Sample Strategy: How To Target CTV/OTT For Your Home Services Company
How do you connect a local community to your home services company with TV Advertising? We’re not talking “branding” though, we mean serving TV ads to homes who may actually need your services – HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Solar, Pools, just as examples. Leveraging Connected TV/OTT may be a major opportunity area, and efficient too! This form of TV advertising gives you tight geographic control – after all you don’t want to serve ads to individuals who are outside of your service area. But proximity alone doesn’t mean you should pay to advertise to someone – this is where our best-in-class data comes in.
We hope this guide helps you identify how Connected TV or OTT can give your home service company the high-impact TV advertising it needs, while making full use of the available technology to have the best chance of success.
Note: we’re well aware, AI has no idea what tools look like (re image above).
Defining Your Geography
Individuals who are most likely to be your potential customers, where do they live? Are there certain neighborhoods that are primed to need your services?
Some of how you define a geography will be based on the platform you use. Many ad platforms are only capable of targeting a radius, or might be as granular as zip codes targeting. This works well for some use cases, but sometimes you need more precision. We’ll show you both.
Radius, Zip and Broad Geo Targets
Radius targeting should be available to you in most platforms. This provides you the ability to reach individuals or households within a certain radius that you select. For example, this is a 2.5 mile radius around Ding Dong, Texas.
Zip code targeting is also viable, but do keep in mind: is the whole zip code your target? Also does the zip code provide enough coverage? In many areas, zip codes are a messy puzzle – you should validate that your targeting does not miss key areas or need additional zips targeted to satisfy your intended target area.
Both radius and zip code targeting lack the precision of polygon-based geofences (next heading), but for general coverage or getting started, both radius and zip code are still acceptable.
Custom Geofence / Polygonal Targeting
For more precise targeting needs, polygonal targeting is the route to go. This form of targeting allows a marketer to draw a specific zone around locations on a map.
This is frequently used to only target certain neighborhoods, to avoid features like a bridge/river crossing, or even to avoid areas that may be less fruitful.
In this example, we’ve targeted a specific area of Oklahoma City – north of the Oklahoma River, South of 36th, West of 235 and East of 44. This is just an example, but presume that houses in this area might be more lucrative for receiving TV Commercials about Solar, or based on the age of homes in the area are much more likely to need plumbers, or based on the income in the area, much more likely to have a lucrative remodel need.
Note that these are generalizations about the geography. These other layers (like contemplating a remodel or solar) – these are specific homes we can target! We use geography to strongly localize where ads go, but homes get targeted for specific purposes, not just where they’re located. See more about Audience targeting below!
Additional Geofence Strategy Examples
Here’s some additional examples for how to leverage custom geofences / polygonal targeting. These are primarily used for:
- Targeting individuals who live in the geofence, and not those who are transient/traveling through. Don’t burn impressions on tourists, service businesses need to not waste money here!
- Targeting individuals who have recently been located in the geofence area.
- Targeting individuals who are currently physically located in the target geofence area in real-time (mostly OTT inventory)
- Many other targeting methods based on location, proximity and history. This can be neighborhoods, city blocks, large buildings, congressional district targeting, and basically anything else.
Example: Custom Political Geofence Targeting for people who live in Nevada’s 1st Congressional District (and not the millions of tourists in this area)
Example: Custom Geofence for people who live only in this section of Brooklyn, between specific streets as landmarks.
Example: Geofence targeting for residents near Chicago’s Lincoln Park Area, but prioritize anyone in the red radius.
Example: Custom Geofence Target for the Anaheim Convention Center for people who have been there recently.
We Can take care of all this for you. our strategies are custom, dedicated to making your CTV campaign a success.
Defining Your Audience
Your target customer is not everyone. It’s most certainly not everyone within a target geography. Even if your audience were “everyone” (it’s not) it’s extremely unlikely that you have budget to reach them all. We define key audiences in marketing to focus our messaging, appeal and impact to certain groups of people who are the most likely to connect with us. A good audience is comprised of:
- What defines your most frequent customers? What about your most valuable customers?
- What are common threads across your customers that makes you appeal to them?
- What product/service offering do you have that has the most appeal? Why? To whom?
- What basic optimizations can be made to prevent serving to irrelevant homes?
Homeowner vs Renter TV Ad Targeting
We see this done incorrectly all the time.
If someone is only able to be your customer if they’re a homeowner – don’t serve ads to people in apartments. Also, don’t serve ads to people renting homes if your service requires a homeowner’s signature! We tend to see this done wrong more often than correct, and (for us at least) targeting homeowners vs [home] renters vs apartment renters is basic digital advertising 101!
Targeting the right kind of homes is fundamental, but this can be layered with many other methods to reach the right kind of audience for your commercial, more details below.
Target based on what has been searched for recently
(we’re not talking about search ads here, we’re talking about search behavior)
- ex: someone in the home is searching for remodeling contractors, so your local remodeling company can place ads into that home showcasing your recent and local projects.
- ex: someone is the home has been researching (or bought) an electric vehicle, so a local electrician who provides quick EV home charger installation places a few TV ads into that home per week.
Think of an audience this way: “Would my strategy work better if I spoke to this group of individuals differently from my other customer types?” If so (and assuming the audience is large enough to be relevant) it likely justifies its own strategy.
Before moving on, some important context: an audience is anonymous. Our audiences can be very granular and are far more precise than most self-serve ad platforms will allow you to use. We won’t build audiences small enough that it reveals specific individuals or households. Some examples in this article are based on our data, which is used for targeting only on our platforms. Our targeting and audience data is not for sale, nor do our advertisers ever possess it. We have strict policies that must be adhered to for audience targeting, particularly around some sensitive data types. Ultimately the decision to approve or reject an advertiser’s audience request is ours.
An Audience Defines a Person or Household
Like geographic targeting defines where someone is, audience targeting defines who someone is. This can be defined based on an enormous range of targeting choices. Your choices can vary drastically based on your advertising platform. Common types of audience targeting data includes:
- Household composition (parents, children, elders, etc)
- Purchase behavior (major recent purchases, where they shop, frequent purchases from major retailers, things the household has researched purchasing)
- Recent behavior (things the household has researched, viewed online, recent places they’ve been, how they vote)
- Financials (income, number of income earners, credit card count/debt/behavior, home owner/renter status)
- And many, many other datapoints
Not all ad platforms will have these features. Most ad platforms will hide the true targeting data in a black box and call it something like “in market for pizza” or “interested in pizza” without telling you what actually constitutes that audience. Audience data is not refreshed in real-time, so an “in market for pizza” audience from some ad platforms may be a super-exclusive list of…. everyone who’s bought pizza.
That’s not a good audience.
Defining A Better Audience
As previously mentioned – an audience should represent a certain set of individuals based on shared traits that makes sense to message to separately.
Think of a Venn diagram for how your audience is constructed, or a set of OR/AND logical conditions:
Homeowner (Excludes Home Renters OR Rents Apartment OR Rents Condo)
AND
Household income is $150k or greater
This provides a massive optimization in delivery vs typical marketing, simply by not placing ads into homes that will never be your customer, or who won’t financially qualify.
for illustrative purposes only
Dynamic Audiences & Lookalike Modeling
Most ad platforms will have capabilities to analyze your website traffic and develop a targeting profile based on this. This is usually done by having a tracking code installed (we use this as well) that sees anonymous browsing behavior from your website visitors, as well as goals they complete on your website (like tap to call, reservation scheduling, getting directions, etc.). Based on this data, a dynamic model of who your typical website visitors are, and who among them are the most likely to complete website goals, an ongoing targeting audience can be generated. This is also referred to as a conversion lookalike model.
Some platforms do this well. Much of the targeting ability for dynamic audiences and lookalike modeling relies on two things:
- The quantity of visitors
- a larger sample size is better, always!
- The quality of the setup and tracking
- if you track goals on your website, the quality of data will be better
- it’s like telling the ad platform’s tracking code “all of my website traffic has some value, but everyone who clicks to call or get directions is way more valuable, so find me more of those people.”
Defining Your Messaging
Your geographic targeting is where your customers are. Your audience targeting is who they are. Your messaging – that’s the part of your advertising that your potential customers actually see. That’s your brief moment where you have their attention, so what will you say? What’s the compelling message? Why should they care?
As we mentioned, relevancy is extremely important. Your ad is interrupting their day, so use it well and respect the target audience’s time. We spent a lot of work above defining our geographic targeting and audience, so let’s not waste that work on low-effort messaging.
Just like when you were thinking of an audience “would my strategy work better if I spoke to this group of individuals differently from my other customer types?” think of messaging the same way. Each audience type will work best if it has dedicated messaging. This is of course an expense – it costs time and resources to produce video ads – so start with general messaging that could work for several audiences, then in time refine your messaging to cater to specific audiences.
Your video messaging is your public face! The geographics and audience targeting of your campaign is the hidden engine that powers your media, but the video creative is what makes the connection with your audience. Make your video matter! See our guide for producing your own Connected TV video resources.
Testing Creative
We’ve discussed having video messaging that speaks to a particular audience, but how do you know that a given message is the best message to use for an audience? Testing!
Connected TV, as opposed to traditional television, gives excellent data about the engagement with and results from your video ads. This means that even with a single audience (ex: serving solar ads to homeowners) you can test two (or more) video messages and measure the results. Here’s key points about measuring the difference between A/B testing video creatives:
- Compare Peers – first, only compare videos against their peers within the same audience. Video A serving to Homeowners vs Video B serving to Wealthy Homeowners is not a comparison about the video itself as there’s multiple variables at play.
- Sample Size – if you have a very small, focused audience, you may not have enough scale to justify testing multiple ads. If it would take months of ad serving for you to have enough data to realize the results, your audience is too small.
- Compare Same Metrics – comparisons need to be data-driven and consistent, so when evaluating an experiment, keep the comparison objective. Compare both videos on the same metric. Ex: not “Video A is better at View Rate but Video B is better at generating searches.” That’s an observation, not an experiment.
What Makes A Good Connected TV Video Ad?
CTV as a format should be treated a bit differently from In-Stream or other digital video formats. Here’s some general rules of thumb to follow:
- While timing is flexible, a :15 or :30 spot will allow you to place into more inventory
- Most CTV ads will play with audio on, so make full use of the audio experience
- Localization is extremely important! Make sure individuals who are receiving your ad understand the relevancy to you, not just their interest but the fact that you’re nearby!
- Use a clear call to action and tell the viewer what you would like them to do. “Visit us at…” or “mention this ad to save…”
- It does not need to be a high-end production. An expensive look has its place, but also understand there is perceived value, authenticity and human connection in less-polished video ads.
On our CTV inventory, most people will view the whole ad. Make it worth their while.
Connected TV ads have additional specs & requirements that must be met in order to serve across our vast access to networks. Failing format requirements means we either must reject your ad, or it may not be eligible to play on Premium inventory like Hulu or others. See our specs & requirements documentation to ensure your video creative meets our expectations.
Additional Creative & Messaging Examples
Here’s some additional examples for how to leverage custom audience logic. Steal these thoroughly-proven concepts:
- Behind The Scenes: People love to see what they normally wouldn’t! From Dirty Jobs to How It’s Made, people love to see this content. Demonstrate the quality of the work and showcase your staff. Have staff tell the audience why the viewer should choose your company, and then prove it with finished results in video.
- Human Connection: Expanding on the above, what unique twist or impact story does your company or staff have to share? Introduce your staff and demonstrate their passion for their work.
- The Work in Focus: Show high quality imagery or video of your craftsmanship, with particular attention paid to close-ups, vibrant colors and textures – these have immense visual appeal. Don’t do this if your photography skills are weak, or you might put people off! Pair this with promotional messaging, creating demand and desire for your quality.
- Seasonal Offerings: Highlight new (especially temporary) services, and especially indicate if they are limited time offerings. Generally, avoid providing a specific date that a seasonal offering ends – this unknown instills a sense of urgency that something might be missed if not acted on soon. A limited time offering gives viewers a fear of missing out, or the urgency of a well-timed ad. This creative type works great for targeting your existing customer audience!
You have the first five seconds to hook your audience. Try starting with excitement or a question.
Our ads learn over time. Generally, ads that exist for a longer period of time can work better than short term ads.
Human connection is very important. Viewers can relate to and form a connection with a person, not a picture of your building. Use people!
Critically important: audiences need to be tested! Our advertising specialists have been using the best-in-class industry tools for years, and there’s seldom a situation where an audience is perfect on day one – even for us. They need testing, and ongoing optimization. That’s a benefit of our targeting precision and tools – we can see all the audience components and make updates based on CTV/OTT campaign performance data – other platforms are seriously lacking in this regard.
Leverage Our Best-In-Class Targeting Capabilities.
Your audience is unique. Your targeting strategy should be too.
Bringing It All Together
The key elements when you create your successful Connected TV (CTV) strategy for a home services company requires a focus on geographic, audience, and messaging alignment.
First, identify your target area: reach people who live in your service area to ensure relevancy. Second, refine your audience based on specific customer profiles, so you can eliminate irrelevant viewers and tailor content for optimal engagement. Lastly, develop impactful messaging that encourages action, and emphasizes locality to inform your viewers that you’re nearby.
Geographic Targeting: Define the specific service area around you yields the most potential customers, or define a custom service area based on where you do business, or where you do the most profitable business. Tailor your ads to reach only the most relevant geographic areas to avoid wasted impressions on households that are unlikely to produce value. You will need to ensure your geographic area is large enough to effectively serve.
Audience Selection: Identify the various types of customers who are most valuable, such as families, recent searches performed by someone in the home, or other criteria that defines better-than-typical value to you. Leverage CTV’s audience selection tools to exclude irrelevant demographics and focus on those most likely to engage. By zeroing in on these sub-groups, you can further personalize your message, increasing its resonance with viewers who are most receptive.
Messaging: Develop concise, action-oriented messages that directly address the viewer and prompt them to take a specific action, such as “Visit Our Website” or “Scan This Code On Your TV Now.” Emphasize local aspects in the message, mentioning the city or area to help viewers immediately recognize that you provide service to them! Make yourself obvious as a local company. Authenticity matters more than a high-end polish, keep this in mind.
Remember, relevancy is extremely important – so combine a target audience (who you’re reaching) with a message tailored for them (what you’re saying to them).