CTV Measurement: Connected TV Metrics to Track

Linear TV advertisers receive standard reporting on estimated impression delivery by demographic (for example, 18 to 34 age group) based on TV ratings, and Nielsen panel data. 

If advertisers want to understand the impact of those impressions, they need to invest in separate research tactics—like incremental lift analyses, or paid brand studies to estimate the likely effect of TV on correlated metrics like awareness, acquisition and sales.

Connected TV (CTV) is changing the landscape of television. It allows you to combine premium, high-impact video inventory with specific audience targeting to reach your ideal audiences. Unlike with linear TV, one of the many benefits of CTV is that you can track the impact of your CTV campaigns in the same manner as with your other programmatic buys. 

TV Advertising Attribution Explained

TV advertising attribution looks at a spike in online response volume after a linear TV ad airs, which advertisers can analyze to gain insight into the ad’s performance. 

An attribution model typically has a set of rules that determines how sales and conversion credits are assigned to various touch points in the conversion path. CTV advertising attribution looks a bit different. 

What is connected TV measurement?

CTV measurement tracks and analyzes the results of your CTV ad campaigns, allowing you to understand attribution, and optimize your campaigns for the best results. CTV measurement leverages metrics like impressions delivered, CPCV, VCR, unique device breakdown, and view-through conversions to provide a picture of your campaign’s performance. 

5 Common CTV Metrics to Track

There are various sets of metrics that you can use to assess the success of your different ad campaigns. The ones you choose should be based on the unique goals of the campaign. 

1. Impressions

Impressions track how many people saw at least a portion of the CTV ad. This simple metric offers a huge improvement on traditional TV measurement. Impressions are an important metric because they provide a picture of how many people are seeing ads within a particular channel.

2. Watch Time and Completion Rate

Watch time and completion rate measure how much of your CTV ad a user watched. These rates help determine whether or not your audience is finding the content engaging. 

Watch time measures the exact amount of seconds that a viewer watched, and completion rate measures how many viewers watched the video to the end. 

3. Cost Per Completed View (CPCV)

Cost per completed view (CPCV) measures the amount paid by an advertiser to the publisher once a video has been viewed through to completion.

4. Return On Ad Spend

Return on ad spend (ROAS) measures the amount of revenue earned for every dollar spent on advertising. Similar to return on investment (ROI), ROAS measures the ROI of the money that was invested into digital advertising, like a CTV campaign.

5. View-Through Conversions

This metric measures how many people converted (for example, made a purchase) after viewing your ad on a CTV device. View-through conversions give you a holistic view of the value of your campaign. 

The ability to accurately track and report on this metric will allow you to measure true return on advertising spend, while also providing a baseline to help improve future CTV campaigns.

CTV Measurement and Brand Lift

Another strategy for CTV measurement is to leverage a brand lift study. A brand lift study gathers feedback directly from consumers in real-time. 

Through a survey-based approach, you are able to measure consumer sentiment and brand affinity of those who have been exposed to your CTV campaign by comparing their results against the results from users in a control group who have not been exposed to your CTV ad.

You can use the data from the brand lift study to demonstrate ROAS in more detail. A brand lift study will show incremental lift through metrics like brand awareness, ad recall, brand favourability, and brand affinity.

By asking your audience relevant questions, you can learn insights about them: their considerations, purchase intent and preferences. This will help demystify your audience, create retargeting pools based on consumer responses, and build lookalike audiences that will connect more users with your brand—ultimately, increasing your scale at a lower eCPA.

Get Started With CTV Measurement 

If you’re planning to onboard CTV, and reallocate budget to it, it’s important to think about how best to maximize that investment to prove the return on your investment (ROI). Targeting the right audiences and measuring the impact of CTV advertising through attribution will be critical for success.

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