How Small Brands Can Leverage Convergent TV During Major TV Events Like March Madness
College basketball fans across the country are gearing up for another epic season of March Madness. If you are a superfan, you will likely be watching every game, and maybe even rewatching a few of the games over streaming services. Along the way, you’ll check your brackets more than you would care to admit and watch countless commercials by some of the biggest brands in the country. You will be part of a captive audience that every advertiser wants to reach. So, it’s no surprise that marketers will spend lots of money to be part of one of the biggest TV moments of the year.
According to CBS, the price range for a 30-second commercial is from “a couple of hundred thousand dollars” for early-round games to “well over two million dollars for the championship game.” Very few brands can afford to run TV ads consistently throughout the tournament with that kind of cost.
The good news? Even if you aren’t one of those brands spending millions on linear TV March Madness ads, you can still score big. Our advice – find the open spot on the floor and let ‘er fly! Meaning, pick your ad spot time, audience, ad format, and activate wisely.
Convergent TV: Merging Linear TV With CTV
Advertising during March Madness and other big seasonal TV moments throughout the year has traditionally been out of reach for smaller to mid-size brands. But the strong emergence of Convergent TV which merges linear TV with CTV has changed all that.
What is Convergent TV?
Convergent TV, one of the hottest topics in advertising right now, is the intersection of linear TV and Connected TV (CTV). Convergent TV, and the analytics it demands, merge the power of linear TV with the zero-waste targeting of CTV, creating cost-efficient TV ad opportunities early adopters are already profiting from. The technology now exists to apply sophisticated digital measurement to linear TV investments, and advertisers are racing to understand how this game-changing strategy can improve measurable outcomes for big screen advertising moments such as March Madness.
Convergent TV: The Perfect Solution for Small Advertising Budgets
If your team is small, and your budget is even smaller, convergent TV could be the answer. Cost-efficiency and strategy are key here:
- What’s your budget, message, and who are you targeting: national, regional, local, or all three?
- Are you going to serve ads at the beginning of the tournament (more ad availability, less cost), or;
- Wait until the Final Four (more expensive, more visibility, less availability)?
GroundTruth’s Solutions for Your Convergent TV Advertising Strategy
At GroundTruth, we’re developing powerful convergent TV solutions that brands can apply today. We believe this is an opportunity for advertisers to think about their big screen investments in a more thoughtful, strategic way. When an advertiser is investing in linear TV, and/or CTV, they need to know what’s producing measurable results, and why. Convergent TV isn’t about measuring impressions, it’s about using data in addressable ways to extend the targeted reach and get better outcomes. Companies like GroundTruth are giving advertisers the data analytics they need to optimize investments that meet cross-screen expectations, across local, regional, and national campaigns.
GroundTruth’s Convergent TV Solution: Linear Visitation Analysis
GroundTruth’s convergent TV model applies the best of our MRC-accredited Ad Technology with the ability to analyze and take action on linear campaign data. We call this solution Linear Visitation Analysis. Just like CTV, we can apply data analysis that shows how a linear campaign can be measured by household exposure, and then take it up a level to show resultant foot traffic attribution.
Running a linear campaign will always deliver broad reach and frequency, but now those attributes can be tied to tangible, location-based traffic results. Linear Visitation Analysis is helping brands optimize and refine their campaigns in real-time, making their big-screen investments more efficient, and their brand messaging more targeted and impactful.
Convergent TV has arrived, and smart brands will recognize the opportunity cross-screen measurability, on linear and CTV, represents to the future of strategic big screen advertising… even beyond March Madness.
To see if GroundTruth can improve your brand’s advertising efficiency, give us a call.
