How Ad Agencies Use Connected TV To Gain A Competitive Edge.

Advertising just isn’t what it used to be.

The art of advertising used to be a kind of dark art, a mysterious practice that only the sages at advertising agencies could conjure successfully. In those old days, only the best agency ECDs knew the recipe for ad success, and they held those secrets close to their chest. 

But as any agency advertiser receiving questionable client feedback can attest, today, everyone thinks they’re an advertiser.

It’s become easier than ever for brands to simply make an ad, and they’re increasingly getting their hands on turnkey technology that makes it possible to deploy them. Meanwhile, ad agencies’ secrets to success continue to depreciate as they bleed outside of the agency walls. All of this has led to brands feeling more comfortable running their own marketing operations — and 91% of them have moved at least some of their marketing operations in-house.

So what’s an agency to do? It’s not enough to simply offer hands-on expertise and run the same creative playbooks anymore. To thrive, they must offer value via strategic expertise tied to audience building, creative approach, and building and maintaining strong relationships. Thankfully, CTV and its automated technology has allowed agencies to take their hands off the levers and focus on bigger challenges.

We wanted to know how successful ad agencies are navigating these changes — not just keeping their clients, but growing their business — in such a competitive landscape. So we reached out to some of the most successful agencies who have partnered with MNTN, and asked: how has CTV helped you offer this level of expertise and keep your clients happy? Here’s what they had to say.

The Benefits of CTV Advertising For Agencies

When asked how offering CTV advertising has impacted their ability to generate new business, respondents had overwhelmingly positive things to report. Nearly 79% said offering CTV has unlocked new business opportunities with their current clients, while 57% said it’s even opened doors to new opportunities with prospective clients. 

And when it comes to concerns that brands are pulling their advertising in-house, 57% of agencies said that offering CTV has helped them retain their current clients and remain competitive with in-house marketing departments.

“Our clients are excited about the deeper understanding of how potential customers are interacting with their website after viewing a video. Insights learned from view rate all the way to revenue help my clients make better decisions on future video projects as well as seeing revenue growth from CTV.”

— Matt Meeker
Product Development Manager | Logical Position

This ability to attract and retain clients is paying off. Exactly half of respondents reported that offering CTV via MNTN has contributed to higher earnings, more campaign success, and more client KPI goals achieved. And that’s making for happy clients who choose to stand by their agency. Another half of respondents say their clients have been so impressed with CTV’s capabilities that they’ve increased their investment in the channel, while nearly 79% say that their clients report feeling more confident in their ability to operate digital channels like CTV. 

What impresses their clients most? Here, our polling shows perhaps the widest variety of answers, with no clear-cut winner. Leading the pack at 64% each, agencies say clients are excited to discover how capable MNTN / CTV is — and they’re just thrilled to achieve the prestige of television advertising. For many small-to-medium sized brands, TV advertising has long been out of reach, thanks to the costs of production and media buys. CTV has upended this by democratizing the television platform and breaking down the gates that has kept so many brands out —- in fact, 90% of MNTN clients are first-time advertisers.

“Our clients are most excited about the ability to merge programmatic audience targeting with machine learning, delivering high-quality creative storytelling to prime in-market audiences. MNTN continues to remove so many of the barriers to entry for emergent and disruptive DTC and omnichannel brands, leveling the playing field and bringing more competition to TV ad distribution.”  

— Justin Buckley
Partner | ATTN

We can also see that clients are simply excited to have another means to achieve their goals and higher earnings (50%), and unearth new messaging opportunities or campaign strategies (14%). Further, it’s CTV’s hidden benefits that have truly impressed ad agency clients — they’re seeing improved performance across their other ad channels with CTV’s halo effect (57%) and they appreciate that their agency partners can target, measure, and optimize their ads (28%).

How CTV Gives Agency Back to Agencies

The days of “just” offering creative are over. Today’s successful agencies have pivoted to performance marketing and overall strategy to combat brands pulling advertising in-house. But there are also more demands (and ad channels!) for the modern advertising agency — how can they possibly juggle so many needs with yet another channel added to their mix?

The good news is that agencies have discovered that not only is CTV highly effective as a performance channel — it’s freeing them up to tackle larger challenges and grow their business.

When asked how MNTN unlocked more creative flexibility, 57% said it was because they can now monitor what’s working in real time, A/B test, and tweak underperforming creative on the fly. These agencies no longer have to wait to see how campaigns fare in postmortems; they can start ensuring their clients’ messaging is resonating from the moment it airs. Not only does this help the client and agency more effectively maintain ad budgets, but it can lead to some fascinating discoveries or reveal untapped audiences that can be applied on other ad channels. 

Drilling deeper into the benefits of CTV’s automated technology, a whopping 71% of agencies told us it drives value and opportunity by automating ad buys to ensure their clients are seen on premium channels. In other words, their brands are being seen by the right people, at the right place, at the right time. This led to 57% reporting that CTV helps them drive value to their clients, simply by optimizing their ad spend and producing the best results. And they can run these effective ad campaigns at scale without having to scale for hiring (43%). 

What Drives Agencies to CTV — And Keeps Them There

So agencies are seeing outsized results for their CTV efforts — resulting in happy clients, new business, and more revenue. But what initially drove leading advertising agencies to pursue CTV advertising (and sign up with MNTN)? 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a staggering 93% said it was CTV’s performance marketing strengths — the ability to target customers, measure outcomes in real time, and turn the TV into an effective performance channel. Drilling down further, a plurality (57%) were sold on preferred pricing on top-tier TV inventory, 42% liked how easy it was to set up and launch campaigns, and 43% were attracted to the platform’s automatic campaign optimization. Cross-device attribution with third-party measurement platforms came in at 36%.

“We are all about media spend efficiency and effectiveness, which is why we value the best-in-class audience targeting. The platform’s ease of use lets us launch and manage campaigns easily, and the constant innovation means there’s always something new and provocative on the horizon.”

— Reid Carr
CEO & Executive Creative Director | Red Door Interactive

The Future’s Looking Bright For Savvy Ad Agencies

Audience and creative are major performance levers for ad agencies, and expertise in these areas continues to provide value. To maximize those two strategic strengths, agencies should look for partners/technology that automate performance optimization in a way that outperforms any manual optimizations. Expertise on audiences, creative, and targeting — coupled with platforms like performance TV platforms like MNTN — will help agencies continue to provide value and prove their worth, weathering the storm that has affected agencies cyclically in the past.