After a long day of Zoom meetings and spreadsheet wrangling, we all like to unwind in front of the TV from time to time. While we’re zoning out, brands are tuning in to the potential of connected TV (CTV) advertising.

But is the best place to reach your B2B customers really their living rooms between episodes of 3 Body Problem? Isn’t TV advertising better suited to B2C brands than B2B? The answer may surprise you.

According to Demand Gen Report’s 2024 State Of CTV Advertising, 70% of B2B advertisers surveyed are leveraging CTV advertising in some capacity. And Nielsen data provided to MarketingWeek revealed £108m of B2B ad spending in 2022. 

But perhaps the strongest argument favouring CTV’s increasing appeal as a mainstream B2B advertising channel comes from LinkedIn. 

The preeminent social platform for professionals recently announced new CTV advertising options in Campaign Manager, alongside a managed offering through NBCUniversal dubbed LinkedIn Premiere. While LinkedIn’s options are currently focused on the United States and Canada, there’s no reason to think they won’t make their way across the pond soon enough.

The move is a clarion call for B2B marketers, who will be able to leverage LinkedIn's extensive professional data and network to reach business audiences through streaming TV content with just a few clicks. 

However, DemandGen's report suggests that a lack of knowledge is one of the main reasons why B2B marketers are hesitant to fully embrace this emerging channel. Of B2B advertisers currently not leveraging CTV, 61% cited this as their main hurdle. If that sounds like you, here's a primer to get you started.

What is CTV?

Connected TV (CTV) refers to televisions or devices that can connect to the internet and allow viewers to stream video content from online services and apps.

It includes smart TVs that have built-in internet connectivity, as well as devices like Roku, Apple TV and the Amazon Fire TV Stick that you can connect to your regular TV to enable streaming. Peripherals like gaming consoles with video apps would also be considered CTV devices.

Consumers use CTV devices to stream over-the-top (OTT) content. Popular OTT platforms include the usual subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) suspects - Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO Max, and the like. The ITVHub and All4 apps also fall into this category.

If it all sounds a bit like alphabet soup, suffice it to say that CTV and OTT are often mistaken for one another but are not, in fact, interchangeable.

CTV advertising integrates traditional TV's reach and visual impact with the precision and analytics of digital advertising. It should be viewed as a complementary channel within a comprehensive B2B marketing mix, working in tandem with other tactics to drive awareness, nurture leads, and influence purchase decisions.

Key Benefits of CTV Advertising for B2B Marketers

CTV offers several strategic advantages for B2B marketers leaders seeking to capture the attention of hard-to-reach business audiences and drive measurable results.

Targeted Advertising

In many ways, CTV solves several problems that have long kept B2B companies locked out of traditional TV advertising: high costs, a lack of audience targeting, and ROI that’s difficult to quantify.

CTV turns all this on its head by allowing B2B marketers to enjoy TV's wide reach while targeting specific demographics, job titles, industries, and even individual companies. Targeting is based on rich data collected from users’ digital interactions and viewing habits. 

This level of specificity helps marketers engage decision-makers who may be difficult to reach through more generalised advertising channels.

Marketers can also leverage diverse data sources, such as their own CRM data, to build detailed targeting profiles and retarget prospects who’ve already engaged with the brand. This makes it a potential channel for account-based marketing (ABM) campaigns, ensuring that the viewers most relevant to your brand see your ads so you can continue the conversation.

It’s also possible to use detailed third-party data to target viewers. LinkedIn’s CTV offerings, for example, enable precise targeting using LinkedIn's detailed professional data. This enables the strategic placement of ads where they are most likely to reach decision-makers and influencers within specific industries or job functions.

Partnerships like this also offer advertisers another critical type of targeting: the opportunity to place ads alongside popular and trusted programs that are likely to be viewed by business professionals - and which offer a baseline of brand safety.

Enhanced Audience Engagement

Thanks to CTV’s ability to target audiences with pinpoint accuracy, marketers can focus on increasing engagement by developing content directly relevant to viewers' professional lives.

Aside from the content itself, television is, by its very nature, an immersive experience that’s difficult to replicate through any other medium. Your audience will already be tuned in and, in many cases, expect some ads. 

Because CTV ads appear on a large screen to a captive audience, they often hold viewers’ attention better than standard display ads or even traditional TV commercials. This offers the opportunity to deliver complex brand messaging more completely and engagingly than would be possible with digital ads, email marketing, or social media strategies.

Keeping Your Brand Top of Mind

CTV's ability to reach audiences during non-business hours when they’re more relaxed and receptive, making it a valuable tool for maintaining brand awareness.

This can be crucial in the context of the extended B2B sales cycle and complex buying process.

Most buyers have a pre-selected small list of vendors they evaluate when they enter an active buying mode. In fact, the Harvard Business Review estimates that 90% of buyers ultimately choose a vendor from their day-one list of contenders.

It’s key to be part of that initial consideration set, which is heavily influenced by prior brand exposure and awareness. 

By advertising on CTV platforms and networks, B2B brands can reach out-of-market buyers,  promoting their products and services alongside premium, brand-safe content that boosts credibility and brand perception with business audiences.

The big screen TV experience also allows for more memorable, engaging, and premium creative that can better communicate value propositions compared to traditional B2B digital ads.

Measurable Outcomes 

CTV provides advanced analytics and tracking tools that allow marketers to measure key performance indicators (KPIs) such as view-through rates, engagement levels, and conversions to assess campaign effectiveness.

The metrics from CTV can be integrated with platforms like Google Analytics, providing a unified view of website visit rates, cost per acquisition, and other critical metrics tied to the B2B marketing strategies. Having this unified view of performance data reduces the need for manually compiling reports from multiple sources when calculating metrics like Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

Challenges of CTV for B2B Marketers

While CTV advertising offers numerous advantages for B2B marketers, it's essential to be aware of some challenges that may arise when incorporating this strategy into your marketing mix.

Poor Suitability for Direct Response

Despite CTV’s knack for helping brands secure (and nurture) a prominent spot in potential customers’ minds, it's important to recognise that CTV ads alone are unlikely to close deals. 

B2B sales cycles are long, complex, and involve multiple stakeholders - not all of whom will have seen your post-roll ads while bingeing the latest episodes of Taskmaster or Gogglebox on All4.

Use CTV ads to build brand awareness and rely on other tactics, such as targeted email campaigns or personalised landing pages to drive conversions more effectively.

Brand Safety Risks

Unless you’re budgeted for LinkedIn Premiere or buying ad space on a CTV device’s homepage, chances are you’ll have minimal control over which shows your content appears alongside. After all, someone’s got to wind up in the post-roll ad slot for Naked Attraction.

To mitigate brand safety risks, partner with reputable CTV platforms or ad networks that offer brand safety tools and have strict content guidelines. Alternatively, invest in private marketplace (PMP) deals, which give you more control over ad placement and help ensure your ads appear alongside brand-suitable content. Regularly monitor your ad placements and adjust your strategy as needed to maintain brand integrity.

Content Creation, Optimisation, and Consistency

Integrating CTV into your digital marketing efforts will increase the cost and complexity of content creation. The need to deliver content with high production values suitable for large screens - and to do so at scale - can squeeze already-constrained resources and budgets. 

You’ll also need to balance these demands with meticulous messaging planning and coordination to ensure a consistent, recognisable brand voice across all your engagement channels.

To address the challenges of creating high-quality CTV ad content at scale, you will need to consider:

• Allocating sufficient budget and resources for CTV content creation and optimisation to ensure your ads resonate with your target audience and drive desired outcomes.

• Developing a comprehensive brand style guide and messaging framework to ensure consistency across all channels, including CTV.

• Collaborating with experienced CTV ad production partners who can help you create compelling, platform-specific content while maintaining brand consistency.

• Repurposing existing video assets, such as product demos or customer testimonials, and optimising them for CTV formats.

Understanding Your CTV Ad Options

There are three main ways to buy CTV ads:

• Directly from streaming services: Although this route creates challenges with scalability, you’ll have access to exclusive inventory and slightly more transparency into where your advertising spending is going.

• Through programmatic advertising platforms: This PPC-esque model allows ad buyers to auto-bid on available ad inventory across multiple platforms, helping maximise segmentation to extend ads’ reach while controlling costs. However, you’ll give up some control over where your ads appear.

• Directly from CTV device-makers: Placing an ad-buy directly with Roku, Amazon, or a smart TV manufacturer allows your ads to appear on device home screens and screen savers, but at the cost of transparency and control over specific ad placement.

Once you’ve identified how you want to buy your CTV ads, you’ll need to think about what kind of ads you want to run.

CTV ads fall into three general categories: interactive, skippable, and non-skippable. Interactive ads encourage users to scan a QR code or press a button on their remote to learn more. Skippable ads allow users to “Nope!” out after three to five seconds, with advertisers only paying if the viewer hangs around long enough. Non-skippable ads typically run for 15 - 30 seconds before returning users to their content (or another ad).

Within these categories, you can create many different types of CTV-specific ads. These are the main ones to know:

• Instream and linear video ads most closely resemble traditional television ads. Pre-roll ads play before the content starts, mid-roll ads interrupt the content (hopefully at a sensible break-point, but not always), and post-roll ads follow the end of the streamed video.

• Non-linear ads display while the content is streaming, typically as an overlay with a small static image (or some other eye-catching visual) and a CTA. A variant of this ad type creates a picture-in-picture effect, allowing the content to play in the small window while the ad displays.

• Display ads are static images and animated banners that appear on menus, home screens, screensavers, and other areas of the CTV interface but without directly interfering with streaming.

• Audio ads don’t have any visual components but can effectively reach individual consumers who stream music or podcasts through CTV devices.

Focusing on these basics will help you develop a comprehensive CTV advertising strategy. However, as you gain more experience with CTV advertising, you can also consider more adventurous possibilities, such as immersive video, augmented reality, dynamic ad insertion, and companion ads.

The Future of CTV in Your B2B Marketing Mix

Industry forecasts predict CTV ad spending and viewership to surpass linear TV within the next decade, so B2B marketers need to stop thinking of CTV advertising as a B2C channel and see it for what it really is: a smart strategy recalibration in a world where home and office are increasingly indistinguishable. 

With its ability to deliver targeted, measurable, and impactful campaigns, CTV offers a unique opportunity to build brand awareness, nurture leads, and drive meaningful business outcomes.

​​While there are challenges to consider, such as the need for high-quality content creation and the potential for brand safety risks, these can be effectively managed through strategic planning, partnerships, and continuous optimisation.

If you’re considering adding CTV advertising to your marketing mix, we’d love to chat about how the 1827 Marketing team can make it happen with creative talent and engaging content.