5 minutes
Connect with members while they consume on their connected TVs.
Economic, personal and social factors are affecting consumer sentiment. Changes in privacy practices, consumer expectations for personalization and lifestyle, social change and marketing innovation have opened critical and cultural perception gaps between financial institutions and consumers.
One area in particular that is affected by change is how financial institutions use new marketing channels to connect with customers. Many marketers and product managers struggle to find the right mix of marketing channels for increasing account growth.
A recent Vericast survey revealed that most of the expected and traditional marketing channels, like email, direct mail and social media, rank high for usage among financial services marketers and product managers and, overall, produce modest results. Interestingly, the channel least used is also one of the hottest and most promising for connecting with consumers, connected TV (CTV).
Other research by Vericast showed that 49% of consumers perceive CTV ads as more relevant than traditional TV.
4 New Ways CTV Broadens the Spectrum of Advertising Campaigns
- QR codes generate interest, extend engagement and inspire action.
- Mix in CTV with direct mail, email and social media to supercharge your campaign.
- Pinpoint consumers ready to act with hyper- targeting message capabilities.
- Cash in on above-average engagement.
If you haven’t noticed, QR codes are back, courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic. Once mocked and dismissed, QR codes now have more uses than anyone could’ve imagined.
QR codes make CTV campaigns actionable and engaging to consumers on all devices. They prolong interactions, capture interest and improve performance. Consumers do not have to remember and enter a URL. Scanning a QR code makes it fast and convenient to go straight to a product page or shopping cart, encouraging spontaneity.
According to a recent survey from Sharethrough, 76% of people would scan a QR code on a TV ad if it was relevant to them.
SUPER RESPONSE
Coinbase Global’s viral QR code Super Bowl ad resulted in record- breaking site traffic.
Closing the Gap
There’s a startling disconnect between education and opportunity. According to Leichtman Research Group, a whopping 80% of U.S. households have at least one CTV device, and CTV households are expected to grow to 82% by 2023, according to eMarketer. When included as part of an omnichannel marketing strategy, CTV is powerful tool for connecting with consumers more precisely via streaming media services.
Effectively adding CTV isn’t as easy as flipping a switch. Marketers seeking real-world performance in streaming television ads need to utilize better marketing, better data and better analysis for better results.
Certainly, proposals abound for making the connection between CTV and conversion, but most leave a lot of questions unanswered, including the most important one: “Did my ads actually drive conversion?” This is mainly because the digital advertising ecosystem continues to struggle with three major attribution gaps:
- Identity resolution. Cookies are fading fast for most digital media, but they simply don’t exist at all for CTV. So, even though, per Leichtman Research, 40% of adults in the U.S. watch content on a connected TV daily, most attribution methods lack a reliable way to even identify who is seeing the ads, not to mention who responded by visiting a store or buying a product.
- Data sources. Often, attribution requires a third-party tracking device or depends exclusively on online activities. What happens when your audience isn’t tracked by a third party or when offline activities figure prominently into your attribution calculations?
- Data stability. Validating data assumptions with both online identifiers and physical addresses is important to help zero in on what is really going on. Many attribution methods rely too heavily on one data source while others are disproportionately impacted by consumer privacy choices.
Unfortunately, the attribution approaches many companies follow do not successfully bridge these gaps. As a result, marketers are often in the dark about the real-world impact.
What’s missing is transparency. From beginning to end, marketers deserve to know who they are targeting, how that audience responded, how the insight gained can improve future campaigns, and of course, actual conversions and the return on marketing spend.
Provided with a powerful consumer insight, Connected TV offers a wealth of opportunities for financial institutions to connect with their ideal customers and prospects where and how they live via streaming media services. With ultra-detailed targeting capabilities, you’re able to connect with precision to consumers ready to act and view the campaign outcomes through the lens of advanced metrics.
There’s a lot at stake. If financial institutions are to achieve their business goals and secure long-term survival, they must first meet consumer expectations and close the gap. They have to engage consumers where they are, not where they think they are or want them to be.
The most successful financial institutions seek first to understand and empathize with what consumers are experiencing — the market is far too competitive and unstable for guessing or assumptions. Without a comprehensive understanding of market conditions and the rise of new trends and patterns, financial institutions are flying blind.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. But if you are intentional about getting the right message to the right consumers at the right time, the payoff will be enormous.
Stephenie Williams is VP/financial institution product & strategy at CUES Supplier member Vericast. She has over 30 years of experience in direct marketing, strategic planning, product management and promotions in the financial services, retail and automatic industries.
