It’s not just so-called direct-to-consumer brands that are trying to bring “daily rigor and accountability to video.” Effectively connecting different television environments is a common goal across the spectrum of advertisers, says EVP and Chief of the Horizon Next direct-marketing agency Gene Turner.
“For most of the DTC brands and even the performance brands that we’re talking to, the conversation is about business building and brand building. I use those two things synergistically because there’s never a conversation that we have with a brand where we’re only talking about sales,” Turner says in this interview with Beet.TV at the recent VAB Direct To Success event in Manhattan.
Conversations tend to center on metrics reflecting sales and brand health, according to Turner.
“We need to hit our performance goals. I think we recognize that there’s a lot of competition in most categories and we need to be making sure that we’re thinking about awareness and those metrics simultaneously.”
The goal of connecting TV environments is combining the right audiences with the right strategies. “So we’re constantly testing and learning like we would do in a digital channel and then from there we’re leveraging data to make quick, fast decisions so we can actually drive those businesses forward.”
At the end of the day, says Turner, performance can mean many different things. Signals can help to understand initial engagement, site visitation “and how we’re getting folks interested in our brand.” After that, “most of what we need to make sure we’re doing is actually driving incremental sales and incremental sales lift within the video channel.”
While initial signals might suggest that “this campaign is moving well but the analytics and the decisions that are driven by those analytics are really driven by the ability to drive incremental sales and better overall ROI for our clients.”
Beyond traditional linear, broadcast and syndicated TV lies the growing promise of OTT.
“I see the big opportunity as OTT, and then around OTT making sure that we have the measurement in place that we have in linear TV and that we have in Facebook that we can make quick, fast decisions in the OTT space so we’re making holistic decisions of how to make video dollars move fluidly.”
This video is from a Beet.TV’s coverage of the VAB’s Direct to Success summit held on June 12 at Viacom in New York City. Please visit this page for more segments.
