CTV campaign planning is stuck in the past - can better data bring colour to black-and-white targeting?

Instead of taking advantage of CTV’s data-driven capabilities, many advertisers depend on the same demographic data they’ve been using for decades: age and gender aligned with TV content categories and little else. This limited view might maximise volume, but leaves many opportunities on the table.
 

Why is age & gender so prevalent in TV advertising?

TV has been the prestige advertising channel for many decades, a place where big brands duke it out with celebrity appearances and Hollywood production values and agencies show off their creative talents. Without opportunities for direct conversion, building brand awareness was the name of the game, with adverts aimed to appeal to as many viewers as possible.

Ratings data would allow a degree of tailoring towards particular ages and genders depending on what they watched, but the precise behavioural targeting of the digital world was nowhere to be seen, nor was it possible. But that has all changed - or has the potential to change - with CTV, where a more data-driven, digital-like approach to granular audience targeting is available.

However, old habits are hard to break, and age and gender remain the de facto attributes for audience targeting in TV campaigns. This limits the potential of the channel to awareness-raising and the big brands that can afford a scattergun approach to targeting. But even in the world of big budget TV advertising, the efficiencies and cost savings of precise segmentation will be impossible to resist as CTV’s data capabilities mature.
 

Demographic targeting is in desperate need of a reboot

Age and gender alone are unreliable proxies for the life stages that advertisers will commonly target. The age at which people are having children, buying their first home, or retiring is widening in range, and many may forgo these traditional markers of success entirely. Whether through economic pressures or greater individual freedoms, the increasing diversity of the human experience makes demographic assumptions in silo less reliable.

It’s not just people who are diversifying but also what they watch. Outside of major sporting events like the Super Bowl or FIFA World Cup, there are fewer reliable cultural touchstones on TV. The sheer volume of content available today - from on demand to live streams across a dizzying array of services - makes it far more difficult to predict accurately what content demographics watch, and making broad assumptions means missing opportunities to craft relevant campaigns aimed at valuable segments.

In addition to what people watch, there’s how they watch it. Someone watching a documentary on their phone while they commute, playing old sitcoms on their tablet in bed, or running a live sports stream in the corner of their work laptop would all come under the umbrella of CTV, but their viewing experiences are a far cry from the big screen TV with the family gathered around. In such cases, information such as the user’s device type, location, and level of attention is just as important as their demographic, if not more.
 

Consumers have broken demographic barriers & brands should follow

Some of the most sought-after audience segments today crash through demographic barriers. Take the rise of the value-driven consumer, for example. While Gen Zs and millennials tend to get the limelight here, people of all ages are increasingly concerned about the environmental and ethical impact of what they buy. Without any insights into such attitudinal factors, a campaign for eco-friendly products might target women aged 30–34, who may index higher in value-driven consumption, but by no means make up the entire segment.

As the gradual and inevitable shift from linear to CTV continues, campaign planners need to inform their strategy with as many insights on their target consumers as possible to match the granularity increasingly being offered by streaming platforms, broadcasters, and TV OEMs. By filling in a picture of their target audience through data enrichment from panels, exchanges, collaborations, and more, advertisers can build out precise, CTV-ready audience segments.

An airline could distinguish between business and leisure travellers; an auto company could isolate single urban professionals seeking a small electric vehicle; a food delivery service could reach rural customers many miles from major stores.

A data collaboration between a streaming platform and a retail media network, for example, could show CPG brands which content their target consumers are watching and place ads directly around it. Age and gender matter but much less when you can say with certainty where your prospects are, opening opportunities to plan campaigns around the content and the product rather than only the demographic of who is watching.

The core principle of advertising is the right message, in the right place, at the right time. Demographic targeting based on age and gender is not enough to deliver this on the fragmented CTV ecosystem. But what advertisers lose in the simplicity of the linear era they gain in precision. Your ideal customer could massively over-index amongst people who binge watch reruns of crime shows on TV or fill their train journeys with anime streamed on their phone. With the right data, you can find them.