🍝 Your Ads On... Netflix?

Hey friends,

If you are running LinkedIn Ads campaigns right now and not having much luck, today’s newsletter is going to break down how to tap into one of the highest ROI campaigns hardly anyone is testing: LinkedIn Connected TV (CTV).

After analyzing our closed/won deals for the year and realising how much revenue CTV has earned us, I wanted to share the wealth. 

The biggest surprise to me about CTV is, even though LinkedIn launched this ad type over 18 months ago, most B2Bs still haven’t tested it. 

I have two theories: 

But the opportunity window to test CTV is real. CPMs on CTV are 50-70% lower than other ad types on LinkedIn, competition is pretty light, and you're reaching people with non-skippable placements.

Here’s how to cook up a CTV campaign of your own 👇

Brands can now target decision-makers down to the shows they watch using LinkedIn's Campaign Manager integrated with publishers like Paramount, Netflix, NBCUniversal, Samsung Ads, and Roku.

The targeting combines LinkedIn's first-party data (role, company, industry, titles) with what people actually watch on connected TV devices.

You might be running video ads on other platforms and thinking CTV is just the same thing on another screen. It's not.

CTV ads are different because of the inventory models available: 

The reason it works isn’t difficult to figure out. Those high-value ICP prospects you are going after? They do the exact thing most of us do when we log off for the day—watch tv and chill.

Just remember, the goal isn’t to convert them while they’re watching Netflix (obviously). 

CTV works because it buys up space in your ICP’s memory bank so if (and when) they need a product or service your brand offers, you will be top of mind. 

Most ads fail on LinkedIn because the targeting is too broad, which is why CTV works best when you pull data from your last 12-24 months of closed deals:

If you read this newsletter regularly, I’m going to sound like a broken record. But, targeting works best when you use a third-party tool like Primer to build this audience. 

Third-party tools exclude seniorities (entry-level and C-suite positions, for example) that LinkedIn won't let you remove with native targeting. Then, add exclusion layers for existing customers, direct competitors, and what we call reverse ICP audiences.

These should be people who match the opposite of your ICP. 

Nail this step and it should cut your audience down to roughly 1/10th the size of your original targeting size. When you narrow this precisely, you reach actual decision-makers instead of title matches, and wasted spend drops immediately.

Only 5% of your audience is actively buying right now. The other 95% might purchase in six months, but even the best creative never converts someone not ready to buy.

For CTV, aim to reach 50%+ of your ICP every 30 days. I recommend using these platform settings to hit that goal:

This forces the algorithm to distribute ads broadly instead of concentrating on the most-engaged users. 

Broader reach today generates recall for when your ICP moves in-market.

Now that you've got the targeting and frequency locked down, the last step is putting spend behind creative that works.

Here's an example of a high-performing CTV ad we ran in Q3 👇

After watching it, you can immediately see how this framework is put into action:

1⃣ Agitate a real problem for your ICP

The first line of the ad is "I run marketing here. Or at least, I try."

This immediately establishes the core pain point your audience experiences daily: being pulled in conflicting directions while trying to move strategy forward. We know this is what our ICP has to deal with, because they tell us in calls!

2⃣ Hint at a desired outcome

Throughout the video, the marketer is yanked around and told to focus on different tasks, which we made satirical and kind of ridiculous to add some humor to the ad.

But, it also opens up a way for us to tie the ICP’s pain point back to our business: what would it feel like to actually focus on strategy without constant interruptions? 🤔

3⃣ Hit home with a benefit-driven ending

At the end of the ad, the marketer says: "I'm one Slack ping away from applying for a job with no Wi-Fi" and then scissors quietly cut one of the ropes pulling her around.

The final scene of the ad says: "Still Being Pulled in Every Direction? Time to Cut the Rope. Get a Marketing Plan That Actually Delivers" with our agency’s name and what we do: performance marketing.

Now, obviously the viewer of the ad can’t click the CTA on the TV and convert from the sofa.

But we can see if they do that in the future because we ran the ad through LinkedIn. This CTV campaign will get credit for influencing the conversion.

If budget is tight, think about how to maximize content you already have or would be a low lift to create. Even an audiogram mashed together from customer calls will work surprisingly well. 

We’ve put $15k behind this very CTV ad this year:

So far, it has influenced 12 closed/won deals worth roughly $720k in ARR 🤯

And all it took was some pieced-together customer calls and out-of-the-box thinking from our own creative team.

Most B2B brands running video ads today use broad targeting and optimize for engagement. They watch CPMs rise and wonder why pipeline suffers.

CPMs are still low and competition is still light. But like anything good in B2B marketing, that will all change as more teams allocate budget to CTV.

Move now and establish some campaigns before the auction gets crowded.

Hope you've found this useful, catch ya in the next one! 

🤘

Patrick

P.S. If you want to test CTV but don’t know how to get started, we run this recipe on our account and with dozens of clients. I can show you exactly how to roll this out for your brand, just hit me up for a chat!