What Is OTT Video Marketing, and Should Your Contracting Business Be Using It?

In the past, small busi­ness­es strug­gled to adver­tise on cable TV, espe­cial­ly in big cities where high min­i­mum bud­gets made the cost pro­hib­i­tive. TV was a ​“big busi­ness” game that required deep pockets… 

With the emer­gence of smart TVs and stream­ing apps, how­ev­er, the adver­tis­ing land­scape across your devices has trans­formed. Now even small paint­ing and con­tract­ing busi­ness­es can effec­tive­ly reach their tar­get audi­ence through Over the Top (OTT) and Con­nect­ed TV (CTV)

adver­tis­ing at afford­able rates.

How Does OTT and CTV Video Mar­ket­ing Work?

Let’s back up and talk about smart TVs. 

Rather than rely on cable being piped in, con­nect­ing you with a huge array of chan­nels, smart TVs rely on apps and dig­i­tal stream­ing ser­vices. Net­flix, Ama­zon Prime, Hulu, ESPN, HGTV… The list is basi­cal­ly end­less. This is how peo­ple watch and digest most of their con­tent because they pin­point ser­vices and ​“chan­nels” that they know they enjoy. 

Over the past 5+ years, the enter­tain­ment indus­try has wit­nessed a sig­nif­i­cant shift as home­own­ers increas­ing­ly aban­don tra­di­tion­al cable sub­scrip­tions in favor of var­i­ous stream­ing devices. Smart TVs, gam­ing devices, smart­phones, tablets… Basi­cal­ly these are devices that plug into a TV or screen that allow you to stream apps. CTV (Con­nect­ed TV) is almost the same but is just TV with inter­net access that already has the apps built in and allows stream­ing services. 

If you use these ser­vices, you already know that there are small ​“com­mer­cial breaks” from adver­tis­ers that pop up through­out your show. A minute here, 30 sec­onds there… You can pay to adver­tise and stream a com­mer­cial on these plat­forms, and it’s much more cost-effec­tive than run­ning a tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion spot.

Is OTT and CTV Adver­tis­ing Affordable?

In short, yes! 

His­tor­i­cal­ly, adver­tis­ing rates have been based on impres­sions: the num­ber of peo­ple who see an ad. TV sta­tions deter­mine their rates based on impres­sions per spot (high pro­file events or time slots are more expen­sive than less pop­u­lar slots). While impres­sions are not an exact sci­ence, they pro­vide a fair­ly pre­cise mea­sure. For exam­ple, a 30-sec­ond com­mer­cial in a par­tic­u­lar mar­ket might cost $600 but be seen by 20,000 peo­ple. As a help­ful ref­er­ence point, the aver­age cost per impres­sion for OTT adver­tis­ing can range from $0.02 to $0.05 per house­hold per commercial.

How­ev­er, not every­one in that audi­ence is a poten­tial cus­tomer for, say, a paint­ing busi­ness. Some might live out­side the ser­vice area or lack the means to afford pro­fes­sion­al paint­ing ser­vices, right? 

This is where OTT adver­tis­ing excels: it offers a one-to-one adver­tis­ing plat­form, allow­ing busi­ness­es to tar­get spe­cif­ic house­holds or indi­vid­u­als based on demo­graph­ics such as age, income lev­el, home­own­er­ship, and zip code. 

Max­i­miz­ing Your OTT/CTV Campaign

Sup­pose you have a bud­get of $1,000 for a one-month OTT/CTV cam­paign. With this bud­get, you can tai­lor your ad to reach your ide­al cus­tomers approx­i­mate­ly 6 – 15 times per month, with costs rang­ing from $0.18 to $0.50 per house­hold. Plus, you can lever­age OTT ad soft­ware to strate­gi­cal­ly place your ads across over 500+ chan­nels and apps, tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic user habits. 

This means your ad could be seen on chan­nels like the His­to­ry Chan­nel, HGTV, the Food Net­work, or CNN, allow­ing you to engage with a vari­ety of poten­tial customers.

Build­ing Your Brand Message

For paint­ing con­trac­tors and home improve­ment firms, OTT adver­tis­ing presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty to effec­tive­ly con­vey your brand mes­sage to your tar­get audi­ence. We rec­om­mend craft­ing a mem­o­rable call to action or tagline that res­onates with view­ers, just as Lib­er­ty Mutu­al has done with their catchy jin­gle: ​“Lib­er­ty Lib­er­ty Lib­er­ty. Lib­er­ty!” Such mem­o­rable ads can help build brand recog­ni­tion and influ­ence con­sumer behavior.

What’s Your Takeaway?

OTT and CTV adver­tis­ing have rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way small busi­ness­es, includ­ing paint­ing con­trac­tors, can reach their tar­get audi­ence. By lever­ag­ing the pow­er of stream­ing apps and smart TVs, busi­ness­es can deliv­er their mes­sage direct­ly to inter­est­ed house­holds, opti­miz­ing their adver­tis­ing bud­get and build­ing brand aware­ness. We’re big fans and excit­ed about the potential!

If you have any fur­ther ques­tions about OTT and CTV adver­tis­ing and how it can ben­e­fit your busi­ness, feel free to reach out to us for more information.