Today’s performance marketers are exploring new solutions as growth channels like social and search are becoming more expensive, and in some cases, less accountable. But many are ignoring traditional channels that bridge the gap in terms of marketing outcomes, while also remedying the deficiencies these growth channels are leaving behind.
Sharing a common desire to diversify away from social and search advertising, many brands are launching into TV. As these brands scale their efforts across streaming and linear TV, they are consequently reaping rewards across their core key performance indicators (KPIs). And they haven’t had to make any concessions in how they track their dollars against outcomes.
The lesson is clear: If you’re a growing brand, you must consider adding TV to your marketing mix. Yet, too many brands still view the channel as old fashioned or out of reach. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
The misguided quest to solve for cookies
The industry is racing to find replacements for third-party cookies and mobile identifiers, with many pivoting to first-party data strategies and alternate (yet unproven) identifiers. But here’s the problem—cookies and other audience identifiers have never been the primary driver for growing a brand or for finding new customers. This simple reality is becoming more evident every day as channels like search and social reach their economic saturation points.
When it comes to building awareness, the solution to cookieless media and growth beyond search and social has been sitting in everyone’s living room all along. TV can be an efficient part of your media mix, and for a lower spend than many are accustomed to. At Tatari, we’ve worked with many brands that found success upon integrating TV into the marketing mix. We have clients who have seen significant reductions in customer acquisition costs (CAC) with high-reach buys, and others who have witnessed considerable performance increases on digital channels as a result of their TV spend. Many are now following outcomes to the point where TV occupies the majority of their performance budgets.
The new approach to TV
If you want a glimpse into the future of advertising, take a look at today’s leading direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands. These are companies that got where they are today by buying against outcomes, not audiences. While TV has long been a reach machine—a channel primed for brand building and hitting upper-funnel KPIs—it now drives lower-funnel outcomes in an efficient and measurable way. Mass reach, lower costs per thousand (CPMs), and an audience of verified humans? That sounds exactly like what advertisers are searching for in premium digital environments.
A digital, outcome-centric approach to TV advertising is possible, and it represents the logical path forward for today’s growth marketers. If your brand has yet to test this channel, earmark a chunk of your 2022 marketing budget for TV. When looking at a typical Tatari client campaign, we see a $150,000 investment deliver more than 30 million impressions and reach upwards of 15 million people. Given the reality of today’s media, the reach and efficiency of this investment is simply a must have for growth marketers in 2022.
—Todd Gordon, Vice President, Client Development, Tatari