. She was dismayed to find only 3% of Creative Directors were women, so she dug a bit deeper to get at why agencies were so woefully short on women in Creative Director roles. Overall, she found that there was a glaring lack of:

  • Motherhood support
  • Female mentorship
  • Women negotiating the salaries they deserved
  • Awareness that a woman’s perspective was critical for connecting with consumers
  • Recognition for women’s work, due to gender bias in awards juries

She wondered if part of this issue had to do with men making the majority of purchases. She kept digging, and it turned out that was not the case. Apart from only three categories where men dominate purchases in the market, women were making the majority of purchasing decisions, effectively making them the superset, not the subset. And with the rate at which women were building wealth and influence in society, Gordon concluded that it was simply myopic to overlook them. Unfortunately, advertising, at least at that point in 2008, had largely been doing exactly that. Case in point: the Saab pitch.

All of this became a rallying call for Gordon to create change in the advertising industry — and so she birthed the 3% Conference with the straightforward goal of growing the number of women in top creative marketing jobs and expanding diversity and inclusivity within the industry (especially since, of that 3% cohort of women Creative Directors, an even smaller percentage were women of color).

How are things for female creatives today?

Flash forward to 2023 — some change has happened, but not as much as you might think. The pandemic created a seismic shift in how and where we work, creating an unintended revolution of more flexible policies that have helped women (and men) juggle their home and work lives. Although conversations around equity, inclusion, and opportunity have grown, the lack of representation of women as creative directors persists. Ironically, women hold the purse strings, making more than 80% of all purchasing decisions — not to mention 60% of social sharing — but the advertising intended to help sway their choices is often not ideated or produced by women.

However, this is not an ad industry-wide issue. Whereas women make up roughly half of the advertising industry’s workforce, as of 2023, women only hold about 12.6% of Creative Director roles in the sector. Even as women have seen their economic impact grow, contributing 37% of the Global GDP, substantial discrepancies abound. Despite women playing an increasingly significant role in driving consumer purchases, they are still conspicuously absent from the command center of creative decision-making.

Why representation matters for your business

Women account for $20 trillion in annual consumer spending, but according to a 2019 study, 66% of women don’t actually connect with what they’re seeing in advertising. Even worse, 60% say that ads have an outdated view of women.

Given that most purchasing decisions are made by women, it is critical to ensure that advertising messaging and storytelling align with their experiences, perspectives, and values. However, when creative leadership lacks adequate gender representation, the risk of producing marketing content that fails to resonate, or worse still, misrepresents women is high — and the ensuing impact on the business’s bottom line can be sizable.

Check out what some key decision-makers in the advertising industry have to say about how women’s desires and needs have shifted in a recent Quantcast article, Why It’s Time to Change the Conversation About Women in Advertising.

“Between 2011 and 2021, the number of women drinking beer has increased 12%, which is four times faster than men. So the idea that women don’t drink beer — those days are over.” Josephine (Fien) Bertrams, Senior Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, Heineken USA.

“According to Statista, two-thirds of women are self-proclaimed sports fans. And you’re seeing them not only as fans, but as engaged participants in sport on social media. And for brands, that’s important – that’s where the audience is. I also found that 80-90% of women sports fans don’t feel like they’re being properly spoken to by brands. This is where the data and AI part comes in. This is an opportunity for us to really personalize and customize messaging. That’s what I’m excited about in this space.” Leah Meranus, North America CEO, dentsu X.

“In the month of January 2023, we had more women betting than in the entire year of 2021. Women are sports fans and sports betting is a form of entertainment. It feels scary at first, but there’s not that barrier that everyone assumes. Being able to do it digitally on your phone has opened it to everybody.” Jennifer Matthews, Vice President of Brand Strategy, FanDuel Group.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Women’s desires are changing in many ways, and these are just some that go up against ingrained ideas of what is “male” territory.

Closing the gender gap

Advertisers need to adjust exactly who is crafting the narratives used to sell products across the board, especially when women are often the main audience marketers are trying to reach. Tone-deaf marketing will continue to haunt brands, effectively sending market share to brands that aim to reach women where they are today and choose to amplify women’s voices through commensurate representation in the creative suite.

To truly address this disparity, agencies need to actively promote women into key creative leadership roles and create environments that foster advancement, growth, and opportunity for women. This means creating dedicated mentorship programs, flexible work policies, and addressing inherent biases in hiring and promotions. What’s more, being intentional about vendor and partner selection that is representative of a brand’s audience can also go a long way in connecting with a brand’s intended audience.

It’s no secret effective communication thrives when diverse voices are behind branding and marketing efforts, and it’s high time women’s influence as high-level creatives mirror their consumer purchasing power. Inclusion, among other things, means producing work that is relevant, authentic, and impactful. It starts from the inside out, not just with a script that pays homage to women in March but forgets them come April.

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Bottomline

The 3% Conference now goes by the name 3% Movement, and its mission to bring the number of female Creative Directors to 50% is well underway. By giving agencies a clear road map on how to champion female talent and leadership — along with annual conferences, a vibrant online community, a student scholarship fund, and so much more — the 3% Movement is helping lead the change for a more inclusive world.

How does your team square up? Are your creative leaders reflecting the purchasing power of women? If your goal is to diversify your team and be more inclusive of different viewpoints, Creative Circle can help you (and your bottom line while we’re at it). Talk to us if you’re ready to ensure your brand is effectively communicating its core values to its core customers.