Is Connected TV the key to innovating your marketing strategy?

That’s the question Lidl’s agency – Omnicom Media Group (OMG) U.K. – was keen to explore for its clients. The team’s brief? To drive awareness of Lidl’s baby care products among parents of children aged 4 years and under.

Typically, Lidl invest heavily in traditional broadcast TV however, with a specific segment to reach, the brand wanted to make sure they maximized ad spend using a more targeted route to their desired audience. So, OMG suggested adding CTV inventory to the campaign’s marketing mix, with a view to testing and measuring its performance alongside broadcast content.

CONNECTED TV DRIVES ACCURACY AND REACH

With a remit to maximise scale and completion rates, OMG selected premium Connected TV inventory within The Trade Desk’s platform that supports both TV and app targeting.

OMG used contextual targeting via a kids’ TV programming lineup as well as automatic content recognition (ACR) to leverage direct insights into smart-TV viewing behaviour. By using these strategies, the OMG team made sure the ads reached the right people at the right time. And by executing the campaign programmatically, they were able to maximise targeting accuracy and drive incremental reach beyond traditional broadcast TV. But that’s not all. The team also used The Trade Desk’s publisher management platform to manage and optimise Lidl’s Connected TV budget – in real time.

WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DOES DATA GENERATED BY CONNECTED TV PRESENT?

One of OMG’s aims was to dig deeper into market-leading audience data. With Connected TV, The Trade Desk enabled them to use insights from traditional broadcast TV to identify programmes and channels that featured a greater percentage of OMG’s target audience, which the team could then test online. The Trade Desk’s partnerships with third-party data providers across free ad-supported video services made this possible.

Additionally, thanks to The Trade Desk’s investment in cross- media audience measurement, the OMG team measured incremental reach across Connected TV, traditional broadcast TV, and digital video, all from a single source. They also developed the capability to track and measure the ads viewed by audiences.

SO – WAS THE CAMPAIGN A SUCCESS?

The campaign delivered 2.6 million impressions across the U.K. via highly relevant content watched by parents with children under the age of 4.

An overwhelming majority (95 per cent) of viewers were reached solely through Connected TV. The video completion rate was 93 per cent, exceeding the team’s benchmark by 18 per cent. And of the 964,800 viewers, 919,800 were incremental to broadcast TV’s on-demand viewers.

All in all, OMG proved that programmatic CTV can drive incremental reach well beyond traditional broadcast TV. After seeing how OMG, with the help of The Trade Desk, enhanced targeting and improved media efficiency, Lidl is keen to explore other ways to integrate CTV on future campaigns.