• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, February 5, 2021

Connected TV is poised to play a bigger role and open new interactive and creative opportunities for marketers during this year’s Super Bowl and other live events. 

Innovid CTO Tal Chalozin elaborates in this Q&A: 

What does the growth of CTV over the past year mean for the Super Bowl?

Chalozin: “We’re expecting an overall spike in streaming viewership of the Super Bowl. For one thing, there are way more smart TVs and Roku, Apple TV and Amazon Fire devices out there now. 

For another, the Super Bowl can be streamed free, including by the growing number of people who have cut the cord or don’t have cable. There are many ways to watch, but the main one is using the CBS app. 

The stay-at-home dynamic is also expected to boost viewership this year. This includes the pre-game, which hasn’t been much of a big deal in the past — attention levels tend to be lower, since a lot of people are normally watching out-of-home, in bars or at parties. This year, the pre-game offers advertisers more opportunity to reach audiences." 

What about engagement opportunities through CTV? 

Chalozin: “This year, many more viewers should be watching from their living rooms, with their remotes and phones in hand. They will also have fewer distractions, with fewer people around them. 

This makes it a unique moment for marketers to engage directly with these viewers — use interactivity, personalization, dynamic creative and tools like QR codes to turn a commercial view into a subscription or sale, and capture customer data. 

Interactive, personalized CTV experiences are used widely today by a variety of brands, across numerous publishers. But the live nature of the Super Bowl, and its scale, make it unique. 

Leveraging this opportunity does require working with the publisher — CBS, in this case — to prepare and troubleshoot. But we expect to see brands of all sizes trying new techniques, and ones they haven’t used previously. 

We’ve seen brands lift performance in the past through relevance-based executions as simple as adding a time-based countdown to kickoff, or by dynamically pulling in the active score of the game. 

But take that thinking a step further. According to eMarketer, nearly half of TV viewers use a second screen simultaneously. Interactive CTV enables delivering a personalized, compelling message directly to the consumer. 

Features like content galleries and SMS texts, as well as interactive and static QR codes — we expect to see more of the static kind, in particular — give marketers the opportunity to go beyond their standard awareness-based messaging and drive deeper connections through direct action.  

For example, a restaurant brand can tempt viewers during the game by using an interactive unit like a QR code to offer a real-time coupon for delivery. Or geo-target to offer a special menu item available in certain cities. 

Advertisers can also sequentially target their messaging. For instance, during pre-game, viewers might see creative that’s more app- and drink-focused, while in Q4, they may see ads for sweets and creative geared to end-of-game themes.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to swapping out creative or targeting viewers with personalized interactive.”