Precision CTV and YouTube targeting maximised Black Friday footfall

The Wires 2024 Awards has shortlisted Audience Store’s work for furniture retailer Furniture Village in the Best Use of Data & Creativity category – a major validation of the insight-driven media activation specialist’s CTV and digital targeting capabilities on small budget campaigns.

Using such channels to supplement linear TV activity, Audience Store was able to help Furniture Village beat footfall and sales targets in the lead-up to Black Friday last year.

The campaign is one that will inevitably interest habitual TV advertisers intrigued by the possibilities of CTV for brand and performance. Furniture Village has relied on linear TV as its biggest media channel for many years, and while digital has been added into the mix in recent years, linear TV still accounts for a large proportion of its media budget.  The challenge was to reach the retailer’s ABC1 householder target audience with a limited budget, and with minimal TV investment that month.

Audience Store turned to CTV to plug the gap. Budgets were allocated so that CTV spend was higher in weeks where there were fewer or no TVRs, and lower when TVRs were greater. In the event, results were such that CTV has now become a regular part of Furniture Village’s AV strategy.

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The execution called on a number of partners, including the LightBox TV platform, to inform inventory planning across BVOD, AVOD and YouTube apps; Kogenta, to track footfall uplift to Furniture Village stores; and Audience Project, to understand the incremental reach of CTV over linear TV.

Deals were curated across a variety of inventory sources, including LG, Samsung, Pluto and Discovery Plus, either directly or via Magnite, and built around genres and content categories that indexed highly for the ABC1 householder audience. Additionally, Samsung and LG created direct deals that overlaid ACR data for Light TV Viewers to add incremental reach to the linear and BVOD activity.

On YouTube, Audience Store created an inclusion list of channels based on a blend of relevance to home furniture/design audiences, and content categories and interests that the Furniture Village website audience over-indexes for based on Audience Store’s DiscoverAI proprietary audience insights tool.

The campaign surpassed the 56% incrementality reach target Vs. linear TV by 10 percentage points, with 66% of the CTV activity reaching users that were not reached by linear TV activity. These targets also translated into sales for Furniture Village as they beat their combined in-store and online target, equating to significant additional revenue. Footfall analysis confirmed that the biggest increases in footfall correlated to areas where CTV activity was greater.

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Further testing has brought SVOD services such as Freevee and Amazon Prime Video into the planning.

“This campaign highlights the value of CTV as both a branding and a performance channel,” says Audience Store MD, Jon Hewson. “It also proves that a smaller budget doesn’t have to equate to lower reach, so long as you have access to the tools needed to harness the precision targeting that CTV and other digital channels can deliver.”

The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on 7th November.

Audience Store is an international customer insight and next-generation programmatic media activation partner for brands and agencies. We help brands understand consumer behaviour and purchasing motivations at a granular level by leveraging AI, technology, and sophisticated insights to empower brands, embracing the power of simplicity, not complexity. By applying these insights, we fuel digital marketing for enhanced customer discovery, engagement and acquisition throughout the purchase journey. Through our programmatic expertise, we achieve brand-safe, high-performance campaign goals through curating the right inventory and implementing real-time optimisation. As a proud partner of the IAB Gold-approved 2.1 standard, we stand as a trusted solution to inform, create, and consistently deliver cost-effective results. For more: audiencestore.co.uk.